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MECHANISMS
(A study of factors causing stress and its coping mechanisms)
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report talks about the BPO industry which is an eye candy for many youngsters who are in
need of a job with less effort and more rewards. A Business process outsourcing is often
considered as a place for quick employment, lucrative and most importantly its work culture.
The BPO is also known for its stressful work environment. This report talks about what causes
stress to the employees and after effects of stress on their health
This report talks about the factors which causes stress and the methods by which one can
overcome stress. Stress can be mitigated at two levels one at organization level and another at
individual level. The report studies the efforts which an individual and an organization should
take so as to develop a foolproof coping mechanism which will reduce the attrition rate in BPO
industry. Stress degrades the quality of work and BPO is directly related to productivity, more
the stress less the productivity.
The crux of this report is the factors which cause stress and the methods which can be used to
mitigate stress. The study says who faces more stress in an BPO organization i.e. male or
female and also elaborates factors which causes stress and what type of coping mechanisms can
be effective , what all can be done to reduce stress levels in an organization and make it stress
free and pleasant to work. This report also studies the health issues caused by stress and studies
the behavior of employees through which there stress levels can be measured and can be
concluded that they are stressed.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
SR. NO
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
TOPIC
INTRODUCTION
CAUSES OF STRESS
COPING MECHANISMS
OBJECTIVE OF STUDY
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
LITERATURE REVIEW
CONCEPTUAL MODELS
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
FINDINGS
RECOMMENDATION
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX
PAGE NO.
4
5
6
7
8
8
13
16
25
26
28
29
INTRODUCTION:Stress typically describes a negative concept that can have an impact on ones mental and
physical well-being, but it is unclear what exactly defines stress and whether or not stress is a
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cause, an effect, or the process connecting the two. With organisms as complex as humans,
stress can take on entirely concrete or abstract meanings with highly subjective qualities,
satisfying definitions of both cause and effect in ways that can be both tangible and intangible.
Symptoms
Signs of stress may be cognitive, emotional, physical, or behavioral.
1. Cognitive symptoms
Inability to concentrate
Poor judgment
Pessimistic approach or thoughts
2. Emotional symptoms
Moodiness
Irritability or short temper
Sense of loneliness and isolation
Depression or general unhappiness
3. Physical symptoms
Aches and pains
Diarrhea or constipation
Nausea, dizziness
Chest pain, rapid heartbeat
Frequent colds
4. Behavioral symptoms
Eating more or less
Sleeping too much or too little
Using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax
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Causes of stress
Stress is usually caused by too much pressure being put on us by others or in some
cases by ourselves and if stress is left unchecked, it can lead to an inability to
function effectively and cope under pressure.
Not having enough time:
Frequently you can be running around all day trying to balance all your tasks at work
and at home, yet still not manage to tick everything off your list. Sometimes this can be
due to the demands that are placed upon you being unrealistic, but often it simply comes
down to poor time management and not setting your priorities.
Unhealthy lifestyle:
While some people might adopt an unhealthy lifestyle due to lack of time for example
by turning to fast food because they havent time to eat properly others may have an
unhealthy lifestyle because they are already stressed for example by turning to
smoking as coping mechanisms. Whatever the reason, an unhealthy lifestyle can reduce
your ability to cope with stress, and in some circumstances it may actually increase your
stress levels.
Conflicts in the workplace:
If relationships are strained at home or in the workplace, then its more than likely that
youll be stressed about them. Conflicts might occur due to disagreements about how
things should be done and so you might feel that you have to stand your ground to
make progress but ultimately a lot of hot air will only contribute to your stress levels.
Lack of participation in decision making:
Some people dont have the ability to accept things as they are or realize that certain
situations are out of their control. If you try to change something that you really cant
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change, then youll just be creating unnecessary stress that you can do without. Plus, all
that time spent stressing about it means youll be unable to concentrate on the other
things that you could be doing which may make you even more stressed.
