Over the past few years, there has been a growing recognition of the fact that Indian IT-BPO companies, though secure, continuously need to review and revise the standards for maintaining a secure environment for their employees and customers.

Against this backdrop, NASSCOM and the industry conceptualised and launched the National Skills Registry (NSR) under NASSCOM’s Trusted Sourcing Initiative. The NSR – a verified database listing employee of this industry, along with their professional and educational background data, aims to provide a secure fabric to the Indian IT-BPO industry.

Since its launch in January 2006, the NSR has crossed several milestones. Today, the registry has 3,30,000 registered individuals, and 65 companies accounting for almost 70 per cent of the industries workforce have joined. This first-of-its-kind, industry effort led by NASSCOM is independently managed and executed by NDML, a fully-owned subsidiary of the National Securities Depository Limited.

Speaking about the implementation of the NSR, Vijay Gupta, Senior Manager, NSDL said “NSR is a unique initiative, which brings users with divergent processes, practices, size and strengths together and agree to share their data work as per common processes and practices. All this is done without a regulatory mandate based only on concept selling. This has been a tough job – for companies to change from their existing processes, convince the employees to register

Talking about the advantages that NSR brings to Indian IT-BPO companies, T Sridhar, Chief People Officer, Cognizant says, “We are sure that the NSR initiative will enhance the Indian IT sector’s brand equity globally. Not just that, it will add to the comfort our customers enjoy in working with us. This will create further opportunities for growth in our business. With the participation of all NASSCOM member companies, this will become the IT industry’s
equivalent of the Social Security Number. Eventually, employers will refer to these details before taking an employee on board.”

The NSR is a national, authentic, verified online database containing third party verified personal, qualification and career-related information of IT-BPO professionals and is touching all the stakeholders in the IT-BPO equation — employees, hirers and enforcement agencies.

Benefits to stakeholders

• The NSR is creating a database of potential employees and weeding out undeserving candidates who fake resumes for employment
• Employers save time on background checks enabling faster completion of HR processes
• Companies are reducing HR sourcing costs
• Improved recruitment practices in IT-BPO industry

With NSR gaining momentum, background checks are becoming easier to implement for IT-BPO
organisations with a number of these companies mandating it for existing and new employees.

Download this Section