Challenges Posed by Alien Culture Diffusion for Employees of Call Centers in Mumbai

Since the last decade, there has been a tremendous growth in the call center businesses in several metropolitan and urban cities in India. Mumbai city is no exception to this sudden boom. The call center businesses employ over 500,000 nascent employees in the age group of 18 – 28 yrs in Mumbai. The nature of outsourced work along with the odd working hours in this industry leads to high employee attrition in the call centers. Job satisfaction, high levels of stress, health issues, employee safety and career prospects are some of the reasons cited by industry experts as some of the factors leading to absenteeism and high employee turnover. This study facilitates the understanding of the extent of impact of call center job profile and the related challenges that its poses to the employees of call centers.


INTRODUCTION.
In the past decade or two, it has often been said that we live in a global village. This has increasingly become a reality with the advent of satellite televisions and the revolution in telecommunications. The convergence of all this technologies has meant that we can be the back office for the developed world. Wages that are 80% cheaper than any-where in the world and a vast pool of English speaking graduates has made this possible. The last decade ended with a mammoth downsizing of human power used in various industries worldwide. With the Globalization and liberalization era dawned today, we face challenges of survival in the commercial world. The effects of Global downsizing in various industries combined with high cost of infrastructure and resources has given impetus to a new commercial viable phenomena for the Indian economy better termed as "Call Centers" or "Voice Processes based BPO's". India has witnessed a tremendous growth in these Global Outsourced Shops. In the last 5 years over 300+ Call Centers have mushroomed in and around Mumbai region. The industry revenues are touching over 10 Billion Dollars per annum and employing over 5 Lac youngsters.[1]

Call Centre.
The definition of call centre is changing in our e-business world, but the core fundamentals of a customer making a call (via a telephone, e-Mail, Website. IVR or Fax) to a centre will remain constant because the customer views the call as an important or pivotal activity to themselves. Call Centre, Contact Centre, and BPO -by whatever names your call it -operate on a common need of providing services to customers for their needs at their convenient time and location. Like a Bank customer can operate his bank account at 12 midnight using his telephone at his bedside. His call is attended by a call centre executive located at a distance having no knowledge of banking. The call centre executive helps the customer by feeding his instructions on the computer and giving the customer the required information.

Call Centers in India.
Call Centers are required for large companies to sell their products to the customers, proposing a product or service as well as for the after-sale enquiries made by the customers. Call centers in India are at its peak today. Customized solution through customer interactive programs in the success mantra of numerous corporate firms nowadays. For the strategic business development -that requires acquired skills for customer queries, solutions etc., Indian call-centers are at par with the current marketing demands. Call centers not only handle the task of interacting with customers but also provide a wider base for official tasks of inventories, bill handling, web-solutions and various other business requirement proceedings. Call centers in India are prospering upon the upscale rise amongst the entrepreneurs who are trying to allure their customers through inbound and outbound calling facility. This concept raving in US have enabled many offshore call centers establishments, major are in India. The quality of English is at par with the international standards. Indians are technically literate and comfortable with new technologies arising in the industry. Indian call centers work round the clock and provide 24-hour support for the customers of these US based clients. From the concept of being just a voice based medium of customer support, today call centers are referred to as 'Contact Centers' which are capable of handling customer queries over phone or the online medium. Qualified professional talent with fluency in English and a neutral accent with the ability to shift to different accents have made India, a preferred destination for offshore clients.

