GECIS Agent:  Took Rice, Dal, Ghee To USA
By Mitr

Fortune’s most admired company. Yes, that is what GE has been for 6 out of the last 8 years. GECIS (now GENPACT) has been riding high on GE’s wave of success. While BPOs today are a dime a dozen, GECIS came into being in the 90s, at a time when no one knew what outsourcing was and only a handful had heard about GE itself.

Did GECIS become famous by association alone? Not really. It was a huge factor. Something the company folks played on all the time. A 3-day induction that talks more about the parent company than about GECIS, GE values displayed all over the place, and a lot of talk about “the GE way”. But give them the benefit of doubt, this was not the only thing they had going in their favour. They had the “first-mover” advantage, employee friendly administration policies (like cafeteria and transport), and gave non-IT students the chance to make a career. Think back, how many people in the 90s had the opportunity to say they worked for a Fortune 1 company?

But the thing is that insiders knew that working for GECIS was not like working for a Fortune 1 company. It was far from that. Yet, it remains the first name that comes to people’s minds when someone says the word ‘BPO’. This company also made the term ‘OJT’ a buzzword of sorts. Almost everyone was sent abroad for an OJT: An on the job training. What is the price one pays to go abroad through a company? One succumbs to slavery. Literally! A 2 year bond is signed by employees who are sent abroad. This bond kicks in after the employee returns, so sometimes one is forced to remain in the company for much longer than 2 years. A second trip before the initial 2 years is up would mean a second bond. Where has trust disappeared? And during this time, the company gets away with 5 and 10% increments. On base salaries that could be as low as Rs. 5000 for associates and Rs. 10000 for leads. What’s wrong? These guys can’t leave anyway. Not for better salaries, not for anything.

And depending on the type of trip, one gets either $25 or $10 as a per diem allowance. The $10 is considered an allowance for “out of pocket expenses”. Of course, how long will $10 stay inside the pocket anyway? Not very far. I spent money from my own resources when I had to travel because $10 does not go far at all. People look at these trips as money making opportunities, when in reality, it’s a big squeeze.

Is this another way to cut costs? I know of folks who packed rice, dal, oil, wheat flour and everything else needed for the entire trip and lugged it all the way because they didn’t know how far the per diem would take them. From the voices that I hear today, it seems like other than the name, nothing has changed.

Several people have raised their voices about working conditions, about the bond and the allowances. There was also an incident about passports being confiscated by senior officials while employees were traveling. “Illegal” is a word that is heard often in such discussions. How does a company manage to succeed when there is so much noise? The average Indian does not like to sue. There is so much negativity around the words court, case and lawyer. People have neither the resources nor the time to actually sue, whereas the organization has enough of this and more.

Back in the 90s, employees would say that even the best of companies turn into ‘mom and pop’ companies once they land in India. At a time when business etiquette was more the exception than the norm, one senior executive said this in at an all hands meeting: “When we want smart looking people, we hire from the north. But when it is brains that we are looking for, we are only looking at the south”. And we talk of racism in the world?

To better times!