Corporate Social Responsibility

6 years back, I as a management graduate with my team was in a seminar organized by the IT department of Government of Tamilnadu. The seminar had the CEOs of the biggest BPO companies in Tamilnadu. BPO was at its peak at that time employing fresh graduates with hefty salaries. They were talking on the skill set that a fresher candidate should possess if wanting to be employed in BPO industry. I wondered and started to think why for a back office job a fresh graduate is required! There is no work for the brain there and no skill set is required except language for which the companies were anyways training the candidates. Employing fresh graduates for BPO is actually a way of restricting their thinking. I called BPO as Brain Paralyzing Outfits. My team members did not accept my thought. They defended it gives a fresh graduate an exposure and also made them confident and independent. It was actually the money paid which make the young graduates go for BPO jobs. Then, I started to make a plan which will enable the candidates to work as well pursue their higher education. It was basically a shift system which will benefit the society on the larger scale and also meet organizational goals.

Yet, a thought was there in my mind on why for a BPO job a fresh graduate is required. Why cant physically challenged people struggling for a life, be employed for those jobs or why not single senior citizens be given an opportunity rather than making the young graduates restrict themselves. I strongly felt there is no learning or thinking nature in BPO and it’s a danger in the future when these organizations grow big employing all the fresh graduates out of college. I used to keep discussing things like this with one or the other. After a while, all these passionate thinking passed away just like several others.

Today, I got this invitation.

It makes me feel good that the Government is acting on it. It’s a PPP model. Samarthanam Shrishti will be an unique BPO/Call Centre Training Unit for the Disabled at Peenya. This initiative is first of its kind in India along with a similar setup at Hubli started recently. This project would train 300 physically challenged youth across the state of Karnataka. This is a first step and hope the corporate too will support this and it’s where the real corporate social responsibility lies.