A Comparative Study of Gender Differences in Stress Management in the BPO Industry in India

Analysis and Comparison of Stress among Males and Females in BPOs in NCR, India

SYNOPSIS / RESEARCH PROPOSAL

SUBMITTED TO THE

MANAV RACHNA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, FARIDABAD

FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN

(MANAGEMENT)

SONAL PATHAK

Registration No- 09029990021

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

Dr. ANIL SARIN

Department of MBA, Faculty of Management Studies

MANAV RACHNA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, FARIDABAD

20th Feb, 2010

Signature of Candidate: Signature of Supervisor:

Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………. ……………....3

1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………… ……...... 4

2. Description of Broad Area

BPO Industry ……………………...………………………………….. . ………... ..4 International Scenario ….………………………………………………………….. 5 Status of Women in the IT/ BPO Sector in India …...... 5 Key spoilsports of the BPO Industry…………………………………………….....6 3. Literature Review…………………………………………………………………………7

4. Objectives of the study/ Problem Identification …………………………………….....11 5. Hypotheses of the Study……………………………………………………………….....12

6. Work Plan and Methodology ……………………………………………………...... 12 Planning phase………………………………………………………………. ………. ..12 Action phase…………………………………………… ……………………………..12 Observe phase ………………………………………………………… …………...... 13 Reflect phase………………………………………………… …………………….. ….13

7. Proposed Outcomes of the research ……………………………………………………14

8. References…………………………………………………………………………...... 14

2 ABSTRACT

Outsourcing has become an essential part of industries in the present era to provide economic balance to the businesses. Multinational companies are looking forward to have their businesses outsourced from India because plenitude of human resources is available here. Earlier, only men were opting for BPO industry for their livelihood but today a number of women are working in industries. Everything is not green inside the BPOs. In fact, working in metrics, project deadlines, shift culture, work-life balance etc have increased stress among employees. Moreover, women working there are struggling with issues like glass ceiling, gender inclusivity, multitasking etc. This proposal describes how stress operates in the BPO industry and how stresses are induced in men and women. The aim of the present study is to analyze and compare stressors and responses on stress by males and females in the BPO industry in India. The study would also sensitize the management of the BPO regarding their responsibility to reduce the stress levels of their employees to minimal level for increasing their productivity by understanding the need of their employees (male and female).

These days, some organizations have started realizing the importance of stress management to improve their productivity, employee loyalty, reducing the attrition rate and curbing the tendency of their employees for getting gravitated to depression and suicidal tendencies. But still, there is a long way to go for a harmonious and amicable working environment.

The opinions and attitudes of BPO employees shall be analyzed using statistical sampling tools (t- test, chi-square test, F-test etc ).

Key Words: Outsourcing, BPO, Corporate Stress, Stressors, Glass ceiling, Gender Inclusivity.

3 1. INTRODUCTION

Stress is a widely spread universal phenomenon. Stress exists in human beings, animals and even in metals used in various engineering structures. Interestingly, most of the mechanical devices/structures are tested for stress levels in laboratories and manufacturing places for their prolonged life and efficient working. Stress level is also related to animals and their efficiency of producing milk or providing quality services to human beings. However, in this study we shall be concerned about human stress with special focus on the corporate BPO stress in National capital region, India. Stress creeps in, when there is increased anxiety and mental pressure. Though Stress seems to be simple to understand but it is very complex and generally people misunderstand stress.

1.1 Definition of Stress

Stress cannot be defined in a rigid way. According to the most definitions of stress, it is caused by physical or psychological stimulus and the response of individuals to unfavorable conditions (stimulus for the stress). Stress is the process of adaptive response of an individual to face the alarming situations (physical or psychological). Canadian physician Hans Selye was the first person to describe the concept of stress in his book ‘the stress of life’ in 1930. Alarm reaction, resistance and the exhaustion were the three phases of ‘General Adaptation Syndrome’ which Hans Selye explored in 1930s.

Stress is a general term for the problems that includes the factors responsible for the stress reaction, type of stress responses and the intervening process. No one is capable to ignore stress in their life. Though it is invisible, but, every individual and organization is suffering from stress. Stress is the mental condition or state of mind which acts like a disease though, its response remains non- specific to demand, stress has become a major concern of the modern times as it can cause harm to employee’s health and performance. In corporate sector, it requires significant attention especially after the establishment of BPO industry in India.

