Screening of Staff ?.. A Wrong Prescription for a Right
Cause
Responding to the fraud in Pune where some ex-employees of
Mphasis BPO (MSource) working for Citi Bank committed a fraud in which an amount
of RS 1.5 crore were transferred out of some US customers of Citi Bank, Nasscom
is reportedly considering a system of "Screening of Employees".
The NassCom screening programme would allow existing or
potential staff in India's burgeoning software development and outsourcing
industries to register their details in a national database.
Their details would then be checked and verified by an
agency, and every time they applied for a job the potential employer could pay
to check their backgrounds.
While the intention of Nasscom to take some action to
mitigate the "Employee Fraud Risk" in BPO s is appreciated, there is an
apprehension that the move is unlikely to yield the desired results.
In fact, Mr Jerry Rao, the CEO of Mphasis and also the
ex-Chairman of Nasscom has rightly observed that the three staff arrested did
not have criminal records meaning it is unlikely that any screening programme
would have picked them up.
The problem of turnover in BPOs (cited as one of the reasons
for such frauds in some circles) is not because the staff are
committing frauds in one company and running away to another company. It is
because there is a premium for "Experience" and employees trade their experience
every six months are as and when an opportunity arises. This is a function of
the rapid growth of the industry and will settle on its own in due course.
The "Database" of employees can at best be a track record of
"How Marketable an Employee is" rather than his "Integrity". Perhaps, a
screening of Monster.com database or Job Aheads.com data base can give a
reasonably good information on "Job hopping" amongst BPO staff.
Naavi.org had some time back suggested a register for
"E-Entrepreneurs" who were defined as those who would like to work from homes
and outside the traditional umbrella of an organization such as a BPO. This was
relevant since there was a problem of their real identity. The BPO employees
however do go through a process of identification screening at the first
employment stage and this is reasonably good to prevent impersonation or
anonymous existence.
However, if such a registry is of some value, it should be
"Registration Based" in the sense that the employee should voluntarily register
himself and there should be some kind of a benefit that he perceives.
Perhaps Nasscom would work on building such a "Voluntary Registration Process"
and gradually build the register rather than succumbing to the temptation of
asking all BPO's to share their employee records to the database. (We trust that
the envisaged Nasscom Scheme, details of which are awaited, would be on
voluntary registration basis).
This will be like the "Domestic Servants Registration Scheme"
which Delhi Police has introduced. The incentive would be when every recruiter
recruits only "Registered BPO Workers". Perhaps Nasscom can generate
revenue out of this registration process also to sustain the scheme.
One has to wait and see of the employees themselves would
welcome such a scheme and HR managers would adopt a discipline in recruiting
staff by not trying to beat the system.
The undersigned firmly believes that the solution to the
problem of Employee Frauds in BPOs is not in
"Screening" but in "Educating" the staff with what we have often referred to as
"Cyber Law Compliance Education".
Sociologists can study and confirm our theory that "Cyber
Crimes will substantially reduce if Cyber Workers are aware of Cyber Laws and
the impact of committing an offence". Today when a young college pass out joins
a BPO because he can speak English fluently, he does not know that there is a
law nor that he may end up jeopardizing his career if he takes one mis-step. If
this gap in awareness is bridged, there would be substantial drop in Mphasis
type of cases.
There is no denying of the fact that this will still not be
able to prevent crimes from determined criminals who are driven by the greed of
quick money. But such people are less in number and probably stand out from
their abnormal behavioural patterns which can be identified through periodical
behavioral analysis programmes which BPOs can conduct in house. (It is
considered impractical to run such tests at the time of recruitment in view of
the mass nature of BPO recruitments).
It is keeping in view the value of "Awareness" that Cyber Law
College has prescribed as the first level of
CyLawCom certification, the "Need
to create awareness of Cyber Laws in 90 % of the employees. (For details
visit www.cylawcom.org)
I would welcome sociologists to conduct necessary studies to
empirically test the hypothesis that "Awareness of Cyber Laws will reduce
Employee Fraud Risk".
Naavi
April,14, 2005
Related Articles:
Cyber Law
Related Risk Management
The
Strength of Indian Cyber Laws
Changing
Profile of Cyber Crimes
Critical Review of the
Incident in technewsworld.com
India Acts on Call center Fraud..Personnel Today
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/42112.html
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1077097.cms
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/13/india_call_staff/
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1077047.cms