PROBLEMS FACED BY CALL CENTRE EXECUTIVES.
1. Abuse from British and American customers is driving increasing numbers of Indian call centre workers from their jobs, defeated by the strain of handling persistent rudeness.
[1] 2. Call Centre workers face a spectrum of rudeness -from sexual harassment to fury at unsolicited sales calls, to open racism. 3. Call Centre workers face stress of having to work through the night and are under extreme pressure to meet productivity targets. The number of calls attended in one shift of 8.5 hours is over 200 calls. A drop in the call rate warrants for serious action like salary slashing or at times even loss of job.
[1] 4. During the working hours agents are entitled for a 30 minutes lunch/breakfast break and two small breaks of 10-15 minutes duration for tea and refreshment, for which records are maintained. 5. Due to 24 X 7 work culture the call centre employees can hardly avail of any leave facilities. 6. Most of the workforce comprise of people in the age group of 18 -24 years of which nearly 60 -70 % are females. Most of them are undergraduates. Most of the workforce is unskilled in any particular profession as being a computer literate, a good communicator, having good typing skills and a command over English is all that it requires joining a call centre. Most of the workforces do not have a long term career goal as they consider the job as a stop gap arrangement for a few years at the most. This leaves them unqualified for any skilled job at a later stage in their work career.
[1] 7. Most young workers quit jobs early due to reporting pattern of the organization. In most organizations the average age for a supervisory position is about 25 -28 years. This is the same age profile of the reports and this many a times is the root cause for friction among the employees. At times 45 year old reports to a 24 years old team leader.
[1] 8. High volatility in the workforce due to high attrition rates is cited as the most common cause for HR departments of Call Centers for not considering "Career Advancement Programmes" for call center agents seriously. 9. Most call center employees work from dusk to dawn and hence their social life is at the minimal. This leads to emotional imbalance as they feel alienated from their social circuit. [2]

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10. Many of the call center employers are disgruntled with their employees on productivity norms. This leads to unwarranted separations which in turn lead to many highly paid "Cyber Coolies" to be unemployed for relatively longer periods. This is the root cause for many "Cyber Crimes" and frauds typically seen in call centers and BPO's.
[2] 11. Work environment is generally a highly surveillance zone and constant pressures from Quality supervisors by intruding in calls and monitoring of call timings and language usage leads to a very high level of frustration. This can many times lead to substance addiction in the employees or many employees can experience BOSS (Burn Out Stress Syndrome). This can mar the mental as well as the physical health of a young generation. [3] 12. Most of the nascent workforce of call centers are financially independent but at the same time materialistic in their outlook. The need to spend has generated an artificial need for capital goods for which they have to keep on working at call centers for payment of the several mortgage and personal loans taken for several such purchases. 13. Most Voice based call centre processes force employees to don a different identity altogether, this causes dual identity problems with them. It goes to such an extent that he / she is given a pseudo identity in an alien nation, where they have never been or may never travel in their lifetimes. Even the local lingo and slang are taught to them. In some cases the local landmarks and current happenings in that part of the world along with today's weather conditions are displayed on the employee's workstation terminal. The call centre employees work with this hegemony, accepting this cultural subordination as a part of their jobs. [3] 14. Balancing work life and family for a working women in call centre poses a challenge as odd work hours coupled with the innate job stress leads to upheavals in family life.
[2] 15. The attraction of higher salary/perks in BPO's also gets murky, when it is juxtaposed with the education and opportunity costs of the employees. As majority of them are educated in expensive institutions, the average cost of their education far exceeds that of an ordinary Indian graduate. Thus, these agents represent a group of expensively educated cheap labor. The longterm opportunity costs of BPO work could be still higher. Most of these youngsters are in fact burning out their formative years as 'cyber coolies', the toll of which is very high. Entering into a well-paid employment soon after the completion of graduation, act as a deterrent to continue studies. Further to this, BPO work does not provide any scope for skill up gradation. Most workers in the sector are doing low-end work, which were handled by erstwhile computer operators and receptionists, other than picking up accents and certain communication skills; the skill up gradation is minimal. Gaining specific accents would sometime adversely affect the job prospect of the employee also. [1]

REVIEW OF LITERATURE.
The area of research is quite nascent and hence not much research papers are published. But of late there have been many articles related to problems faced by call center executives in the print media. Some of the recent research papers highlight the problems faced by call centre executives. These range from occupational diseases, role stress, facing verbal abuses from irate customers to job related monotony. Interesting substantive direct positive effects of empowerment competence and leadership consideration on job satisfaction were found. Job satisfaction was found to be conducive to job performance. Furthermore, it was found that job satisfaction reduces turnover intentions, directly and indirectly via organizational commitment.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY.
The objectives of this research are as follows: 1. To study the levels of job satisfaction among call center employees.
2. To evaluate the security measures adopted by the call centre employers for its employees.
3. To study the effect of job profile on the health of the call center employees.