2. DESCRIPTION OF THE BROAD AREA

2.1 BPO industry

4 Early eighties were the time when the term ‘Outsourcing’ has stated. Some organization started delegating their functions which were non-core functions and can be easily executed by the external organization that that was specialized in providing a particular service, function or product on their behalf. Outsourcing is required and advantageous in globalize corporate world.’ Outsourcing market has this fastest growing division. Back office functions and the front office functions are the two categories of the jobs in BPOs. While the back office jobs include internal business functions such as procurement and payment whereas, the customer – related services (after sale support and the technical support) are the front office outsourcing includes customer- related services. In the recent times, there is an endless job opportunities for those who are willing to render BPO activities. Starting from Call Center and Data Processing to Knowledge Services and Transcription Services, there is no dearth of BPO Jobs in the current era. In relative term, jobs in BPOs are fairly well paid which is 2-10 time the starting salary in any of the other job. Also generally we have a flat compensation profile but, in BPO industry salaries often increase rapidly with experience.

2.2 International scenario

Retail sectors, telecommunications, insurance, banking, finance and mortgage and more are being catered by the business process outsourcing over the last two decades .The third party that offers economies and focused management expertise are helping firms in consolidating and standardizing operating processes. India, Russia and China are the countries which are flourishing with BPO industry and companies which are US and UK based looking at these countries for their businesses to be outsourced. India is about to gain $60 billion of the international BPO industry which is going to be worth $230 billion by 2014. However, the country’s existing infrastructure needs a complete re-haul; workforce needs to be upgraded. Thus we can say that currently BPOs industry is at explosion and number of employees keeps on increasing

2.3 Status of women in the IT/ BPO sector in India

Today’s women are participating equally in bread-butter earning along with men. Old were the days, when women stayed at home for their domestic duties. Now they are managing work at both industry and home. Traditional roles of women have changed from home worker to business

5 solutions. Survey on the various IT based industries in India suggests that 50% women are employed in BPOs, whereas software industry have 19% of employed women and Telecom industry have 40% of employed women. Technological and regulatory changes in the BPO sector in India created a sharp and fairly sudden increase in the demand for female workers. According to Data quest survey, though 20% of the IT workforce are women, but still very few women manage to reach up to the CEO level position. The percentage of women goes down as the seniority rises and is accrue only at the bottom in the career pyramid. If even few women reach at the managerial level, they only deal with the administrative jobs rather than the work related with hardware and the software. Technology is helping women as a tool and they are using ICT for their office assistance only such as in word processing, data entry, capturing and verification, order taking, after sales support etc and higher decision making role are generally predominated by males only.

2.4 Key spoilsports of the BPO industry

Employees of BPO work 24 hours in a day, seven days a week without getting holidays on important Indian festivals or often not even on national holidays.

Following are the key spoilsports that have their huge impact on the fastest growing industry:

 Pressure to Perform on Metrics  Strict Project Deadlines  Overtime  Health Issues  Prolonged Working Shifts  Work Load  Insufficient Holidays  Work- Life Balance  Monotonous / Repetitive Nature of Work  Glass-Ceiling  Gender Inclusivity The above said factors generate stress among employees but stress responses and acceptance of a pessimistic /optimistic situation to cope with that is totally different for

6 different genders. Therefore HR professionals must take care of these issues while handling grievances in their firms and in framework of policies for their employees.

3. LITERATURE REVIEW

The concept of stress is borrowed in social sciences from physical & natural sciences. In the Encyclopedia of Mental health, the term ‘stress’ is a force (physical or psychological) applied to a system. Stress is a state wherein expected functioning gets disrupted. Thus stress affects an individual’s response.

3.1 Early-staged researches on the stress.

Various experiments, conducted (Selye, Hans)(1956)[7] on rats revealed that if the living being is rigorously damaged by severe agents, a typical syndrome namely GAP appears. As per the Hans, the GAP comprises of three phases: - First phase is Alarm Reaction, Second phase is Resistance, and Third phase is Exhaustion.

Fig 1 : Stages of GAP

When suddenly a discomfort condition is confronted by an organism, the state of general alarm appears as the first stage and called ‘General Alarm Reaction’. Then organism gives an unusual responses like temperature change, fever etc which is the resistance stage. After being trapped

7 into a non comfort conditions for long time, organism starts adapting the situation as it is, this is called the exhaustion stage.

In India, The concept of ‘organizational role stress’ was firstly proposed by Kahn et al (1964) [8]. He defines “stress” as an environmental characteristics thought to affect people adversely. Their work on role conflict and role ambiguity was the pioneer effort in organizational studies. Jobs such as negotiation, procurement, promotion or jobs of representing the institute to the public involve greater stress. They also found that some personality dimension including emotional sensitivity, introversion – extroversion, flexibility- rigidity and the need for career achievement contribute towards as work stress.

