Real nice… umm…
May 12, 2010 3 Comments
I’m all for increasing employability and bringing people into the mainstream work-force. So it was wonderful to read about an initiative that is trying to rehabilitate and bring prison inmates into the fold.
“Now, BPOs are going behind bars, literally. In a unique experiment, Hyderabad’s Cherlapally Central Jail is all set to become the only prison in the country to have a BPO unit in its premises. The BPO would be manned by educated convicts serving out their terms. “
So far, so good. The employees would be selected from among the educated inmates and tested for interest and ability. Great social initiative and potentially margin accretive for the company supporting the initiative. But then, I read the next line…
“For starters, the convicts working at the BPO would not have access to phones as is the case in a call centre. They would be involved in bank-related work of data entry and transfer“
Oh great. I wonder how their customers (the banks) feel about their work being handled by prison inmates. Tell me this is April’s fool!
amtgrg
Gaurav Rastogi
Two MBAs, One Blog 
“I wonder how their customers (the banks) feel about their work being handled by prison inmates?”
Business as usual, I’d think 🙂
It was inevitable. This is the onward march of “forward integration”. The folks were already helping banks with international money transfer, debt collection, property eviction and other public service. Now, they can handle more transactions from the same cell-phone. What’s not to like?
So, on the one hand, employees in IT/BPO firms believe they work in prison-type environments, and on the other hand, umm, vice versa.
Good stuff.