Continuing with the topic, this concluding post will look at the various solutions which have been proposed and debated in the Indian industry to manage the problem of absconding employees. Some of these have come out of the broader debate of managing risk and frauds that can arise from employees.
The debate actually started in a big way in the year 2005 when a few instances came up in which BPO employees had misused the information that was available to them for customer service purposes. Additionally, the BPO companies were quite tormented with the frequent job hopping phenomenon. This news article as posted on Nasscom site gives one of the first references around the concept of a ‘blacklist’ or ‘negative list’ of employees. While this list would have definitely served the purpose of the industry, there were apprehensions that it could be misused by the employers to wrongly ‘blacklist’ an employee and hence this idea was never implemented.
Over a period of time, this concept gave way to a nationwide database of employees working in IT and ITES sector which would be maintained by an independent third party. The major shift was the move away from the ‘blacklist’ to a complete repository of verified credentials of employees in these sectors. This news article throws more light on the emerging model. Eventually, this model was implemented in the form of the National Skills Registry. While the registry definitely helps the member companies to avoid doing background checks every time an employee changes jobs, it still does not help with the absconding employees issues, and also a vast portion of workforce is yet to come under the scope of this registry.
One possibility could be to have an open social networking type platform where both sides – the employees and the employers have a way to share their input on each other. Even now, various sites exist where employees can go ahead and post their feedback about their current or ex-employers like www.jobeehive.com, www.glassdoor.com. So in a moderated fashion, the employers would have the ability to share their input on absconding or errant employees. And in a symmetric fashion, the employee in question would have a chance to present his/her side of the case. The potential recruiters or employers could then review the input from both the sides and reach a better informed conclusion.
In the mean time, you can continue to implement the employee background verification recommendations that were given in the Part 1 of this series. Of course, the best course of action for the HR professionals and employers is to continuously keep on making their workplace even better because eventually that is the best antidote for preventing absconding employees. Closing this with a quote from Reinhold Niebuhr – “Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.”
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