Coping Mechanisms
Responses to stress include adaptation, psychological coping such as stress management,
anxiety, and depression. Over the long term, distress can lead to diminished health and/or
increased propensity to illness; to avoid this, stress must be managed. Stress management
encompasses techniques intended to equip a person with effective coping mechanisms for
dealing with psychological stress, with stress defined as a person's physiological response to an
internal or external stimulus that triggers the fight-or-flight response. Stress management is
effective when a person uses strategies to cope with or alter stressful situations.
There are several ways of coping with stress such as controlling the source of stress or learning
to set limits and to say "no" to some of the demands that bosses or family members may make.
Coping is thus expending conscious effort to solve personal and interpersonal problems, and
seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress or conflict the term coping generally refers to
adaptive or constructive coping strategies, i.e., the strategies reduce stress levels
Good Interpersonal Relationships:
Interpersonal relationships are important attributes in maintaining a positive business
atmosphere. Without these skills, relations inside a business become hostile, resulting in
workplace dissatisfaction.
Relaxation Techniques:
For many of us, relaxation means zoning out in front of the TV at the end of a stressful
day. But this does little to reduce the damaging effects of stress. To effectively combat
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stress, we need to activate the body's natural relaxation response. You can do this by
practicing relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, rhythmic exercise,
and yoga. Fitting these activities into your life can help reduce everyday stress and boost
your energy and mood.
Healthy Lifestyle:
Having a healthy diet, doing regular exercise, and getting enough sleep means that your
body will be able to cope with the stress that is thrown your way. Exercise in particular
can be great for stress relief especially if it involves taking your stress out on a ball or
other inanimate object! Also, by knowing youre leading a healthy lifestyle, youll be in
a more positive frame of mind and will be better able to cope.
OBJECTIVE OF STUDY :1. To study and understand factors causing stress and various coping mechanisms
2. To understand how effective the coping mechanisms are which are implemented in the
organizations
3. To compare the stress levels of male and female in a BPO industry
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6.
7. Ques.11 asked about the coping mechanisms which they take to nullify stress.
8. Ques. 12 checked their anger levels.
9. Ques. 13 asked what health issues they suffer.
10. The last ques.14 asked to what extent the programs are helpful.
Literature review.
LITERATURE REVIEW:1. BY BPO WATCH DESK; 1ST JANUARY, 2009, HOW TO TACKLE
STRESS?
Review: - The above article talks about how stress can have drastic effects on the employee, it
talks about Vanishree a BPO employee and how her behavior changed due to BOSS (Burn out
stress syndrome). The Article also states that after sometime the body is not able to cope up with
the amount of stress level prevalent in the organization and it starts to give indicators in the form
of overweight, depression, hyper sensitivity psychosomatic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension
etc., and other nervous disorders
. These were the problems faced by employees in the BPO. The organization faces the problem
in the form of sick leave, labor absenteeism also the organization fails to create a suitable
atmosphere for the employees and in turn the employees lose the drive to work.
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The solution that this article says is Regular free health checkups for the employees, make the
employees aware of RIGHT EATING and RIGHT SLEEPING.
2. By Mint journal, Long working hours, travel time add to stress of BPO staff
Review: - This article says that, there are many factors that cause stress at work, they are health
issues, travel time, insufficient holidays, sleep disorders, digestive disorders and eye sight
problems. Also many companies who are facing the problem of employee absenteeism have
found out that the employees are not induced by compensation package (CTC) or any other
thing, only thing that drives the need for an employee to work was the job satisfaction.
Also this article says one of the ways to achieve job satisfaction was employee encouragement
and engagement. Many Big Elephants of BPO sector are facing the same problem of stress and
are creating new methods to tackle stress and increase the productivity of the Firm
3. By Sonali pathak and Dr. Anil Sari ,Manav Rachna International University
Faridabad, Haryana, Management of Stress among Women Employees in a
BPO
Review: - The concerned article concentrates on the stress caused to employees in a BPO
especially women. The article gives a basic idea about the working of a BPO industry and also
gives a brief description about the term stress. It tells us a very interesting fact that stress is a
part not only a part of human life but that also of animals. Animals also are affected by stress in
various ways.
