Rank 3 - Wipro BPO: Stress Buster

With over 15,000 employees on its rolls, Wipro BPO is the

second-largest participant in the survey. In addition to some of the regular

challenges in the industry, Wipro BPO (earlier Spectramind) has to cope with the

additional challenge of size. Wipro BPO fares very well on HR scores, but

employee satisfaction pulls its final rank down.

Focused initiatives to reduce stress levels at work have

yielded the desired results with employees expressing satisfaction. Says Richa

Tripathi, head of HR, Wipro BPO, "Being a large organization, the typical

challenges are around building a uniform culture and career paths for a huge

workforce, and managing employee touch time." Career Mosaic, a proactive

and periodic exercise aimed to create opportunities for employees to gain

exposure in diverse roles across Wipro was introduced to understand work-related

issues and reduce monotony through cross-functional exposure.

There are structured communication programs to effectively

reach out to the 95% of the employee base that is not connected by emails.

Awareness has been created among current and prospective employees about what

Wipro BPO stands for: "Work Hard — Have Fun".

A grievance-handling mechanism based on the nature of queries

and concerns raised has been initiated. The process lays down categories of

issues with guidelines on resolving any issue around these grievance categories

by approaching the concerned authority. It is meant to provide an opportunity to

review how services are delivered to the internal customers.

An element of fun has also been introduced into the work.

Says Tripathi, "We believe that fun is an important element to enhance

mutual trust and build a dynamic mentoring relationship. Fun reduces stress,

eases tension, and improves energy. A good laugh revives our spirits."

Employees are rewarded for promoting and living up to the value of fun at their

workplace. Salary reviews of employees take the fun element into consideration.

Each supervisor is rated for his or her efforts to encourage team members to

enjoy pursuing individual as well as the company goals; encouraging team members

in organizing and participating in events and group activities.

STAR or Saving Talent at Risk is an initiative that evaluates the health of

an employee in a team. The team leaders along with their TED (Talent Engagement

& Development) representative, identify team members who show signs of

disengagement and are likely to be in the 'potential attrite' category. This

initiative aims at sensitizing supervisors to the non-verbal signs that members

show, and proactively handling stress or other issues that may lead to attrition

eventually.