Life in a BPO….……

In the early days when we used to see our parents going to there offices in the morning , working hard but finally coming late in the night and having a good night sleep, the next morning we saw the same thing. It was the time when people were judged by there tenure ship and skills. In today’s world there is a new era of employment I’ll give you a hint,

There is no restriction of the dress code, working in odd hours, quick promotions. You’ve guessed it right! We are talking about BPOs. Today Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is playing a major role in the Indian employment sectors. The country's domestic market for business process outsourcing is projected to grow over 23 per cent to touch $1.4 billion this year, in 2010, the domestic Business Process Outsourcing market was worth $1.1 billion which is very impressive looking at the global employment market and the recession going on worldwide. In 1980s western and European airlines started opening there back office in India. This back office had reservations and ticketing departments. Later on American express came in second half of 1980s and introduced to banking outsourcing of Japan and Asia Pacific. After this general electric sales BPOs also came in the market and set there positions in Delhi and NCR in 2002 major IT companies like HCL, Convergys, SITEL, IBM, Accenture also set a up shop in India. BPO industry has thrived all these years because of its ability to deliver services at a low cost. India is the only country where 1.5 million students graduate so naturally the foreign countries have skilled and English speaking workmen.

The Indian economy has been growing rapidly since the 1990s as a result of the processes of globalization, economic reform and liberalization. Over the past decade, the services sector in particular has witnessed a high rate of growth, most notably in business process outsourcing (BPO) segments.

Technical support, handling customer’s query, maintaining log-in hours, achieving given targets etc. these are few duties of a BPO employee just to give a highlight about the a BPO employee on an executive level. Youth is narrowing down to this profession is because it’s effortless threshold due demand of skilled English speaking workman.

Since an employee of a BPO having benefits like meals on job, insurance, home pick and drop services, the job is not so easy. That’s right! Average BPO employees are pushed to there limit as they have to work against the nature. Now this may sound an easy task but working in against the nature has its own disadvantages.  The whole biological cycle is disturbed due to this and is a cause of many stomach diseases, intestine diseases and also causes insomnia,eating disorders (Phukan, 2006; e-sat survey, 2005). According to a survey of BPO employees, several factors were considered to cause stress at work including travel time, changing duty shifts, insufficient holidays, work pressure and long working hours. It is recently noticed that young people are more influenced about this employment sector as young Indians are more eager to earn money and quick. In today’s world were education is much more flexible than the earlier days i.e. distance education and online degrees young Indians have chosen a path of working in a BPO and studying from a distance education program. Nitin Joshi from Delhi started working at the age of 18 just after clearing his Senior Secondary School. He is working since 4 years and about to clear his graduation through a distance education program. “I’m happy working in a BPO but only thing which I am fed up is the night shifts” says 21 yr old Nitin Joshi. It is proven that a human being is a social animal and has to live in and according to the society. BPO culture in India is entirely opposite. There is a big gap between BPO employees and the society which they live in. “My parents don’t see me on my working days because of the opposite world I’m living in only time I get for my family is on my offs” says 23 yr old BPO professional Thomas. Its is also been observed that most of the BPO employees are going through short term relationships. If you meet some, you introduce yourself and given a date to meet again suddenly your shift changes so you need to “call it off”.  By researches it is found when 2 professionals meet they are already aware that they need to call off there relationship as they are working in shifts and there shifts can be changed in the next roster. Hence relationship status changes as the shift changes; it sounds funny but is true. So this sort of behavior can be a lot stress full.

Various surveys and research conducted amongst the call centre employees have shown that depression is the most common problem faced by BPO employees. Frequent headaches, feeling of fatigue, sleeping disorders and frustration have become regular problems for them. The basic profile of the BPO employees is trouble-shooting, sales or revenue collection. All of these are done through tele- calling. The anger and abuse of the clients has become a regular routine of these employees.

However still BPO industry is growing and it is been estimated that the BPO industry employment will grow till 1.8 billon by the end of the year. Lets hope the excepted bright future of a great country doesn’t go into the dawn. 

-Yusuf Kamran