Another murder of an employee working in a BPO, another news for the media. Is it anything more than this?
Perhaps this is a question worth discussing. What are the initiatives that we took when the first such incident in Bangalore happened? Did we formulate enough measure to ensure that this doesn’t happen in the future? Probably not.
It is easy for the organization to say that it was not our mistake. It is even easier for the employees in these organization to say that the Company is not taking adequate care of them. But actually the fault if from both ends.
Organizations formulate policies to esnure safety of Women employees like – No female employees to be picked up first or, dropped last and tracking of cabs etc. etc. But they fail to do a random check to ensure that these policies are being adhered to. BPOs fail to understand that the kind of population that they are dealing with are the most immature ones mostly aged 22-23 years who are fond of flouting rules and breaking policies. These organizations have to ensure that the policies are being adhered to. A strict random checking would surely help this. So organizations should not just be making and framing policies but also be ensuring that this is adhered to.
The employee population in BPOs is fun-loving, just out of college, new-to-job youth who often find pleasure in flouting rules. Jumping red lights, speed driving, shouting through the darkness of the silent night is thrill for them.But are these things worth the thrill? I would say “No”. Safety – yours and the society’s; comes first.We need to understand that these policies, though at times seem very useless and punishing, benefit us in the long term.When these basic safety instructions are passed onto us, we need to ensure that we follow them, thus ensuring our safety.
It is only with a joint effort from both the employees and the BPO organizations that we will be able to ensure that these kind of unfortunate incidents doesn’t happen in the future.