Motowidlo, Packard (1986)[13] has used a stress model which follows the philosophy of Lazarus, Osier (1952) and Leventhal (1968). This model figure out that emotional states such as unease, aggression, and hopelessness and to decrements in aspects of job performance, are the consequences of subjective stress and it is caused by different state of affairs that occur at work.

Pestonjee (1999)[2] has also developed a model called ‘BOUNCE MODEL’ to explain how we cope with stress reactions.

Kruk (2004) [10] described the HPA-axis to explain stress developed in the human body. Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis is the axis which interconnects the adrenal glands, pititutary gland and the hypothalamus. In neuroendocrine system, HPA axis controls the responses to stress and also manage the various body processes such as immune system, energy storage, anxiety disorder, body temperature, mood and emotions, digestion etc. GAP is also mediated by the HPA axis. A brief mechanism of the development of stress as per HPA axis is shown in the following figure:

8 Fig2 : Hypothetical Mechanisms Showing the Adrenocortical Stress Response

Thus we can say the stress is being explored day by day to know the physical, psychological and biological correlation on a person’s attitude towards life and job.

3.2 Stressors among BPO employees.

The study conducted by Sudhashree et al (2004)[14] reveals that, everything is not good in the BPO industry. This industry is suffering from the ‘BOSS’ syndrome. Due to this syndrome, the BPO industry is generally called ‘BOSS -Burn out Stress Syndrome’. In BPOs, BOSS can be seen very commonly. Chronic fatigue and insomnia are the symptoms of this syndrome. Gastrointestinal problems are inevitable due to chronic stress in employees working 24 X 7.

Women employees in BPO

BPO is a place where women can enjoy their empowerment. BPO is one of the industries, where women have shown their growth, even at some higher positions. However, this is also a fact that women are still expected to do multi-tasking. They have to fulfill their responsibility at home and at office as well. Though women have a sound position in the BPO, but they always suffer problems by virtue of their sex. According to the Pande (2005) [15] generally there is equal emerging opportunity for women employee excluding some of the issues like:

 Discrimination / Stereotyping

 Security

 Multiple roles

 Work – life balance (due to late hours working and party life image).

 Lack of career progress / Glass Ceiling

Kenth [9] in 2007 suggested that pregnant and the nursing women must be protected from the excessive physical and emotional stress and working in the night shifts. This study supports the protection for only women due to their reproductive functions.

9 3.3 Analysis of stress among males and females

Hobfoll et al developed a dual axis model of coping which includes both action and social dimensions of coping strategies. This was examined on a group of men and women. Results from this study reveal that women are more social as compared to men. Men are generally more aggressive and they use assertive coping strategies whereas, women deal with the negative emotions first and are more prone to pessimistic approach than men.

Gyllensten (2005)[4] was done a review on the role of gender on the workplace stress and role of stressors on the workplace stress. It was found inconsistent in this review. Some studies says that women are at higher level of workplace stress than men but at the same time there are studies which says that role of gender is not important. Thus, no firm conclusion can be drawn out on the differentials in stress between different genders.

Galanakis et al (2008) [5] studied a sample of 2775 professional to study the gender’s role in organizational -stress considering the variables like age, education, role of marital status and gender. Results proposed that in general, women are more stressed than men. But variables like marital status, education and age do not have significant impact on gender. Study describes that over the past two decades studies investigating gender difference have given contradicting results.

Eaton,et al (2008) [3] has described that gender, negative affectivity (NA) and perceptions of stressfulness are closely related to each other. Women generally perceive the scenario as more stressful than men even if the conditions are controllable. Also, there is a significant role of gender on the coping selection. Women opt for the emotion-focused coping strategies and men opt for the practical-focused strategies.

In 2009, a study Sharon, et al (2009) [16] was done on 630 women and 933 men to examine the relationship between the employee’s burnout and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Two negative states – depression and anxiety were controlled for possible confounders. Burnout was found to be closely associated with CRP. Also fibrinogen concentrations in women were found to be closely associated. Results reveals that women were less involved in physical activities and are more stressed than men. Thus, anxiety, burnout and depression are differentially associated with gender.

10 Christy, et al (2011) [1] studied the relationship between trait emotional intelligence and gender considering three job-related variables (stress management, emotional management, and emotional expression). The sample consisted of 1025 participants, of whom 550 were female and 475 were male. Their ages ranged from 18 to 70. Results showed that differences between males and females with regard to how their stress and emotions are managed and expressed are significant. Men show greater usage of stress management skills, while women express more emotion in their responses. Reason for such behavior shown by women is - as women are predominantly exposed, simultaneously to family and job related stressors.

