Respondents described manual alteration that was incompletely recorded and manual labor that did not appear in reported performance. In the method-based compilation, 107 written answers from 89 respondents on 56 engagements stated that manual alteration was not logged or only partly logged. Manual labor omitted from reported measures was described in 51 answers on 43 engagements, and undocumented practices dependent on an individual were described in 32 answers on 28 engagements. These accounts establish reported gaps in recording, not deliberate concealment in every case.
Method | Not logged or only partly logged | Manual effort omitted from reported measures | Undocumented practices dependent on individuals |
|---|---|---|---|
Manual alteration of financial-institution-provided data | 25 (22) | 11 (11) | 8 (8) |
Manual alteration of financial institution processes | 64 (40) | 7 (7) | 14 (12) |
Manual alteration of AI outputs | 19 (15) | 10 (10) | 4 (4) |
Reporting alteration | 2 (2) | 27 (25) | 0 (0) |
Third-party work done by hand | 2 (2) | 4 (4) | 9 (9) |
Note: Cells count method-based written answers, with engagements in parentheses. An answer may describe several themes or methods. Rows and columns overlap. A zero identifies no coded statement in this set rather than verified absence of the practice. The table distinguishes recording gaps, omitted labor, and dependence on individual knowledge.
“What we settle on in the end is a parallel note. Every synthesis the agents produce, one of my seniors reads it against the source before it goes over, and we hold a sheet of our own recording what changed and why. It is not part of any joint process, the client never sees the sheet. But when they come back three weeks later and ask why a figure moved, we can show them, and that is the only reason those conversations stay civil. It is a lot of hours for something that should be in the QA design itself.” -Engagement Manager, KPO, Corporate and back-office functions
“the other thing is when the agent got a requirement wrong on a case, and it does, nobody above wanted to say it was ours. it went round for two weeks. my lead said just fix it and log it as data issue. so we did.” -Individual Contributor, BPO, Credit, underwriting and suitability
“Some of it makes it into the tracker, plenty does not, this is not every week, maybe once or twice a month, I share informations with my lead when it happen and we move forward” -Individual Contributor, KPO, Credit, underwriting and suitability
1 Systems of Record
Records described by respondents were sometimes limited to team trackers, personal notes, or shared sheets rather than a complete engagement record. Process manual alteration accounted for the largest count of incomplete-recording descriptions: 64 written answers stated that a change was not logged or only partly logged. A personal or informal record could retain useful knowledge while still leaving the engagement’s formal account incomplete.
“i tell my TL but not client, they dont ask anyway, there is no place to put rest of it, so it just disappear off record.” -Individual Contributor, CXM, Corporate and back-office functions
“i tell my TL, kindly he say just manage it… we do the same thing every week, i keep no record of the informations i change.” -Individual Contributor, CXM, Corporate and back-office functions
“Last week the same paragraph came out different twice in a row on the same draft, consistency is the one thing it cannot do, and I catch it before it reaches an investor every time, that is simply the job and nobody logs it separately” -Individual Contributor, CXM, Client servicing and communications
We just pick whichever record looks right and move on, raising this properly takes too long and nobody responds anyway. I don't discuss about what happens after with client, that's not for me, but this happens most weeks on this engagement.”
INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR · ITO, Technology engineering and operations
2 Visibility in Reported Performance
Respondents described performance reports attributing human-corrected work to agents while omitting the labor needed to produce the result. Human-corrected work counted as the agent’s was described in 52 answers on 45 engagements. Manual labor absent from all reported measures was described in 51 answers on 43 engagements. These are overlapping descriptions, not a quantified estimate of overstatement. The study did not measure how far reported performance was overstated.
“no one logs it as a defect, it's just cleanup we do every time we recieve a bad batch, so it never counts as extra work” -Individual Contributor, BPO, Corporate and back-office functions
“I don't report it as a fix, I just note it in our internal Tracker for the team… my manager sees it but nobody escalates, it just eats time every single week” -Individual Contributor, BPO, Corporate and back-office functions
“security approval takes months so we keep reconciling duplicates by hand meanwhile what goes out the other end always looks clean” -Individual Contributor, ITO, Technology engineering and operations
“The vendor's monthly NAV accuracy report averaged in reruns after a manual correction as if the agent had gotten it right the first time, hiding how often fund accountants had to step in.” -Individual Contributor, BPO, Trade, settlement and reconciliation