Aegis BPO:  Big HR reshuffle
By Pulkit Sharma

Aegis BPO is one of the stars of the Indian outsourcing industry.  Aegis has more than 15 thousand employees and is poised to meet its target of soon becoming a $500 million dollar company.  Most recently, it has taken over the AOL Call Centers in India. Aegis India Senior Vice President and HR boss, Prakash Toppo, after consulting the Aegis CEO, has announced a dramatic reorganization of the human resources team. 

Officially the “change is part of our endeavor to provide excellent HR Services to meet the demands of a rapidly growing organization.  The key tenet of the structure is to provide excellence in employee service that is consistent across all sites”.

Unofficially, it is to reward performers and friends and bypass people who do not fit into the vision.

The 5 new verticals of Aegis HR are

Corporate HR:  This forms the strategic arm of HR and encompasses the areas of HR policies, Performance Management and Compensation and Benefits.  Nitin Thakur,  VP-HR will lead this function on a national level.

Talent Services:  This is the Service delivery arm of HR and will continue to be headed on a national level by Sreedhar Bahudhanam,  AVP-HR.

Talent Acquisition:  The forms the recruitment arm of HR and is headed on a national level by Vinod Verma,  AVP-HR

Talent Engagement:  This is the employee relations arm of HR and will continue to be headed on a national level by Seema Lakhtakia,  AVP-HR.

Regional Business HR:  The key change in this announcement is the formation of the regional HR structure.  The Site HR heads will directly report to the North-West/South-East location heads.  The Business HR will be divided into 2 Regions -  South and East (comprising Aegis Bangalore Int, Dom and AOL,  Chennai, Coimbatore,  Hyderabad and Kolkatta)  headed by Shriram Raghu,  VP-HR,  and North and West (comprising Aegis Collect, Aegis Airtel  Noida,  Ahmadabad,  Mumbai and Pune) headed by Seema Lakhtakia,  AVP-HR.

How will the other senior HR officials be affected?

Jeyapriyaa,  Sreedhar A,  Rana George,  Jagdish T J,  Sundeep Kamath,  Sandeep Samson,  Vindo Kumar and Priyanka Banjerjee will now report to R Sriram

Kumar Suraj, Shefali Baja, Sonali Talegaonkar,  Shantanu Mohanty will now report to Seema Lakhtakia.

Techgoss update:  Our Aegis expert tells us that Senior Vice President and HR boss, Prakash Toppo is highly regarded in the industry.  With an impeccable education background of IIT and IIM,  Prakash masterminded attrition levels at Global Vantedge to an all-time low.  Prakash Toppo is the top HR man who reports into Aparup/Sudhir.

On account of the various acquisitions by Aegis like Teletech, AOL, Global Vantedge they had to simplify and give clarity to the structure. This is now complete. 

At the software level, SAP will be used as the ERP system.

The expert opinion is that overall this is “good but a bit cost ineffective.  HR managers to employees ratio is a bit low, it has to be a higher ratio”.