TERM PAPER MPOB
L LOVELY INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

topic:- stress management

SUBMITTED TO:- Ms. MANBIR KAUR GILL

SUBMITTED BY:-
NAME:- PRASHANT KUMAR
ROLL NO:- RT1901 “A19”
SUB:- MPOB
REG NO:- 10900829
PROG :- MBA (1ST)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT |

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude towards all those people who have helped me in the successful completion of this term paper, directly or indirectly. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude towards Ms. Manbir kaur gill (my term paper guide) for her guidance and help which she willingly provided at every step of my term paper.

PRASHANT KUMAR M.B.A 1st SEMESTER

TABLE OF CONTENT INTRODUCTION 1
ORGANIZATION SIGNIFYING 4
LITERATURE REVIEW 5
RESEARCH METHODOLGY * SECONDARY DATA 8
DATA ANALYSIS 11
CONCLUSION 13
SUGGESTION 17
REFERANCE 18

INTRODUCTION:-
What is stress?
Stress is the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure placed on them from extraordinary demands, constraints, or opportunities. It is related to demand or resources means what the individual desire and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and employment .it mean when the demand is greater than resources means if we have the need of more work but we can’t complete the due to lacking of time. Stress is an increasing problem in an organization for example, most people are says that they are suffering with stress due to greater workloads and having to work longer hours because of downsizing of their company. Mostly people suffered stress due to the unstability of their job, by the survey report we got information about stress it mean employees are complaint about the stress created in trying to balance work and family responsibilities.
As well as mentioned above stress is associated with demands and resources. Demands are responsibilities, pressure, obligations, and even uncertainties individuals face in workplace. Resources are things within an individual’s control that can be used the resolve of demands.
CONCEPT:-
“STRESS” the term is introduced by HANS SELYE in 1936 he views stress as the non specifically induced changes within a biological system. It is non specific because any adaptation to a problem faced by the body , irrespective of the nature of the problem , is included Ivancevich and Matteson define stress as an adaptive response , mediated by individual characteristics and or psychological process , that is consequence of any external action , situation, or event that places special physical and psychological demand upon a person. In a simplified way stress can be defined as an adaptive response to an external factor that results in physical, psychological, or behavioral deviations in an individual.
By some example we can understand stress in better way. ‘Where as the demand of working long hour leads to stress. Because, due to working load they don’t spend sufficient time at home and they are unable to fulfill the demand of their family person.
CAUSES OF STRESS:- STRESSS

There may be various conditions in which people may feel stress. “Condition that tend to cause major stress are called stressors.” Although even a single stressor may cause major stress like death of near one, usually stressor combine to press an individual in a variety of ways until stress develops .
The various stressors can be grouped into four categories:
Individual stressors: there are many stressors at the level of individual which may be generated in the context of organizational life or his personal life. * Life and career changes, * personality type * Role characteristics.

Group stressor: there may be some factors in group processes which act as group stressors. * lack of group cohesiveness * lack of social support * Conflict.
Organizational stressors: an organization is composed of individual and groups and , therefore individual and group stressor may also exist in organizational context however they are macro level dimensions of organizational functioning which may work as stressors. * organizational policies * organization structure * organizational processes * Physical conditions.
Extraorganisational stressors: since an organization interacts continuously with its environment, events happening outside the organization also work as stressors. Thus, social and technical changes , economic and financial condition, social classes conflicts, community conditions etc. work as stressors.
Effects of stress:-
Generally, stress is considered to be negative, thereby meaning that it has negative consequences. However, not all stresses can be put in the negative category. In fact, low level stress contributes positively to the work performance. Mild stress such as working under new supervisor, transfer from one place to another may result in an increased search for information in the job. this may lead employees to new and better ways of doing their jobs. in certain jobs such as sales or creativity (newspaper journalism, radio/television announcement time pressure is significant.), a mild level contributes positively to productivity . if the level of stress is high, performance drops of sharply stress effects human beings physically , psychology and behaviorally ,
And they face problems on these three levels.
Physical problem: physical reaction including autonomic, excitability of nerves, increased heart rate and decrease in body temperature. * Psychologically problem: high level of stress may be accompanied by psychological reaction such as anger, anxiety, depression, nervousness irritability ,tension and boredom depending upon the nature of stress and the capacity of individuals to bear stress. * Behavioral problem: people show dysfunctional behavior because of stress of high level.