As this article concentrates only on stress management for women working at the BPO it tells us
that one of the major causes of stress for women is that her responsibilities are divided in two
major parts. First of the two is house and the second being work.
Some of the major stress generators of stress for women are stated as wrong prejudice about
BPO, gender discrimination, security problems etc. To name a few in details one of the key
reasons that stress women a BPO job is the acceptance of society. Due to either late night
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working hours or night shifts the women get a non-conventional status in the society. The
transportation and security also causes worry for the women which ultimately leads to stress as
safety of women is very important. Another stress creator for women is the gender
discrimination done at workplace. Apart from all this there is one more element that causes
stress among women and that is the invisible barrier created in the minds of the women due to
the male dominating society
4. Chhavi Dang, ET Apr 3, 2006, BPOs help staff cope with stress
Review: From the above article it is evident that how stress affects the productivity of the
organization and how the health of the employees get affected due to irregular work hours and
from this article we can understand that how the organization is also trying to help the
employees to tackle stress and help them to work to their full capacity.
This article states different ways by which the employee stress can be handled , few of them
are :- organizing picnics , organizing events for the employees such as sports events and Road
shows , Giving them GEM (Go for extra mile award) to keep them motivated . Also organize
informal environment structure so as to make the employees comfortable with the senior
management.
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5. By
Jerome
&
Robert
Xavier
(www.scrib.com)
,EMPLOYEES
7. By TOI 27th August 2006 Stress Level In an BPO and Ways to Cope with it
Review: - This article talks about
Reasons for Stress:1. Frequent Night Shifts
2. Constant handling of Rude / Unfriendly Customers
3. Drastic fall in Sleep
4. Diet Disorders
5. Chronic & Unexplained neck or body aches
6. Severe Gastric Disorders
7. Program Launched to Cope up with Work stress are :8. Stop the Boss Refresh , relax, restart
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CONCEPTUAL MODELS:-
1. Selye, Hans 1956 The Stress of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill :- Dr. Hans was an
endocrinologist , He studied that there was a pattern to stress , he named that pattern
as stereotypical response pattern it means that our body shows some type of
response to stress which can be measured in 3 ways:a. Alarm stage :- In this stage the body gives initial warnings about stress its facing
such as extreme emotions , depression and fatigue
b. Resistance stage:- In this stage body tries to combat the stress its facing
c. Exhaustion:- The capability to fight stress is exhausted and there is a irreparable
tissue damage
He called this General adaptive syndrome GAS
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2. Benson,
Herbert.
1976.
Steps
to
elicit
the
relaxation
response.
3. Karasek & Theorell (1990). Healthy Work: stress, productivity, and the
reconstruction of working life. Basic Books, USA. Page 45:- This model defines
stress in four quadrants, HIGH strain, ACTIVE stress, LOW stress, PASSIVE
STRESS.
a. High stress This includes people who are constantly working under stressful
environment and are constantly bombarded with work , which leads to low
satisfaction , high fatigue ,high stress, depression and burnout . The examples are
Cooks, Waiters and people who work in service industry.
b. Active stress: - This stress is used by people for constructive development and
used as a positive motivator; this type of stress is used by managers for growth
and for learning.
c. Low stress: - There is a balance and control over work stress, people tend to have
a control over stress, the examples are clerks, forecasters, research scientists.
d. Passive stress :- Highly dissatisfied and un- motivating negative learning curve ,
people who fall under dis category often tend to switch their jobs , this situation
is caused when the initiatives of employees are rejected .
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Statistical Analysis :1. Chi-square test a. To test the relationship between factors causing stress and health issues
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Conclusion:- From above we conclude that X2cal is greater than X2 Tab (0.05)
We reject H0 and accept H1 and conclude that there is a relation between factors
causing stress.
Observation: - It was observed that there is a relationship established between
factors which causes stress and after effects of stress which is problems related to
health, it was found that people who ranked long working hours as stress suffered
from acidity, eye irritation and diseases related to digestion. Hence we conclude that
factors causing stress are directly related to health problems.