Malhotra Shefali, (2012) [11] was done a study on 300 employees who were working in Call centers situated at Mohali, Chandigrah and Panchkula and found that job satisfaction is one of the factor of increased stress. Also, other factors are listed as –sense of insecurity, work environment, workload, colleagues and job task. Study also suggested management should frame such employee’s assistance programs which are based on requirement of the different level of employees.

Pathak, Mitali (2011) [12] reveals after a study that generally women perceive a situation more stressful in comparison to the men and uses the emotion – focused coping strategies. On the other side, men try to control the cause of the situation first rather than giving the reaction based on the emotions

The literature available on stress has given some contradictory findings about the difference in stress among females and males. These studies identify certain issues both as similarities and dissimilarities in gender in stress management. For example, research by Hobfoll, Stevan E.[9] suggests that the women do not think about the solution of the problem and get in to depression faster than men due to negative emotions. However, this point is contrary to other findings which suggested that women see the company’s effort to help their work-life balance more positive than men. Though now a days some organizations are practicing stress management techniques. But also from the recent review of literature it is examined that various organizational variables affects the work stress and it may or may not be differ for different gender. Thus analysis of stress between males and females in BPOs is still a topic to discover which can help our BPO industry to get rid out of this evil in the contemporary context. The above said gap and contradiction motivated the present proposed study.

11 4. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The study is of descriptive nature and aims at understanding and exploring new dimensions of the existing stress management techniques in the Indian BPO industry.

The main objectives of the study are:

 To determine the various physical, emotional and social problems faced by BPO employees.

 To study the status of women in the BPO industry & analyze gender inclusivity in the BPO industry.

 To evaluate and analyze the stress between men and women and their responses to stressful situation.

 To find out strategies which BPO companies may adopt for their employees in maintaining their good work-life balance.

5. HYPOTHESES OF THE STUDY Null Hypothesis

H0: There is no difference in stress between males and females in the BPO Industry.

Alternative Hypothesis

Ha: There is difference in stress between males and females in the BPO Industry.

6. WORK PLAN AND METHODOLOGY

 Planning Phase: Following are the proposed objectives of the planning phase -

• Establishing subject expertise by way of going through specific literature and case studies on stress management in the BPO industry around NCR . • Formulating a scope and rationale for the proposed area of study. • Designing an implementation roadmap for research (visiting various BPOs to interview their personnel and to prepare questionnaire accordingly). • Selection of tools and techniques for analyses of the data collected.

12  Action Phase : Following are the proposed objectives of the action phase-  To select an adequate (large) sample.  To plan the interview schedules.  To select the appropriate tools  To select the suitable statistical techniques/ tools to be used for analyses of the data. Sampling and Data Collection

A sample size of around 500 respondents shall be designed. Samples will be drawn by means of ‘Proportional Stratified Random Sampling’ and around 250 employees at executive level 1 ( more than 10 years of experience) and 250 employees at executive level 2 ( less then 10 years of experience) shall be interviewed using two different structured questionnaire respectively. Sampling will be done in respect to gender, age, annual income and working shift. Survey for sampling will be restricted to the randomly selected specific offices in the NCR region only. The study will be based on both secondary level information (journals, other concerned literature on the topic, annual reports and official reports, magazines, news papers, office manuals, seminars, workshops) and primary data collection through field surveys and personal interviews.

Questionnaires will be containing different categories of questions to collect the demographic details of the employees. ‘Perceived stress scale’ which is one of the psychological instrument will be used to measure the non – specific perceived stress. Perceived stress scale will be used to assessing the intensity of situations in terms of stressfulness.

 Observe and Reflect Phase

This phase will include the identification and analysis of differences and similarities between stressors and responses on stress by men and women. The collected data will be thoroughly analyzed to interpret the result of findings. Results will follow the further discussions and conclusion. Appropriate statistical tools will be used as per the demand of data analysis. Qualitative and quantitative facts and figures will be established through standard statistical methods. Limitations of the Study Besides budgetary constrains, the sample size of 500 people belonging to various socio-economic strata in national capital region may not be the true representation of Indian society. Since sampling methods are used; there might be some error in this method.

13 7. THE PROPOSED AREA OF RESEARCH WILL HAVE THE FOLLOWING STATED CONTRIBUTION  The study will continue to understand how stress operates in the BPO industry and as such will be beneficial to the management to increase the quality and quantity of the pro- duction output.  This study will be a source to understand stress accurately and a helping tool for the individual, family, society as well.  This study could be further utilized by future researchers in the various functional areas of management. 8. REFERENCES

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