Analysis of Some Aspects Related with Women Position in BPO Essay Example

a business-to-business client-partner business scenario, relationship temperament from business inception to product / service stabilization stage is the driving force to set the rhythm, pace and mood of the business. There is always an essence of stress in any business planning, operation and execution. Stress is a problem in almost all the countries of the world, irrespective of whether the economy is strong or weak.From an individual's point of view, stress is our body's physical, mental and chemical reactions to circumstances that frighten, confuse, endanger or irritate us.

If taken positively, stress is a friend that strengthens us for the next encounter, but if, taken negatively, it can have adverse effect on both physical and psychological factors. Stress affects not only the individual but also his/her environment. It has an affect on the individual's family, work and society. As we have seen, positive stress adds anticipation and excitement to life, so our goal should be to learn how to manage it rather than eliminating it.Insufficient stress acts as a depressant and may leave us feeling bored or dejected whereas excessive stress may "tied up in knots". We are all individual creatures with unique requirements, so there is no single level of stress that is optimal for all people.

What is distressing to one may be a joy to another. The growth of call centres has been estimated at an annual rate of 15-20 percent, and this growth will continue as corporate organizations all over the world recognize the strategic value of call centres in an e-commerce world. India has been selected as a base for their call centres y many companies because it lies in a time

zone that makes it the preferred area. Call centres in India are extremely cost effective because of low salary structure. Mushrooming of call centres all over the country has provided more employment opportunities, but in turn, have increased most of the women employees' family problems.

In order to meet the time-schedules with other countries, the working hours in call centres are completely upside-down. There are shifts and that too with no holidays. Call centres in metros are open round the clock. Call Centre Women" have no social life, no holidays, and infact, no time to spend with family or friends. They don't even have leisure time to read newspapers, magazines or watch mind-less TV programs.

As a result, when they are at home they are listless, bad-tempered and depressed. All call centre workers are single women living with their parents or away from home. Employees' turnover at call centres is high, as women leave the job when they get married. My study is mainly at an exploratory level, in order to determine the reasons of stress among women employees in call centres in India.

It throws light on issues such as working conditions, family background, job responsibilities, and mental as well as physical stress. Inside the Call Centres Women constitute half of the resources of the nation. The women employed in IT belong to the younger age group. Mostly women are employed in companies located mainly in cities like Pune, Delhi, Indore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Mumbai.

Girls in India prefer working at call centres in order to earn the kind of money that could not have been dreamed off at their age.In order to earn high, they work

odd hours and adopt an unreal identity which is far from their own realities. What are the lives of those working in call centres? People are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. As a result, the call centre is a mysterious place where Indian women speak in foreign accents day and night and try to hide back their own accents and persona.

Many Indian families won't permit do night work but have accepted them working in call centres, because they assume that their daughters will be safe as the company will protect them.Study Background Women in India were accepted in traditional profiles like teachers, nurses, secretaries or clerks. But against this background, a large number of women are joining call centres. Indian women have taken up professional roles to create an identity for their own. Participation of women in BPOs is rapidly growing and is expected to go up. The number of professionals increased from 6800 (1985) to 650,000 in 2003-2004 (NASSCOM 2004).

As per NASSCOM estimates, women comprise 20-25% of total number of science and engineering graduates in the country.Majority of women are affected by life-cycle factors such as marriage, child-birth and sexual division of labor within the household. In call centre industry, career development takes place through hard work, training, application and continuity in learning. There is an aspect of learning which involves doing rather than using (Rosenberg 1993).

The industry requires long hours of work. Stress is, therefore, inevitable and cannot be avoided as uncertainties and unexpected changes keep occurring in the environment. Review of LiteratureAccording to Taber's Cyclopedia Dictionary, "Stress is the result produced when a structure, system or organism

is acted upon by forces that disrupt equilibrium or produce strain. " A manager trying to make profits in a competitive market is under stress. Stress is everywhere and influences everyone. Hens Selye developed a model called the General Adaptive Syndrome Model to explain the stress phenomenon and the stress level.

This model has three stages. The first stage is the alarm reaction stage, which involves the body's response to or familiarizing itself with the new situation or stressor.The second stage is the resistance stage, which involves resisting and reacting to the situation, and the third stage is the exhaustion stage, which is the aftermath of resistance. If the resistance stage goes on for a long period, then the person becomes distressed. N. Kalai Selvan, Associate Consultant, the ICFAI Research Center, Chennai, through his article, "Managing Workplace Stress", has discussed the different categories and stages of workplace stress, and has suggested various approaches to manage it for the betterment nd the organization.

