BPO firm EXL Services increased its training spend by 75 per cent in 2008, compared with 2007.

CEO Rohit Kapoor says, This increased spending will cover new areas and processes to develop new skill sets. We have increased training expenditure on management development and upgrading the skills of employees.

These training programmes are in the specific functional areas of finance, US GAAP and SEC reporting standards.

Moreover, companies want to create new positions from inside the organisation and training helps them in the process. Kapoor says that 70 per cent of the new positions are created within EXL itself.

At  HCL Technologies [Get Quote], there has been a 30-40 per cent increase in the number of trainings conducted in the past few months.

The focus is on areas, which will have direct impact on the businesses such as delivery excellence, IP creation, innovation and value creation among others. We have seen increased training in the banking, insurance, retail and life sciences verticals. New areas of demand are hospitality industry and logistics.

More than 50 per cent of technical training programmes are business aligned, based on new contracts signed, skilling employees for future requirements, said Dilip Kumar Srivastava, senior vice-president (corporate HR), HCL Tech.

Companies feel this makes employees better skilled and allows them to take better roles and this positively impacts their compensation. More flexible talent is available to support growth if the training is broad-based.

The IT and BPO firms have increased both in-house training and external tie-ups for this purpose. Analysts explain that such multi-skilling may pull down operational costs by 30 per cent.