WORK LIFE BALANCE IN BPO

BY

RITU KARN

BYRITU KARN

CONTENTS

Work life balance

BPO and work life balance

Reasons for imbalance

Challenges

Results of poor work life balance

Providing Work Life Balance

Example of Dell International Services

Benefits of work life balance to employees

Business benefits of improved work life balance

Conclusion

Recommendations

INTRODUCTION

WORK LIFE BALANCE

Work-life balance is the stability characterized by the balancing of an individual’s work with environmental and personal resources such as family, community, employer, profession, geography, information, economics, personality, or values.

BPO

BPO means Business Process Outsourcing.

It is the process of hiring another company to handle business activities at much lesser cost and better expertise

WORK LIFE BALANCE AND BPO

Customer-oriented nature of work.

Fast-paced with a 24/7 operations.

Work organization is composed of

• Unusual work schedule,• Overbearing and irate callers,• Excessive work targets,• And daily quality assurance and service performance

measurementsWorkers are deemed to be most exposed to burn-out and other stressors compared to their contemporaries in different industry.

REASONS FOR IMBALANCE

Imbalance results when the employees having difficulty in managing time with their family and the demands of their work.

Reasons can be-

•Difficulty to say “NO”(workload increases,overtime)

•Stressful working hours without sufficient breaks and recreational activities)

•Night shifts(increased levels of time pressure and lower levels of satisfaction with the balance between work and home life)

•Frequent shift changes ( hinders employees in spending time with their family)

•Less number of leaves or vacations

CHALLENGES

•The BPO sector has to work during the night shifts too because of the time zone differential between countries like India and the US leading to health issues and problems arising out of disorderly sleeping and eating habits commonly resulting in digestive disorders

•BPO workforce needs to be rotated between the night time working hours and the daytime working hours if they are to remain fit and healthy.

RESULTS OF POOR WORK LIFE BALANCE

•Overtime resulting in less time to spend time with family and attend to personal needs.

•Health related issues

•Employees taking a lot of time off to deal with ‘emergencies’ involving children or other dependants

• High levels of employee stress

•High rates of absenteeism or staff sickness

•High levels of staff turnover

•Digestive disorders(for employees working in night shifts resulting from disorderly sleeping and eating habits)

PROVIDING WORK LIFE BALANCE

•Flexi-time(opportunity to negotiate timings)

•Paid leaves(15-30days)

•Cultural/religious leaves

•Vacations

•Parental leaves(maternity/paternity leaves)

•Direct services like onsite childcare and takeout dinners

•Time management to solve the problem of managing the personal life and professional life smoothly.

•Stress management programmes

•Including fun activities every weekend to overcome work related stress

•Setting up of recreational facilities(tvs, canteens, games)

•15 minutes of power nap in between(bedroom or sleeping quarters)

•Opportunity to study

-Career leaves and breaks-Study/training scholarship and subsidy)

•Opportunities for telecommuting

•Friendly work environment( peers and bosses)

•Health related programmes(ergonomics)

•Employee well being programmes(conducting seminars about work life balance)

•Rotation in shifts(day to night and vice versa)

•Sharing shifts(if u have any personal work- change shifts with others)

•Swaping leaves(exchange of leaves with friends- monday leave instead of tuesday)

•Small breaks in between of total 1hour( for restroom or going out,eating, drinking water, napping)

•Celebrating birthdays of employees

•Reducing night shift duration can be motivating (motivates to work in night shifts dan day-reduced stress and less disturbance in eating and sleeping times)

DELL INTERNATIONAL SERVICES

•Leave in a year: Twenty-two days of paid leave

•Work hours: Nine hours with three breaks (two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute break)

•Flexible work schedules

•Fun Activities: Every Friday some or the other fun activity is organised - games, contests like tug-of-war, theme-based dressing, sports day etc.

BENEFITS OF WORK LIFE BALANCE FOR EMPLOYEES

•Enables employees to feel more in control of their working life

•Leads to increased productivity

•Lower absenteeism

•Happier, less stressed workforce

•Happier family and personal life

•Reduces the level and intensity of stress

VIEWS OF EMPLOYEES ON WORK LIFE BALANCE IN BPO

•Pawanpreet Singh, LCTG — quality, NIIT Technologies, says

“The option of flexible working hours is available to employees, which allows us to manage our personal life better.”

•Keshav Raj, trainer, iYogi, says

“Working in night shifts does not impact my personal life at all. On the contrary, it helps me do my personal work during the day.”

•Meenakshi Sharma, specialist in a leading ITeS company, however, addresses the bigger issues.

“Night shift impacts personal life a lot. Working women already face many challenges but night shift can be fatal for your married life.”

BUSINESS BENEFITS OF IMPROVED WORK LIFE BALANCE

•Introducing employment policies encourages a healthier work/life

balance for employees.

•Flexible working and work/life balance policies can lead to

better relations with employees,greater staff loyalty and commitmentMotivationImproved employee morale,satisfaction and

performancereduced staff turnover and recruitment costs

•Also flexible working hours can lead to improvements in health and well-being of employees

CONCLUSION

•Working with 24*7 and stress involved with work and mental stability is a prime concern for employers.

•The sector is working on balancing the work-life of employees and measures are being taken to solve complexities of employees in BPOs.

•The existence of work-life balance programs, policies and initiatives need to be implemented at the organizational level.

•At the end it is also an individual imperative to maintain that balance in one’s life.

RECOMMENDATIONS

•Length and frequency of breaks should be adequate.

•Full time counsellors needed to strike a balance between physical and mental rhythm to synchronize body clock.

•Establishment of welfare committee wherein employees can voice their concerns.

•An expansion of research methods such as large-scale surveys, multi-site case studies, cross-group analysis, and evaluation studies.

•Government interventions required in monitoring Work life balance in domestic BPOs.(international bpos tk work life balance seriously but in many domestic bpos still need to follow the practice of WLB)