2. Annova
Test18 | P a g e
Single
factor
a. H0- No Significant difference between the stress levels of male and female
employees in a BPO
b. H1- There is a significant difference between the stress levels of male and female
employees in a BPO
Source of Variation
Rows
Columns
Error
SS
df
32
54.2
23.8
2
18
MS
3.55555
6
27.1
1.32222
2
F
2.68907
6
20.4958
P-value
0.035383
2
2.293E-05
F crit
2.456281
3.554557
Conclusion :-Fcal is greater than Ftab therefore we accept H1 and reject H0 and
conclude that there is a significant difference between the stress levels of male and
female employees in a BPO .
Observation:- From above we can infer that Both men and women face stress in
an organization and the stress levels of men and women are both on different levels
may because of the factors such as managing home and office becomes a tedious
job for women as compared to men. Hence we conclude that the stress levels are
different.
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Observation:- from above we observe that the maximum no.of employees fall in the age group
of less than 30 and we can infer that the maximum labor force are youngsters , thus proving the
statement that BPO provides quick employments with decent salary and less efforts which
attracts the young Gen Y people .
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Observation: - According to the study maximum number of employees is graduates who are
looking out for easy jobs and about 29% are undergraduates and only a handful of them are post
graduates. From this we infer that many employees were fresher with some or no experience
and were in search of easy employment.
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Observation: The frequency of number of breaks during the shift was around 5 to 7 per person. We came
to the observation that most of the employees took break regularly, almost 1 break in an hour. The breaks
were segregated three times usually during the shift. The first break was of 15 minutes in which a person
can have tea, smoke and/or also use washroom. The time duration was very less, more than 5 to 6
minutes were spent in reaching the canteen and smoking zone. The second break is of a lunch or dinner
which is exactly thirty minutes in which there was a long queue to order the canteen food. Most of the
employees were bachelors so had only canteen food as a choice. This was again a short span for them.
The last break is usually a tea or a smoke break and is usually relaxed. Though as per the industry
standards the break segregation was proper but the employees urged to have more breaks and always
made an excuse when they were on the floor. This break was usually taken to have a quick smoke,
washroom use or tea.
Observation: Upon surveying the people through one on one interaction and questionnaire, it was
observed that they had a very disturbed sleep and could sleep very less. This was basically of irregular
shift patterns that they were not able to adjust their sleep and also they had to carry out household works
and to spent time with family and friends etc. The employees had an average sleep of 5 to 6 hours only.
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Observation:- From above we can observe that the key issues which cause are long working
hours followed travel time and then workload , these are the main issues according to the BPO
employees which cause them stress, from this we can infer that the work culture of BPO is
designed in a way which create a stressful environment for its employees , these three factors
are ranked No# 1 by all the respondents hence we conclude that if the working hours are
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reduced and the employees are given accommodation on a subsidized rates and the work load is
divided among small groups then the stress can be reduced
Observation: It was observed that employees suffered from weak eyesight as they had to
continuously work on their desktops in which they had to type in the opening and closing call
details of the customer.
Nest important issue was sleeping disorder which was because of irregular shifts that they were
not able to adjust with. The time which they spent on sleep was also very less as compared to
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average sleep, and their sleep was usually disturbed i.e. they got up during their sleep because of
the hectic mindset which they carried from office work.
Other factors were depression, anxiety, digestion problems and others.
Observation: - The coping mechanisms are stress busters adopted by organizations to mitigate
stress. According to the survey respondents said they are stressed because of the routine
travelling from their home to office and if the organizations provided better pick and drop
services, then the stress levels of employees may go down because less time is lost in transit.
Also the respondents stressed upon the fact that good counseling and yoga workshops would
help them in combat stress.
Conclusion: - From the above we can conclude that the coping mechanisms help an employee to
mitigate stress and will increase the productivity of an organization since productivity of an
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organization directly depends upon its employees. So coping mechanisms will help an
organization to combat stress and will increase the productivity which will act as a dual benefit
for organization and employees, since the attrition rate will decline and employees will love to
work more for the organization.
