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'If you were 21, would you want to be a night animal?'

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Jeroen Tas, vice chairman and a co-founder of MphasiS was in India recently.

He spoke on varies topics like BPO recruitment, assessment tests, HR policies,

with a special emphasis on the company’s move to recruit take older people to

curb attritition. Excerpts from an interview…

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Is it true that MphasiS is looking to hire older employees for its BPO

operations?



This is something that we are looking at very closely right now. We are not

thinking just to hire 22-23 year olds, but also older people - including

part-timers and people in the 30s and 40s. We are clearly trying to co-relate

attrition levels and effectiveness with people from different profiles. We are

also looking at ways to manage people from these varied profiles, because if you

have a 40 year old who has to report to a 22 year old, it throws up a lot of

things. If you ask me if we have sorted these things out? No! But a lot of what

we are doing is in the initial stages. The BPO industry is not a mature one as

it is barely three years old.

We

have not yet optimized the way we use our resources, but are definitely making a

conscious effort towards that, including looking at a gradual change in the

composition of the work force. Right now, the BPO industry has a 22-23 year old

workforce that is restless.

In the recently conducted BPO Employee Satisfaction Survey, MsourcE

employees ranked the company well on most parameters. However, they named long

working hours and timing as main reasons for stress. What are you doing to

address these issues?



Lets face it. If you were 21, would you decide to be a night animal for the

rest of your life? One, its reflective of the age composition of the workforce.

Also, we are looking at whether people can do four weeks of working during the

day and night, alternatively. In that way, they can spend time with family and

friends for a month and then do night work for a month. It’s important for an

employee to be in the same time zone as his wife. It’s a challenge for us to

ensure that employees can balance work and personal life. I am convinced that if

we sit here a year from now, I will be able to talk of a happier workforce. We

are a high growth industry with a lot of issues and we have to acknowledge that

we don’t have some very clear answers. But, we have to be conscious of that

and try new things.

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Do you use psychometric profiling during the hiring process?



We have started doing psychometric profiling on our employees. It is a

relatively objective way of starting to look at the characteristics of a person.

But, the numbers are getting so big that we really start looking for

correlations. For example, is somebody with a certain psychological attitude

better at collections? Or is he better at sales? These are psychologically two

sets of people. I am a believer in psychometric tests but don’t think that

they tell you everything about a person. It’s a good place to start with and

is often better than some open ended personal interview. We’ve just started

using Thomas profiling.

Is psychometric profiling a norm internationally?



Yes, especially when you are talking large numbers. It’s a good way to

assess who will fit in the job and we are using it as an integral part of the

recruitment process. Right now, the industry is busy catching up with their ramp

up schedules. In fact, it’s my job at MphasiS to make sure that we ramp up

gracefully.

T V MAHALINGAM in Bangalore

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