There is always a silver lining in any cloud, however dark and the Indian BPO industry just seems to be waking up to something that can only be seen as a positive from their collective perspectives.

This high value industry had been hampered by massive levels of attrition for the past several years and for the first time it looks like there would be some respite for HR managers on the one hand and the business planners working in these companies.

According to an article published in The Live Mint newspaper, the industry’s churn rate has come down below 20 per cent for the first time in the third quarter of the year as against 35 per cent a year ago.

The newspaper article quoted data from market leader Genpact which put its attrition levels at 24 per cent for the quarter under review as against 31 per cent in the same period of the corresponding year.

And another fallout of this trend is the with call centre agents and other staff not in favour of moving out, the companies can afford to scale back their recruitment budgets, cut down training costs and generally cool off on the frenzied hiring process.

The article quotes BPIAI President Samir Chopra as saying that not only are there lesser number of jobs in the market, there is also increased maturity amongst the hirers and employees now. Nobody would leave for a few hundred rupees of increment or some perks, he adds.

And companies like Genpact have also set in motion some internal development goals like filling up more vacancies with internal promotions, something that becomes easier if the staff stay put for long enough. BPO firm Convergys Corp. also used this opportunity to move employees to the mid-level positions.

Finally, the employers agree that a key positive of the low attrition levels would be the impact on annual increments which would become stricter as low performers can be segregated easily from the high performers through the quantum of pay-rises unlike in the past when attrition used to help get rid of some of them.