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INTRODUCTION

1.1. Introduction to the Topic

Business Process Outsourcing sector is one of the fast growing sectors in the global scenario
after the liberalization, privatization, and globalization to increase job opportunities day by
day. In Sri Lanka over the past few years, the BPO sector has been growing in leaps and
bounds. This has also posed certain Human Resource challenges to the practitioners.

In the last fiscal year Srilanka was ranked 21st in A.T. Kearney’s Global Services Location
Index (GSLI) 2011, ranking as an increasingly attractive offshoring destination. Srilanka’s
capital city, Colombo has been recognized as a global center of excellence for Finance and
Accounting, with Global Services Magazine ranking the city in the top 20 in the world.

Today, more than 300 IT and BPO companies have operations in Srilanka with more than
60,000 people earning more than US$400 million in exports. This BPO sector provides some
of the general services such as Receivables and Payables, Inventory Management, Order
Processing, Cash flow Analysis, Reconciliation, Data Entry and Tele-Marketing.

There are several companies such as RR Donnelley, Global Vision Limited, Third space
global and etc... operates as a BPO outsourcing organization in Srilanka where their mother
company is located in Scandinavian countries.

In today’s business environment, there exists a lot of competition among the companies.
Employee’s performance becomes a major and essential element for a company’s success. This
performance is significantly hindered by excessive stress encountered in the working
environment and this has aroused the attention of many employees. Knowing the factors
leading to work stress and its effects on employee’s performance is vital for any organization to
ensure its success and smooth functioning.

Considering the steam of Tele Marketing Department within the business environment,
employees have a very difficult task, and much is expected of them. In this Research, an
attempt has been made to study whether efficiency and alertness are affected while working
continuously with high call volumes among the employees and also to study the effect on their
Performance due to Job stress at the particular department.

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1.2. Background of the Organization
ABC Company is an American Fortune 500 integrated communications company founded on
1864.Its corporate headquarters are located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. They provide
various services such as marketing, business communications, commercial printing, and related
services.

Throughout its history, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s, ABC Company purchased a
number of other companies outright, steadily increasing in size. In August 2015, ABC
Company announced it would split into three different companies. The separation was
completed in October 2016 and now they have been around for 146 years in the US and was a
global provider of integrated communications, servicing more than 60,000 customers including
95 percent of the Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Business Data & Business

Marketing Print
Support Insights Support
Global Digital & Analytics Development Commercial
Outsourcing Email Business Production Print
Logistics Tele- Intelligence Photo & Videos Forms & Labels
Packaging Marketing Data Kitting &
Staff
Process Direct mail Management Augmentation Fulfillment
Management In-Store Research &
Statement & Strategy CX
Notices
Supply Chain

Figure 1:ABC Company Services

Source: (Annual Report,2016)

They outsourced their services globally where their each and every functions are being
functioned in various countries. Likewise, one of ABC company’s process, which is Tele
-Marketing Services is being outsourced and started their operation in Srilanka from 1983.

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1.3. Statement of the Problem

Many researchers are of the view that stress has a negative effect on employee’s performance
but at the same time researchers have proved that someone stressful work conditions are critical
to keep employees productive. In clarifying the research problem of the study, it is important to
look into the studies that have been carried out with reference to the Job Stress and its effect on
employees Performance.

In Researchers Organization the company’s Tele-Marketing Process is Outsourced to another

low cost location, employees contact and deals their clients over the Phone Calls in which
many enterprises are outsourcing Telecom expense management (TEM), as a way to free up
time and save money.

These employees employed at a BPO sector work’s continuously with Poor ergonomics
which is a physical factor within the environment that harms the musculoskeletal
system. Ergonomic hazards include themes such as repetitive movement, manual handling,
workplace/job/task design, uncomfortable workstation height and poor body positioning.

Outsourced employees are also found with irregular sleeping/working hours since they
have to work according to the time of the Outsourced Company which they have to handle
their clients based to the UK timing and their structure. This is somewhat linked with odd
working hours. In the evening when everybody wants to spend their time with family
members, the employees of BPO will be working. That creates an imbalance if the spouse
works in General shift. Your life as a BPO employee can become lonely and frustrating at
times.

The employees have to complete their targets and Projects without providing a time Frame
which has led the employees towards time pressure. Sometime customer gets angry upon
you and says anything to you that time employees have to overcome with their self-respect.

It is also visible when these employees handle their clients through phone call we could see
that high call volume and low job security have caused a huge impact on employee’s life
style were the main stressors found among the Employees working at a BPO Sector.