Organization signifying:-

As well as we know today’s modern life is full of stress. And in every organization mostly employees are suffering with stress. So, to know about the stress and their reason we have to take an organization. That is HCL BPO . HCL BPO is one of leading global IT services company which is providing software solution ,BPO services and remote infrastructure management. Its focused mostly on their R & D outsoursing which is working with their clients in their business core area. And it’s network in 15 countries having 26 offices which is working for banking, insurance, retail & consumer, aerospace, automatic, semiconductors, telecom and life sciences. And it’s revenue is US $ 864 million (RS 3890 crore) and 28182 employee.

LITERATURE REVIEW:- Stress levels rising in India Inc: Survey | | | |
Fifty-seven per cent of workers in the corporate sector in India reported an increase in stress over the last two years, a survey has said.
Of over 11,000 corporate across 13 countries, 58 per cent companies worldwide experienced an appreciable rise in their workplace stress over the last two years, according to a survey by workplace solutions provider Regus plc.
The survey asked more than 11,000 respondents about their experience in the workplace during tough economic times. It found that Indian workers experienced a slightly lower rise in stress than their international counterparts, with 57 per cent reporting that their levels of stress have grown “higher” or “much higher” over the past two years.
The most significant stress hike in the countries surveyed occurred in China, with 86 per cent reporting an increase in stress. The lowest increase in stress was felt in the Netherlands, with 47 per cent reporting a rise.
A Regus statement said a study by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations found that India’s rapid economic expansion has boosted corporate profits and employee incomes, but has also sparked a surge in workplace stress and lifestyle diseases that few Indian companies have addressed.
The survey said 45 per cent of Indian workers are particularly stressed by the increased focus on profitability that has arisen during the recession. In fact, this particular pressure is stressing out Indian employees more than workers in any of the other countries surveyed. Another factor responsible for increasing workplace stress is the pressure to maintain excellent customer service: 33 per cent identified this as a major stress-causing factor. Company size has also had an influence on the level of stress increase experienced in recent years.
It found that workers in mid-sized Indian companies (50-249 employees) have experienced a greater rise in workplace stress: 61 per cent of employees in mid-sized firms have reported higher levels of stress against 55 per cent of people in smaller businesses. This may be due to the potential for downsizing.

STRESS causes FACED BY HCL BPO’S EMPLOYEE:

HCL BPO is one of leading company among the Indian BPO sector it is providing software solution, BPO services and remote infrastructure management. And it’s network in 15 countries having 26 offices which is working for banking, insurance, retail & consumer, aerospace, automatic, semiconductors, telecom and life sciences. And it’s revenue is US $ 864 million (RS 3890 crore) and 28182 employee. As well as we know today’s life is full of stress, it mean due to some reason employee are went under pressure that is working culture ie working load, Time of working hour, insufficient holidays, pressure to perform on matrics, health issue, tavel time, overtime, earproblems. Due to this reason employees are feel stress.

LONG WORKING HOUR:
Long working hours is the big factor to increase the stress for Indian call center employees just ahead of work timing. 39.4% of the respondents surveyed endorsed the fact. Along with salary, both these factors, no doubt, account for the high rate of attrition in the industry. Long hours, in itself, is a combination of work load, call volume and travel time.
Since most BPO players are still primarily voice-based, the workload is tremendous; add to it the increasing call volume, as more and more outsourcing continues to happen despite threats of backlash, plus the time involved in traveling between home and office.
Any average employee works for 11-12 hours per day-the number goes up to 14 in case of companies that encourage overtime. The plight of the operational heads is worse-they regularly clock 17-18 hours per day working their shift besides staying back for customer conference calls.
WORK TIMING:

work timing is the second biggest factor of stress for HCL BPO employees and all BPO industry, in fact, feel that this is the root cause for most of the malaises afflicting Indian call centers. It is indeed an irony that the raison d'être for the success of the industry is also turning out to be its Achilles Heel. But, since, no doubt, the geographical time difference with the US and the UK gives Indian industry one of its biggest advantages, a possible solution to the problem is unlikely to be found in the near future. Even the endorsement from 38.6% of the respondents seems to be somewhat tempered by the fact that many of the respondents were either senior non-call floor people, or those in the day shift. While pure-play call centers like Transworks and EXL Services were most severely afflicted, barring eFunds and iSeva to some extent, no one in the survey seems to have tackled the issue with any measure of success.

WORK LOAD:
Some would argue that even IT services employees are burdened with tremendous workload, so why are BPO employees complaining? The real story lies elsewhere. True, even IT services employees work for long and odd hours, but these are interspersed with smoke breaks, coffee breaks or plain chatting with colleagues. Unfortunately, this is not the case in call centers, where sometimes agents do not even get toilet breaks. Sounds draconian? But that is the business driven reality for the Indian call center industry. Absolute freshers get a little respite, since the first few months on the job involves a lot of training time. Like on several other factors, eFunds is in the least affected category, either they are close to devising a mechanism to take care of the most common stresses, or the attrition rate is so high that most of these factors are not accounted for.

RESPECTIVE NATURE OF WORK:

No surprises here-it is a commonly accepted fact that the monotony of the same kind of work in call centers can indeed be very stressful. 37.1% of the respondents re-iterate the same in the survey. The male freshers seem to the group particularly affected. Again, solutions are not readily available, though measures like hiring retired personnel or housewives might be of some succor, since these groups with more experience tend to get frustrated the least. Some others have also devised innovative measures, like periodic job rotation, though not much can be expected out of these in a pure call center environment. That explains why, even in eFunds, the company least affected with this affliction, more than 14% complained about the stress caused by the repetitive nature of the job. It is a bit surprising to see Motif'son the most affected list, especially given that it is located in a smaller town like Ahmedabad. Received wisdom, that small town employees in places with limited scope do not easily get tired even of repetitive jobs, stands questioned.

INSUFFICINT HOLIDAYS:
While this was not amongst the top 10 causes of stress in last year's survey, this year more than 36% of the respondents complained about it. Not too surprising, considering that most of these employees have to work on all Indian calendar holidays. True, they enjoy holidays like July 4th and Thanksgiving, but that is scant solace for working 12-14 hour shifts even during the festive seasons. Of all the companies surveyed, only eFunds seems to have escaped the brunt of this problem. To add to the woes, many companies dangle the bait of additional incentives for working on holidays-it is initially attractive to the freshers, but as the attraction weans, more heartburn happens.

PRESSURE TO PERFORM ON MATRICS:
This is particularly galling for the first timers-working in an environment where every single action needs to conform to a performance measuring metrics. This looks unlikely to go away soon, since most call centers are keen on different standards certifications. It's no fad, but, instead, an absolute business necessity for most companies to follow these quantifiable business metrics to attract customers. However, not many are keen to look at the effect this has on their employees. More than 36% point to it as one of their major grouses-the only silver lining here is that, with experience, the stress level goes down, and more importantly, working on such quantifiable performance parameters helps these people later in their careers. Companies like Sykes and Transworks, which have been going for a number of certifications this year, seem to be the most affected.

HEALTH ISSUES:
Last year, when 23% pointed to health hazards as a cause of stress, we compared the call center industry with coal miners. This time the number has gone up to 34.5%-maybe it's time to classify call centers as an extremely hazardous job. We have also detailed the call center related ailments separately. Not surprisingly, people in senior managerial positions with five plus years of experience are less affected with these illnesses. That's perhaps because they maintain a more regular work schedule and timing. Companies like 24/7 and ICICI OneSource, which have grown spectacularly in a short frame of time last year, seem to be most seriously affected.