Women in Call Centres" published in the Economic & Political Weekly found serious health problems associated with the call centre industry, particularly those working late night shifts. It said, "90% of the respondents have no social life or interaction with people in the family. " March 11, 2005, Call Centre Callers. Adesh Goyal, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Hughes BPO Services, commented at a seminar held in November 2006 on Outsourcing, "Half of the employees smoke too much and many quit the industry due to stress. People at call centre are at relatively young age and without specific training in stress management, they are ill-equipped to handle rude customers on the phone.

World Socialist Web

Site (WSWS), news and analysis study documents exploitation in Indian call centre (by Jake Skeers, 23rd November 2005). Work force at call centres are under constant stress because of their work load, competitive presser and surveillance staff in this sector reported health problems such as nervousness, chronic fatigue, bodyache, insomnia, nausea and anxiety, restlessness and depression due to odd working hours and stress.Articles published in Indian Feminist ; Labor Publication are much more critical of call cantres employment, many calling the workers "Cyber Coolies". Recent articles point out the following problems:

• High pressure to meet unreasonable quotas. (Mujumdar 2004)
• A majority of women are engaged in a dead-end career where the workers do not ever move up the job ladder within their organization. (Remesh, 2004, P. 27)
• Lack of opportunities for promotion or acquiring transferable skills. (The Voice of the Working Women, 2004)
• Loss of identity created by serving the foreign customers and speaking foreign accent. The Voice of the Working Women, 2004) Objectives
• To understand the position of women in call centres
• To examine the impact of call centre employment on women's mental stress
• To find out different ways by which they can manage stress better.

The study is mainly at an exploratory level to determine the reasons of stress in women employed in call centres and problems faced by them.

It throws light on issues such as age, education, motivation and commitment, decision making power and health. A questionnaire was circulated at random to women working in call centres at Indore.Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance, represented by the symbol (W), is an important non-parametric measure of relationship. It is used for determining

the degree of association among several (K) sets of ranking of (N) objects or individuals.

When there are only two sets of ranking of N objects, we generally work out Spearmen's Coefficient of Correlation, but Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance (W) is considered an appropriate measure of studying the degree of association among three or more sets of ranking.This descriptive measure of the agreement has special applications in providing a standard method of ordering objects according to consensus when do not have an objective order of the objects.

The basis of Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance is to imagine how the given data would look if there were no agreement among the several set of ranking and then to imagine how it would look if there were perfect agreement among the several sets. Each case is a judge or rater and each variable is an item or person being judged. For each variable, the sum of ranks is computed.Kendall's W ranges between 0 (no agreement) and 1 (complete agreement.

The Kendall's value is 0. 263. Thus, there is very low agreement level among respondents between variables, which would cause stress among girls working in call centres. The procedure for computing and interpreting Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance (W) is as follows:

• All the objects, N, should be ranked by all judges in the usual fashion and this information may be put in the form of a K by N matrix;
• For each object determine the Sum of Ranks (Rj) assigned by all the K judges;
• Determine Rj obtain the value of s as under.

To judge the significance of this W, we look into the table for critical value of s in

the Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance for finding the value of s at 5% level for K=50 and N=20.

This value is 16900. 00, and thus, for accepting the null hypothesis that K sets of rankings are independent, our calculated value of s should be less than 16900. 00. But the worked out value of s is 19904. 25, which is higher than the table value, which shows that W=0. 01197 is significant.Hence, we reject the null hypotheses and infer that the judges are applying essentially the same standard in ranking the N objects, i. e. , there is significant agreement in ranking by different judges at 5% level. calculation of Mean Ranks Calculation of Mean Ranks Limitations.

The limitations of this research are that it is exploratory in nature and cover only 50 women at random. Individuals are not having clear concept about positive as well as negative effects of stress, they are confused with stress at work place with stress related with their personal lives.Further, research could be undertaken to study women working at different levels with a good sample selection at every level, and also comparison with those working in metros can be done.

Findings From the study conducted, there are three clear major issues emerging from call centres:

1. The first issue relates to balancing of family and social life for women in call centres. As they work in night shifts and also odd hours of the day, they are unable to spend sufficient leisure time with family members. As a result, the contact between the family members breaks up.  centres.As they work in night shifts and also odd hours of the day, they are unable
   

to spend sufficient leisure time with family members. As a result, the contact between the family members breaks up.

They should look for counselors to refer employee's problems; they actually do not retain them. Young women in call centres between 18 to 21 years should be guided on physical and mental coordination to cope with a job that requires hyper-alert efficiency. Because of the sexual stigma associated with the job, it doesn't bring status to women in the society . Establishing an equitable and gender safe work culture and highlighting the respectability of call centres creates pleasure in the job and increases the motivation for women in call centres.