Employee satisfaction is a challenge in the IT industry. And the challenge simply doubles when you talk about the ITeS industry, commonly referred to as BPO. The manpower base of the BPO industry has increased multiple times over the last five years. The segment is currently a $5.2 bn industry, with exports constituting more than 88% of the revenue generated. ITeS is a growing contributor to the Indian GDP, and its growth is projected at greater than 38% for FY 2006. The ITeS-BPO industry is expected to require an additional 93,000 people in the next year, showing an increase in labor demand by 29%. According to studies conducted by Nasscom, the segment is expected to employ over 1.1 mn Indians by 2008. Put simply, it has been a problem of plenty for the industry which is trying to cope with high attrition, high stress and low job satisfaction.

Dip, Dip, Dip
Average satisfaction has slipped this year as compared to last. After remaining flat for two consecutive years, average satisfaction stands at 66.6, a dip of over four points. What it means, effectively, is that most initiatives taken by the industry have not managed to yield the desired results.

Interestingly, if one takes the top 10 companies in the survey, the average satisfaction index stands at 70.4, which implies that the remaining 10 participants have triggered the fall. All companies in the bottom 10, except Motif, are new entrants in the survey this year. In fact, 15 of the 20 participants this year are new entrants with only e4e, Genpact, Ajuba, ICICI OneSource and Motif having been around last year.

Several reasons justify the dip in overall satisfaction levels. For one, most respondents in the survey (employees) felt that companies are not living up to the promises in spite of claims in the advertisements. There also seems to be a loss in pride toward the organization. Second, most employee issues are not finding immediate response from the respective organizations. Appraisal systems and parameters are also an area of dissatisfaction as employees felt that special initiatives and efforts are not taken care of during the appraisal.

The A-Word
Attrition. It is the single-largest challenge for BPOs, in light of the innumerable causative variables-behavioral, organizational and industrial. This challenge is magnified in the offshoring industry on account of the absence of any historical industry precedence compounded with the typical demographic profile of the employees, often in their early twenties. However, respondents to the survey identify three prime reasons to explain the high-attrition phenomenon, which include perceived lack of growth opportunities in the organization, migration to more stable work environments and, most importantly, search for higher pay-scales. Nearly 35% of the respondents said that they would leave a company for better compensation while nearly 26% cited better growth opportunity as the reason for joining a new job. According to industry insights, salary is really a hygiene factor today, which is used more as a reason to justify frequent job hopping. In reality, the trigger point to join and leave an organization is not compensation.

To counter each of the above, organizations have been focusing minutely on designing and implementing best-in-class retention strategies. The most far reaching yet implicit strategy being adopted by service providers is that of repositioning the BPO industry as an attractive long-term career option, so far considered a 'stop-gap' solution for fresh graduates: The target employee segment. Companies have devised unique strategies to retain employees. Some of these are defined career paths; tie-ups with educational institutes for post-graduation programs subsidized by the service-provider; informal anti-poach agreements with competitors; cross-functional training; performance-linked remuneration; tenure-linked bonuses; recognition schemes and flexible working hours.

However, service-providers assert that for the image makeover of the industry to fructify, solitary efforts are inadequate. The industry needs to collectively make compelling efforts in this area. In their individual capacity, however, service-providers are striving to reinforce the power of their brand-an important pull factor for employees of the industry.

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