Work organisation and employee experiences in the

Indian offshoring industryby Ernesto Noronha and Premilla

D‘CruzIndian Institute of Management

Ahmedabad

Aggregate revenue for the Indian IT-BPO sector is USD 100 billion.

Exports accounted for USD 69 billion India’s share in global sourcing is 58 percent in

2011 India accounts for about 60-70 percent of the

offshore delivery capacities Industry directly employs 2.77 million

professionals (NASSCOM, 2012) Middle class and well-educated

Indian IT-ITES industry

Bodyshopping Mid-1990s offshoring model emerged Offshore development centres Similar models in ITES and KPO (LPO)

Models of work organisation

Software development process moves from concept, through design, implementation, testing, installation, troubleshooting and operation and maintenance

Early phases require sophisticated skills while latter phases are routine and are outsourced

Each phase of development proceeds in strict order, without overlaps or iterative steps (Nath and Hazra, 2002)

Labour process in the software industry

Low-level design, coding and maintenance services (Arora and Asundi, 1999; Arora et al, 2001; Heeks, 1996; Rothboeck et al 2001)

Do not participate in conceptualization and high-level design

Did not develop software products Some argue changes in favour of high-end skills

(Basant and Rani, 2004; Miller, 2000) but others state that a large part of the work is still legacy and maintenance work (Agarwal et al, 2012; Upadhya, 2009)

NIDL (Lakha, 1994)

Nature of work

Obsession with quality certifications such as ISO, CMM and six sigma

Signaling quality to customers because of better documentation of processes (Arora et al, 2001)

Invisible de-skilling - Reduces labour intensity, protection from high attrition breaking the individual employees monopoly and shifts control back to management

Modular programming - Tayloristic in nature - quality is not measured in terms of improvements to end-user but in terms of cost efficiencies (Prasad, 1998)

Use of time sheets, weekly reports on quality, idle time, efficiency, response time, customer feedback

Team based system but individual performance should always be monitored (D’Mello and Erickson, 2010)

Labour process in the software industry

Long hours of work – 10-12 hours, sometimes 14 hours Work overnight to meet project deadlines or answer client

calls Tight project estimates Peer pressure and presenteeism (D’Mello and Erickson,

2010) Time slaves –shore up their productivity ratings (Upadhya,

2009) Work-life balance Suicides, diabetes, high blood pressure, divorces, heart

ailments and mental depression (D’Mello and Erickson, 2010)

Consequences of work organisation

Techno-bureaucratic models of control

Call centres are described as `electronic sweatshops' (Fernie & Metcalfe, 1998)

‘Assembly lines in the head’ - Factory-like division of labour (Taylor & Bain, 1999)

Batt and Moynihan (2002) - continuum professional service model to mass-production model with the mass-customisation model being a hybrid of the two.

Call centre agents are stated to be mouthpieces who follow scripted dialogues and detailed instructions

Jobs are being characterized as dead-end, low complexity, low control, repetitious and routine (Knights & McCabe, 1998; Taylor & Bain, 1999).

Indian context

Nature of job Performance targets Work intensification - back to back calls Speed work can be continuously measured - AHT Monotony

Electronic monitoring and surveillance Remote monitoring by clients Call by Clients disguised as customers Call barging Call recording

Close supervision Job insecurity Night shifts – Health, Irritability and fatigue and

tiredness (Noronha and D’Cruz, 2009)

The primacy of the customer

Pamper, empathise and apologise to customers Treat them like children or family members Put up with racial abuse Last call had to be as good as the first Perform emotional labour (D’Cruz and Noronha,

2008) Location masking (Mirchandani, 2004) Pseudonyms Language neutralisation Standardisation- use of scripts (Noronha and

D’Cruz, 2009)

LPO- Constructing a client savvy organisation

Back ground check of LPO Familiar with American professional responsibility Employ lawyers trained in the US Contract small amounts of work Contract to multiple suppliers SLAs Communication and co-ordination Employed only lawyers GLP exam Corporate culture Application of Six sigma techniques Data security (Noronha and D’Cruz, 2011)

Trappings of the LPO web

Persisting skill deficits Limited client access Being neither nor there (Noronha and

D’Cruz, 2011)

Role of HCM

The mass-customisation model, encompassed the use of sophisticated human commitment management (HCM) practices

Benefits – reduces stress and pressure (see Clark 2007; Harney and Jordan 2008; Malhotra, Budhwar and Prowse 2007; Schalk and van Rijckevorsel 2007)

.

Workplace ambience

state-of-the-art infrastructure and facilities To and fro pick ups and drops

Recreational facilities Carrom boards Table tennis Gyms Team outings

Many organisations had tie-ups with educational institutions usually fully or partially fund employees

Non-hierarchical structures

It was common practice to one’s superiors by first name

Employees were reprimanded for using prefixes such as ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ when interacting with their superiors.

Periodic employee satisfaction surveys and skip-level meetings

Open door policies

Career advancement

Internal job postings (IJPs) Equal employment opportunity (EEO) compliant

organisations Merit and objectivity – performance appraisals

(D’Cruz and Noronha, 2012) Meritocratic organisations where caste did not

matter (D’Mello and Erickson, 2010) Movement from junior level supervisory position

occurred within a year (D’Cruz and Noronha, 2012) Travel abroad (D’Mello and Erickson, 2010)

Cultural Ideological control

Targets values, ideas, beliefs, emotions and identification of employees (Alvesson, 2001).

Increasingly uses Identity regulation Identity is seen as an object of management

control and regulation Induction, training and promotion procedures

are developed in ways that have implications for the shaping and direction of employees identity.

Relationship between technocratic and socio-ideological forms of

control

The relationship between is complex. Not necessarily independent but can map

over one another (Fournier, 1999). Socio-ideological and technocratic forms of

control build upon and feed each other (Alvesson and Karreman, 2004).

Who is a professional?

Desire to satisfy customers Put aside personal problems Concentrated on service Accepted stringent monitoring Accepted shift timings Withstand strains and pressure Was not deterred by another identity Customer and organisational interest (D’Cruz

and Noronha, 2006)

Professional identity

Agents identity is fused with organisation identity

Other forms of control meet with little resistance

Losing a sense of discernment, autonomy and agency (D’Cruz and Noronha, 2006)

Professionalism not all encompassing

Is covert rather than collectivist and unionised Redirect calls Bypass calls Simply hang up on customers Jeer at customers High attrition (Noronha and D’Cruz 2006) Resistance through negotiation (Upadhya, 2009) Lawyers strive for control (Noronha and D’Cruz,

2011)

Low-end work dominates outsourcing Taylorism dominates work organisation Reinforced by socio-ideological controls Controls are not totalising

Conclusion