Influx of Foreign Talent in Domestic Call Center

Suitably saturated with domestic talent, call center units across India have relief in the form of a government directive. The Ministry of Labor has relaxed the ceiling on hiring of foreign nationals in the Indian BPO firms. The rule that was in place stated that Indian answering service firms could hire foreigners adding up to only 1% of the total workforce and the maximum number were to be 20. Many call center services units couldn’t import foreign talent to work in their centers because of this ceiling. Now that will change. The government has taken off this ceiling. Companies can hire more foreign talent now. However, that is not the only factor here.

The Labor department is more than aware of the influx of foreign nationals to work in the Indian shores. There are the Chinese who work as chefs and masons as well. The new call center rule states that only highly qualified IT and ITES professionals can be hired. The minimum salary for the hired answering service professionals cannot be less than $25,000 per annum. This will stop the business outsourcing firm from hiring professionals at the lower rungs of the industry. The Labor ministry wants only highly skilled personnel to cross over the Atlantic and work in India. Additionally, the person hired has to declare that he will work in an IT or ITES organization, a software technology park or a special economic zone where they make multiple products.    

This is good news for the call center industry of India. The firms there had to send across BPO employees to countries like USA and UK for training and specialized skills programs. The primary reason was that they could not import the answering service experts from these countries and have them work in India. The ceiling was a bother for many expansion plans. When you have a thriving inbound call center and outbound call center department, you look around for someone to head these departments. You are most likely to look for someone who is familiar with the culture and communication of the clients. That is where a foreign import can be extremely valuable.

BPO services like lead generation and telemarketing service needs updates regularly. The third world countries need trainers from the first world ones to polish their skills. The foreign imports can be really beneficial for call center units because they are more aware of the global scenario and completely in the loop. There can be no doubt in the fact that call center services breathed a sigh of relief when this move was announced. A mover and shaker in the business outsourcing world there commented, «This will remove most of the hurdles that the IT/ITES segment had faced with the earlier rules. I hope that the liberalized criteria get broad-based to cover other priority sectors such as infrastructure, energy, aviation, telecom, etc.» Investors will certainly be looking at this move with a lot of interest. They will look for ways to get more talented people into the domestic BPO circuit and reap richer benefits.