British Telecom to cut 2,750 call center jobs in India

British telecom giant BT will transfer more than 2,000 call centre jobs from India back to the UK, chief executive Ian Livingston revealed during the firm's annual general meeting at the Barbican Centre in London.


BT will transfer at least 2,000 jobs to Britain from India, where it employs 11,000 customer service staff. However, the eventual number of job cuts in call centres will be closer to 2,750, representing half the group's 5,500 call-centre staff in India, the Times reported on Thursday.


The firm, however, insisted that its move had nothing to do with the quality of service offered in India. "This is not about customer service, as the service in our operations around the globe is of very similar standards. It is about the effective deployment of our resources. We have opportunities to bring some activities, carried out by our partners, back from outside the UK to permanent BT employees in the UK who are skilled to do this work," a company spokesperson said.


The pullout of jobs from India would be phased with no specific timescale set for the transfer of jobs. "This is part of a long-term strategy to reduce costs and the dependency on third parties globally," the spokesperson added.


Industry watchers in Bengaluru said the move would keep the local population, struggling with a deep recession, happy. Unemployment in the UK is at its highest in the last one decade and salaries have dropped - so has India's cost advantage.


Managing partner of consulting firm Browne & Mohan Dr. T.R. Madan Mohan says that while Indian firms charge about $18 per resource, in the UK charges have dropped to $22-23 per resource from $33 in December last year. "However, technology work, which requires high skills, may continue to be outsourced. BT had axed 6000 jobs last year in the UK and much of this work came to Tech Mahindra and HCL," he says.


The firm, he adds, was looking at more high-end outsourcing and may consider players such as Patni, HCL, Infosys, and Subex.


The primary hit for Indian IT services vendors - mostly the top five players - will come when low-end work contracts are not renewed next year, says engagement manager with Zinnov Karthik Ananth. A spokesperson said that by next year, approximately 4,000 less people will be contracted in India than was the case in early 2008.


"The BT Global Business Services division, which mainly offshored to APAC countries, has been a loss making unit. The rationalisation of headcount would be to cut costs and scale down operations," he says.


In May, BT had announced that it will cut 15,000 more jobs this year after it reported a pre-tax loss of £1.34bn for the 12 months till March 31.The telecom giant had cut 15,000 jobs last year.


Last year, the majority of the job cuts were in the area of indirect labour, including agency, contractors, subcontractors and offshore workers, including those based in India. The telecom giant has a global workforce of 150,000 and employs 90,000 directly in the UK.


The firm has steered clear of compulsory layoffs in Britain and hoped to cut the jobs through natural wastage and voluntary redundancies.

Source: Asian Age