1. WORK LIFE BALANCE IN BPO
BY
RITU KARN
BY
RITU KARN

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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
measurements
Workers are deemed to be most exposed to burn-out and other
stressors compared to their contemporaries in different industry.

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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)

8. PROVIDING WORK LIFE BALANCE

9. •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

10. •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)

11. •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)

12. 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.

13. 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

14. 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.”

15. 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 commitment
Motivation
Improved employee morale,satisfaction and performance
reduced staff turnover and recruitment costs
•Also flexible working hours can lead to improvements in health
and well-being of employees

16. 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.

17. 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)