TRAVEL TIME:
Most call centers are located on the outskirts of cities, and therefore most employees spend a long time traveling to and from their offices. Again, this is unique to the Indian industry and cannot be easily wished away. Most Indian call centers require large manpower influxes in order to scale up and grow, and to support such huge workforces, they need lots of real estate. And exorbitant land prices inside cities necessitate their movement to the outskirts. Therefore, it is not surprising that companies like Motif, located in a smaller city like Ahmedabad, are least affected by this factor.

CALL VOLUME/NUMBER OF CALL: the overall workload is quite high, call volume in itself is proving to be a major cause for stress, afflicting 26.8% of our respondents. In most call centers, there is hardly any respite between two calls-not only is this disconcerting, but in the case of one abusive call immediately following another, it can be psychologically disturbing too. In addition, most agents accept these calls under an assumed identity: constantly maintaining a false image amidst an influx of calls afflicts all agents – both experienced ones as well as first timers.

OVERTIME:
Though most companies encourage overtime with incentives, for most of the respondents (25%), this is one stress they inflict upon themselves. Especially the first timers, who, with the goal of making more money, willingly do overtimes, but once they are into it, the stress factor starts showing up. Overtime, in concert with long working hours and travel time, is turning out to be a potent combination, causing call center-related stresses. Not surprisingly, companies like eFunds, which have high capacity utilization, seem to be not at all affected by the overtime issue, according to our survey.

EAR PROBLEM:
Employees are suffering with ear problems because they have got target to attain maximum call and their working time is approximately 11 to 12 hours . so due to this reason they are busy on every time on to attain the call and this is running as well as same in order to full working time due to this they feel the problem related to ear problem and they feel stress.

SLEEPING DISORDER:
Employees are suffering with sleeping disorder because in BPO industry working culture is night shift also due to this which employee who is work in night shift they suffered with sleeping disorder and in BPO’s mostly night party happened due to this mostly employees are suffered with sleeping disorder and they feel stress.

Key Factors that create high levels of stress:-

ANALYSIS:-

By the above graph we can understand easily the major causes for the stress increasment at HCL BPO is insufficient holidays , means employees are didn’t got holidays during festive season, due to this the stress increases among the employees. And second causes is long working hour it mean call center executives approximately 12 hours every day while in other industry mostly working hour is 8 to 10 hours and in working period they got hardly five to ten minutes it is so stressfull. And another problem is health issues in which employees are suffered lots of health related problem and reason behind it long night shift due to this reason employees are suffering with stress.
Another big factor is call volumes/number of calls because, call center executive are under pressure to keep the call volumes high as well as keep call times low. And employees are got break hardely five minutes and they have to attain the maximum call in a day. So, it is also a big factor for increasement of stress among employees.
Overtime is also a factor of stress because most freshers are do overtime for more money. However the motivation of theirs tends to wear off after sometime and stress take over.and Pressure to Perform on Metrics is also the big reason because, Call center executives are usually faced with contradictions. Organizational rhetoric in inbound calls centers in concerned with customer satisfaction (quality service). Yet these goals are juxtaposed with an ongoing pressure to keep call times down and call volumes up. This is guided by the logic of delivering quality on service while routinizing, centralizing, reducing costs and prescribing standards. Efforts to attain the desired balance between the quantity and quality of calls remains a perennial challenge.
Inbound call centers typically have targets for call durations; wrap time and daily call volume. Outbound call centers often also have sales or completion targets, which are closely monitored and pay could be partially linked to sales targets. BPO analysts argue that targets are a significant source of stress for the workers. Over 19% of the respondents felt that targets and pressure to perform on metrics is a challenge, up by nearly 8 percent from last year.
And these are also the factors which helps to stress for their increasement that is travel time, workload, insufficient breaks, irate customers, constant monitoring by superiors, non-negotiable performance matrics.
Above all the reason helps to stress for their increasement .