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A stress is a prevalent and costly problem in today's workplace. About one-third of workers
report high levels of stress. One-quarter of employees view their jobs as the number one
stressor in their lives. Stress is the major causes that increased absenteeism and turnover and
also lead with other problems as alcoholism, drug abuse and hypertension.

It has also causes many Health issues such as Heart disease, sleep disorders, eyesight problems,
and depression are a few problems that people working for BPO’s suffer from due to the
untimely schedule. People also tend to gain weight as most of the time they are sitting in their
small cubicle.

Negative stress causes mental restlessness, mental disturbance and loss of self-balance which is
harmful to the individual and, as a result, drives a change in an individual’s behavior. Change
in negative behavior of an individual at workplace effect on their productivity as well as to the
organization’s performance. Even though you work only for 5 days a week, for the rest of the
two days it is not easy to swap your sleep cycle the other way around.

Hence the researcher is hoping to find answers to the following questions.

 Does Job-Stress effects on employee performance in the Tele-Marketing Department at

ABC Company?
 What are the causes of job-stress at ABC Company?
 Does the job stress create a positive or negative impact on the productivity of ABC
Company?

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1.4. Research Objective

The main objective of this research is to identify the problems of employees in Tele-
Marketing Department at ABC Company. It also aims to identify the stress level of
employees and the resulting on the performance deviations of the employees.

1.4.1. General Objective

Researcher has examined that how job stress effect on the performance of the employees in a
Tele-Marketing Department at ABC Company (A UK based Business Process Outsourcing
Organization) where their Tele-Marketing activities is being outsourced in srilanka.

1.4.2. Specific Objective

To understand how job stress effects on the Performance of the Employees at a Tele-
Marketing Department.

To determine factors that causes stress among Tele-Marketing Executives at a Business

Process Outsourcing Organization.

To explore whether these factors have positive or negative effects on Employees Job
Performance.

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1.5. Significance of the study

When a company concentrates on the core business and out sources its non-core activities like
payment services, customer services and administration, then it is referred as Business Process
Outsourcing (BPO).

ABC Company enhance the relevance, impact and effectiveness of every communication
while increasing the efficiency and cost effectiveness of their communications ecosystem.
Their communication management model is to disparate functions and resources, managing a
multitude of vendors and workflows, focused on meeting their own respective requirements.

As far as concern there are factors that effect on their practices which has increase the stress
level of their employees working in the Tele-Marketing Unit and they are undergoing on high
turnover of their Tele-Marketing Executive and they couldn’t sustain their employees leaving
from the Tele-Marketing Department in which they are also going under lack of performance
among their employees in particular sector due to high pressure towards employees targets.
This has also led a huge impact on employee’s turnover and their personal life is being
affected among the employees working for the Tele-Marketing Department.

Though some researchers have been done globally related to job stress and its effect on
employee performance in various sectors, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge there has
not been a research done on the BPO sector in srilanka. Srilankan culture and the timing is
different from the Europe calendar; hence it is worthwhile to conduct a research on this
problem which will benefit the management of BPO and also the other organization
functioning BPO Services.

Tele-Marketing Employees at a BPO are more stressful because of the nature of organization
and type of their work. Hence considering all these factors identification of different issues
with employees and its result of their employees Performance this research investigates the
impact of stress on productivity. Therefore, the study of the research is to analyze “Impact of
Job stress on employee performance” of an individual in a Tele-Marketing Department at
ABC Company.

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1.6. Scope of the study
It is important to know the representation group of the study. This study done based on job
stress of tele-marketing department at a Business Process Outsourcing firm in Sri Lanka. The
total employee base affected by this transaction in the department is 100. In this research the
impact toward employee related factors were discussed in order to analyze employees’ job
stress.

1.7. Limitation of the Study

Researcher has taken the Tele-Marketing Executives who are working in the Telemarketing
Department of the ABC Company. Since data is gathered via hosting an online questionnaire
with these tele marketing executives, acceptance of the trust is the major limitation.

It is assumed that respondents expressed honestly the questionnaire. Also due to the stressful
environment it will be challenging to find the peoples to interview while they are in a relaxed
mind set in order to get the accurate information’s. But still the researcher would be able to
observe the employees when they are handling their customers.

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1.8. Chapter Summary

BPO sectors has taken a major part in srilanka where many srilankan people are outsourced
and placed to work in these sectors. Some of them outsource particular segment of workers
where abc has also taken tele marketing executives from srilanka in order to work for their
company. This has made an impact towards employee life style and their performance where
they have to adapt into a new sector.

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