FINDINGS
From the survey it was found that the majority of people belonged to a age group of 2030 which indicates the that there are lot of youngsters who may or may not have
experience and who are graduates from various fields such as B.com BA and BSC , it
was found that people had experience ranging from 1-5 years and a trend was seen that
no employee had worked in a BPO for more than 5 years which clearly indicates that
BPO industry has the highest attrition rate and employees often switch from one
organization to another in search of better opportunities , Most of the employees were
married .
The employees worked for 8 -10 hours in a day and only 5-7 leaves per year were
allowed which indicates that there is an insufficient holidays provided to the employees.
The employees who were non-smokers were heavy smokers by the time they left the
organization which was very evident from the interview which was conducted with the
employees to understand the mindset of any employee. No one from the respondents
used any sort of anti-depressant drugs or pills to combat stress
The main reasons for stress are
Main stress reasons:
Long working hours.
Travel time.
Workload.
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Insufficient holidays
Repetitive work
Shift timings.
Number of breaks
Occasionally meditated.
Health issues
o Sleeping disorders
o Eyesight problems
o Depression, Lethargy, Digestive Problems.
o Short tempered.
Best solutions to employees to reduce stress :
o Pick and drop service
o Yoga workshops
o Counseling
o Flexible working hours
o
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CONCLUSION:
Stress directly impacts an organization's performance and also affects the well-being of its
employees. Stress at the workplace is linked to absenteeism, higher attrition, and decreased
productivity affecting the profitability of the organizations.
The report talks about the stress level and its coping mechanisms in the BPO industry.
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We have come to a conclusion by surveying the employees in the BPO industry through
questionnaire method based on certain parameters like health issues, frequency of breaks, anger
management, eating habits and work culture.
From the above findings, we conclude in this report that, stress level in the BPO industry is very
high but the stress can be reduced by taking suitable steps.
These steps include:
Timely breaks
Employee incentives and appraisals
Introducing recreational activities such as yoga , gym, stress busters etc.
A good working environment
Regular health checkups.
Stress is unavoidable. But sometimes stress can be harmful health and productivity but at the
same time stress can be positive, beneficial and stimulating. Therefore, it is said that, stress
should prevail at the workplace but shouldnt exceed the required level. Stress cannot be
avoided but it can be mitigated.
APPENDIX
Questionnaire
Name
Age
Qualification
Your Designation
Mobile number
Sex: Male
Female
Married
to
Divorced
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8 to 10 hours
11 to 12 hours
13 to 14 hours
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Sometimes
Frequently
Always
6-10
11-15
11
c) Do you consume Tea/Coffee :If Yes, How many cups of Tea/Coffee in a Day
1-5 cups
6-10 cups
11-15 cups
d) Do you consume sleeping pills
Yes
No
e) Do you consume anti-depressant drugs
Yes
No
Q.8 Please rank the below Issues which cause you stress to your preference (Rank from 1 to 10 ,
1 being the highest and 10 being the lowest)
Sr.No
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Issues
Long working hours
Work timings (Shift timings)
Workload
Repetitive nature of work
Insufficient holidays
Pressure to perform on metrics
Travel Time
Volume of work
Overtime
Peer issues
Rank
Never
Q.10 No. of hours of unbroken sleep
5-7 hours
7-9 hours
9-10 hours
Sometimes
Occasionally
Gym - Regularly
Sometimes
Occasionally
Walk Regularly
Sometimes
Occasionally
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
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5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Lethargy
Voice loss
Anxiety
Ear problems
Others
Q.14 Which of the programs you think will help you to cope up with stress
Programs
1. Socializing
2. Developing Hobbies
3. Workshop on Work life
balance
4. Workshop on Stress
management
5. Picnics ,official trips etc
6. Flexi working hours
7. Pick and drop service
8. Yoga workshops
9. Counseling
Large Extent
Medium Extent
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