A Study of the Discrepancy in the Perceived and Experienced Organizational and Job Environment of the Indian BPO Employees

Purpose- In India, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the fastest growing segment of the ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) industry. Factors such as economy of scale, business risk mitigation, cost advantage; utilization improvement and superior competency have all lead to the growth of the Indian BPO industry. Business process outsourcing in India, which started around the mid-90s, has now grown by leaps and bounds. The term Business Process Outsourcing or BPO as it is popularly known, refers to outsourcing in all fields. The Indian BPO industry has been on steep rise since its commencement in the early 90’s and has had a lot of up’s and downs on the way. India still remains a hot favorite for the outsourcing industry as it accounts to more than 60% of the world’s offshore component and it is expected that it will grow to 100 billion dollars in the year 2012 (NASSOM Survey). This industry is also providing direct and indirect employment to at least 12 million people in India. The biggest challenge however that this industry faces in India is the high rate of attrition broadly due to the lack of employee satisfaction and the wide gap between employees’ expectation and actual experiences of services offered to them. Objective of the study- The broad objective of the study is to identify the discrepancy or gap between the employee’s perception of services that should be offered and the actual experiences of the services offered to them by the employer. The specific objectives of the study are: • To identify and rank the factors of employee satisfaction in BPOs based on accumulative literature review and secondary data. • To explore and analyze the dimensions of employee satisfaction in BPOs based on primary data collected from field survey. • To assess the existing level of employee satisfaction and validate the study by discovering the discrepancy between the expected and actual experiences of organizational environment. • To assess the existing level of employee satisfaction and validate the study by discovering the discrepancy between the expected and actual experiences of job environment. Research Design-Random sampling method was used in order to select the sample respondents. A well structured questionnaire was prepared and pre tested in order to test the applicability of the results. Once confirmed about the applicability, 200 questionnaires were distributed to employees. The responses collected were tabulated and descriptive like standard deviation and mean were calculated and F test was used to test the significance of the results. Findings and Conclusions – The employees of the Indian BPOs have been suffering from various illnesses and are subjected to severe wok pressure and stress because of the kind of job the changes in the biological clock of the Indian BPO employees. Lack of a formal Union has kept these problems of theirs’ unheard. Unions have a significant role to play in raising the problems faced by the employees in front of the management whether the employees being blue collar or white collar. Future Scope - The comprehensive study of the discrepancy in the perceived and experienced organizational and job environment of employees in Indian BPO industry is helpful for both practitioners and academicians as it could help in disentangling the perceptions of BPO employees towards their expectations regarding organizational and job environment and also explain the variances among various groups of demographic characteristics. Management Implication - The study could be useful for the entire BPO industry with respect to the challenge of acquiring new talent and retaining the existing talent which is only going to intensify. Thus handling of employee grievances needs special attention with reference to organizational and job environment