Naresh K Matta Senior HR & Business Advisor

Industry

HR Consulting for IT, ITeS & BPO

The IT and BPO sector's HR problem is velocity. Hiring volumes are high, attrition is structural rather than incidental, and compensation benchmarks move faster than any annual review cycle can track.

Why it & bpo HR is a different discipline

In most industries attrition is an anomaly to be diagnosed. In IT and BPO it is a rate to be managed. Treating a structural twenty-five percent as a failure to be fixed leads to expensive, undirected retention spending. Treating it as a planning input leads to pipelines built for continuous replacement, onboarding designed to reach productivity quickly, and retention effort concentrated on the specific people whose departure would actually hurt.

The compensation problem follows directly. Continuous external hiring at market rates means recent joiners frequently earn more than existing employees doing the same work. Within a year this is visible, discussed, and producing resignations. Correcting it retrospectively means raising a cohort at once, which is expensive and generates no goodwill because it reads as overdue.

Round-the-clock operations add a compliance layer most employers underestimate — shift conditions, transport obligations and specific requirements around women employees working at night, which vary by state and have been the subject of significant regulatory attention.

What goes wrong in it & bpo

Attrition as a structural condition

Hiring pipelines built for continuous replacement, onboarding that produces productivity quickly, and retention targeted at the people you cannot afford to lose rather than applied uniformly across the floor.

Compensation parity erosion

External hiring at market rates leaves existing employees behind. It becomes visible faster than most employers expect, and is expensive to correct once it has.

Night shift and transport obligations

Round-the-clock operations bring shift conditions, transport provision and specific obligations around women employees on night shift. Requirements vary by state and are actively enforced.

Recruitment throughput

High-volume hiring fails on process rather than sourcing. Cycle time, scheduling, offer-to-join conversion and drop-off are process metrics and respond to process improvement.

Offer-to-join drop-off

Candidates accept multiple offers and join one. Where drop-off is not measured, recruitment plans are built on numbers that were never real.

What I do for it & bpo employers

  • Recruitment process redesign measured on cycle time, conversion and drop-off rather than CVs sent
  • Compensation architecture with bands, benchmarked more than once a year
  • Retention strategy targeted at identified critical and high-potential employees
  • Night shift, transport and women's safety compliance framework
  • Onboarding rebuilt for speed to productivity, not just documentation
  • ATS and HRIS selection and implementation without overbuying
  • Global Capability Centre setup — org design, talent strategy and leadership hiring
  • HR analytics and dashboards so the business manages on evidence

Statutory exposure in it & bpo

Shops & Establishment, state by state

Working hours, shift conditions and permissions for round-the-clock operation, all state-specific.

Women employees on night shift

Transport, security and consent requirements that vary by state and are actively enforced.

PF, ESI and high-volume joiners and leavers

Accurate coverage and timely filing under continuous churn, where errors compound quickly.

DPDP Act and candidate data

High-volume recruitment generates very large volumes of candidate personal data, usually retained indefinitely without a stated purpose.

General information on common obligations in this sector, not legal advice. Thresholds, rates and state rules change — confirm your current position before acting.

IT, ITeS & BPO HR — common questions

What is an acceptable attrition rate for a BPO in India?

Rates in voice and transactional operations have historically run far above other sectors, and benchmarking against a cross-industry average is not useful. The more informative measure is attrition among your top performers and in your critical roles — that number is actionable in a way that a floor-wide percentage is not.

How do we fix salary parity between new joiners and existing staff?

By establishing bands and benchmarking more than annually, so the gap stops widening, then correcting existing anomalies as a planned exercise rather than reactively when someone resigns. Reactive correction is more expensive and teaches employees that resigning is how you get paid properly.

What are the rules for women working night shifts in India?

Requirements are state-specific and typically cover transport, security arrangements and consent, with the details varying between states and having changed over time. Employers running round-the-clock operations should confirm the current position in each state they operate in rather than applying a single national assumption.

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