Sun, Oct 09, 2005 page12

• 'Big Brother' is watching Indian call-center staff

  Strict anti-fraud security measures at call centers may reassure their foreign clients, but for employees, work is now like working in Hannibal Lecter's cage

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  Mortified by a spate of fraud and theft, Indian call centers have introduced tough new security measures but they are so draconian that workers are beginning to chafe at the "Big Brother" working conditions.

  On arriving for work in some centers, employees are frisked. Handbags are emptied of mobiles, pens and notebooks. Once in their cubicles where young Indians take calls from their overseas clients or make telemarketing calls, cameras watch every move. Conversations are taped. At the end of the day, bags and jackets are checked again.

  "Everything you do -- your tea break, how long you talk on the phone, how often you leave the office for a break -- is watched," says Neha Sharma, 23, who joined Hero ITES, a big Indian outsourcing company, recently.

  At one center in the suburb of Gurgaon, the dollar symbol on the keyboard has been disabled to make sure that accounts of banking clients are not tampered with. Also, access to certain parts of the office require a special card and password.

  At ICICI OneSource in Mumbai where workers process credit card bills for top US and European banks, the computer terminals have no floppy or CD-Rom drive to prevent copying or storing of data.

  "All our work is in financial services and so our security standards have been global from the start but we're always looking at ways of reinforcing them even further," says Vrinda Walavakar ICICI OneSource's corporate communications director.

  Saurabh Wig, 23, who left his job as manager of Delhi Call Center recently, says using paper was forbidden at his ex-employer's workplace.

  "At first, we used to jot down bank account, credit card and social security numbers on paper and it would be shredded every day. Then that was stopped too. In the end, no paper was allowed," he says.

  Wig also found that, on top of the normal pressure of call center work, the atmosphere was very oppressive.

  "I used to feel suffocated. It's not a very nice feeling working like that. I'd go home feeling drained after being constantly scrutinized by cameras," he says.

  These security measures have been brought in to protect the reputation of the Indian outsourcing industry following some embarrassing incidents.

  In June, the London-based Sun newspaper reported that its reporter had managed to buy the bank account details of 1,000 Britons from a New Delhi call center employee.

  And two months earlier, in April, Indian police arrested three employees at MphasiS in Pune, western India, over an alleged US$400,000 online credit card fraud in which Citibank customers were allegedly enticed to part with their personal identification numbers.

  Anxious to reassure their Western clients that their data is safe, Indian call center companies have been investing in sophisticated surveillance equipment.

  The bigger ones that employ thousands of staff are even planning to install scanners to ensure that miniature pen drives (data storing devices) are not smuggled into the office.

  "Even our screensavers list the dos and don'ts that employees have to follow. It can be irritating but it's necessary to keep drumming home the need for security," says Devashish Ghosh, chief operating officer at New Delhi-based Wipro Spectramind.

  MphasiS has also tightened its procedures. Bitter ex-employees are often most likely to steal confidential data. "We can now lock workers out and cut access to computers and phone just three minutes after they resign. A year ago that process took three days," says Karisma Rahane of MphasiS.

  Even call centers that do not deal with financial services have strict procedures. For providing technical support and troubleshooting for Dell customers in the region, for example, Indian agents need Internet access. But firewalls and many other protective measures block access to all Web sites, except those of clients.

  If no one is taking any chances, it's because a lot is at stake. The US$5.7 billion outsourcing industry is growing at around 40 percent a year. India is currently far ahead of other countries that also perform back office and call center work for western companies, but it knows the lead could erode fast.

  "Luckily, we haven't had any untoward incidents here and we're proud of our reputation. But we realise how vulnerable everyone is in this business and we explain this to our workers so that they understand," says Hero ITES operations chief Nilesh Kothari.

  But for the 350,000 Indians who work in call centers at a fifth of western wages, the boredom and monotony of the work has now been compounded by measures akin to a high security prison.

  Some, like Sharma, however, remain stoical.

  "It's a fact of life. The outsourcing industry can't survive without this scrutiny. Just look at the backlash against India. They're dying to point the finger at us and say their data isn't safe here, so it's pointless cribbing about it," she says.

  Others leave however, finding the office atmosphere just too claustrophobic.

  One former employee likened his cubicle, only half-jokingly, to Hannibal Lecter's cage in The Silence of the Lambs, and says the combination of strict surveillance and monotonous work was very disagreeable.

  Another former call center employee, Chetan Sardana, decided to leave his job when he found that he was always on edge at work. "It's bad enough that the work is mind-numbingly boring, but then to be constantly monitored and suspected was too draining. It all felt very unnatural, very oppressive, so I left, despite the good pay."
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