CONCLUSION:-

To the Increasment of the productivity of workforce of HCL BPO HCL have to co-operate their work force. Because, work force is the most decisive factor as far as the success of an organisation is concerned. The productivity in turn is dependant on the psychosocial well being of the employees. In an age of highly dynamic and competitive world, man is exposed to all kinds of stressors that can affect him on all realms of life. The growing importance of interventional strategies is felt more at organisational level. This particular research was intended to study the impact of occupational stress on BPO employees. Although certain limitations were met with the study, every effort has been made to make it much comprehensive.
SUGGESTION:-
Stress can be managed by the co-operation of each other personal approach and organizational approach some techniques, that is given below.

1. Take adequate steps to redesign jobs, which are taxing to employees' abilities and capacities.
2. To reduce the workload role slimming and role adjustment process should be resorted to.
3. Encourage the cross-functional and interdepartmental work arrangements to reduce work related stress among low performers and low achievers.
4. Facilitate role enlargement, role linkage and role enrichment to manage role isolation, self-role distance and role erosion.
5. Adequate role clarification to be made whenever necessary to eliminate role ambiguity.
6. Introduce more job oriented training programs, which improve employees skill and their confidence to work effectively.
7. Do concentrate on career planning to manage role stagnation.
8. Encourage open channel of communication to deal work related stress.
9. Let the employee clear about hard work related reward and smart work related reward.
10. Adequate resources i.e., material, technical and human, should be extended to make employee feel safe and secure to perform their work effectively.
11. Undertake stress audit at all levels in the organization to identify stress area improving conditions of job and alleviating job stress.
12. Ensure justified use of grievance handling procedures to win trust and confidence of employees and reduce their anxiety and tension related to job related problems.
13. Encourage involvement of leaders and personnel at various levels in all phases of strategic interventions to ensure successful and long-standing interventions.
14. Formulate HRD interventions and individual stress alleviation program.
15. Introduce 'Pranayam' (Brain Stilling and control of Vital Force) as a holistic managerial strategy to deal with occupational strategy.
16. Provide counseling on work related and personnel problems and support from a team of welfare health and counseling staff.
17. Attractive system of reward and recognition of good work.
18. Ensure an organizational climate with career planning and career growth to ensure further the retention of talented employees.
19. Extent the counseling practices at employee family level including dependents and relatives.
20. Effective follow up should be made to different leave category absentee employees.
21. Organization should organize regular check up and those found suffering from very high stress should be subjected to stress management process.
22. Cut back excessive hours, which directly affect the employee's physical fitness.
23. Develop realistic self-concept among employees that is neither inflated nor deflated.
24. Encourage management to practice proactive approaches rather than reactive approaches as a strategic step.

REFERENCE:- 1. What is stress:- management/ninth edition/Stephen p. Robbins Mary coutler/chapter-13/managing change and innovation/page no-369. And
Organization behavior/twelth edition/Stephen p. Robbins/timothy a. judge seema sanghi/chapter-19/organizational change and stress management/page no- 735,736. 2. Concept:- organizational behavior/l.m.prasad/chapter-10/dynamics of stress /page no-178. 3. Causes of stress:- organizational behavior/l.m.prasad/chapter-10/dynamics of stress /page no-179. 4. Picture about stress:- management/ninth edition/Stephen p. Robbins Mary coutler/chapter-13/managing change and innovation/page no-369. 5. Effects of stress:- organizational behavior/l.m.prasad/chapter-10/dynamics of stress /page no-181. 6. Organizationsignifying:http://www.hcltech.com/pdf/HCL%20ties%20up%20with%20Synchron.pdf 7. Literature review “Stress levels rising in India Inc: Survey”:- http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/stress-levels-rising-in-india-inc-survey/377816/ 8. Stress causes faced by HCL BPO’s employee:- http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/dqtop202k4/empSurvey2004/2004/104110816.asp 9. Key factors of stress:- http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/industrymarket/bpo/2005/105121102.asp 10. Suggestion “stress management techniques” :- http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC231/fc231.html