4.
To study the impact on cultural transformation of the call center employees.

5.
To study the high manpower attrition rates in the call center industry and the causes of it.

HYPOTHESES.
1. Null hypothesis -The employees in the call centers are having their job satisfaction.
2. The job profile and security arrangements in call centers are not satisfactory.
1. The researcher has followed the survey method for conducting the study. The primary data was collected with the help of a structured questionnaire. The secondary data was collected with the help of research papers in journals, newspapers, magazines and websites.
2. Sampling -The universe of the population are the call centers located within Mumbai. The sample was selected from the call centers on random basis. The size of the sample was 250 employees selected from these call centers.
3. Data Analysis -The data collected was tabulated, analyzed and interpreted for drawing conclusions. Statistical methods such as average, percentage, standard deviation and corelation were used for the analysis of data.
4. Hypothesis was tested with a suitable statistical technique. The conclusion and few suggestions are given at the end.

DATA ANALYSIS.
The data collected through the questionnaire was analyzed with the help of computer software i.e. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). There were 344 respondents and each respondent has given responses to 42 questions. Most of the questions were close ended. The detailed analysis is given below.
1. JOB SATISFACTION The researcher asked the respondents whether they are satisfied with their jobs or not. The responses were as follows: The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows:  Table 1 reveals that 146 out of 344 respondents i.e. 43 % were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with their jobs. 32 % of the employees were somewhat satisfied and 13 % of the employees were quite satisfied with their job. Thus only 13 % of the call center employees were satisfied with their jobs and the remaining 87 % are either not satisfied or are partly satisfied with their jobs.

CREATIVITY IN JOB PROFILE
The researcher asked the respondents whether their job profile provide for being creative at workplace. The responses were as follows: The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows:

Fig. 2 Creativity in Call Center Job Profile
Table 2 reveals that 192 out of 344 respondents (56 %) have responded that their job profile at the call centre allows them to be creative generally but not always. 44 % of the respondents mention that their job profile allows them to be creative sometimes. Thus the call center jobs do not allow the employees to be totally creative at their workplace. This can lead to monotonous work and boredom for the employees in the long run. Fatigue and stress results from monotonous job profile which can be seen in most call centers.

PSEUDO NAME AT WORKPLACE
The researcher asked the respondents whether they were having a pseudo name at their workplace and how did they feel about it. The responses were as follows:  The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows: Table 3 reveals that 218 respondents out of 344 (63 %) mentioned that they are neutral i.e. they are neither feeling good nor bad about their pseudo name at workplace, 29 % felt bad about the pseudo name at workplace and 8 % felt miserable about it. None of the respondents felt good about their pseudo name. Thus we find that all the call center employees do not feel good about their pseudo name. 37 % of the call center employees mentioned that they either felt bad or miserable about their pseudo name at their workplace. They feel as if they lead a dual life as they are not being identified as per their original identity. They need to fake their identity at workplace. This can lead to lower morale of the employees.

CHANGE OF ACCENT AT WORKPLACE
The researcher asked the respondents whether they were made to change their accent at their workplace and how did they feel about it. The responses were as follows:

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The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows:

LOSS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY OF EMPLOYEES DUE TO JOB PROFILE AT CALL CENTER
The researcher asked the respondents whether they have lost their personal identity due to their job profile at the call center and how do they feel about it. The responses were as follows: The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows:  Table 5 reveals that 174 respondents out of 344 (51 %) mentioned that they felt like having a dual identity due to loss of their personal identity at workplace, 27 % mentioned that they are having lower self esteem, 20 % mentioned that they are alienated from their jobs and 2 % of the respondents were impersonal about having lost their personal identity. Thus 98 % of the employees of call centers are being adversely psychologically affected due to the changing of identity at their workplace. This leads to lots of Psycho-Social disorders in the call center employees.
6. CULTURAL CHANGE AT CALL CENTERS The researcher asked the respondents whether their organization follows the customer country's culture in India. The responses were as follows: The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows: Table 6 reveals that 132 respondents out of 344 (39 %) mentioned that generally their organizations followed the customer country's culture at workplace, 31 % mentioned that their organizations did not follow the customer country's culture at all, 25 % mentioned that sometimes their organizations do follow the customer country's culture at workplace and 5 % mentioned that their organizations always follow the customer country's culture at their workplace. Thus 69 % of the call centers do follow the culture of their customer's country at the workplace either regularly or sometimes. This means that the Indian employees of call centers have to adjust to alien culture in terms of language usage, customs, traditions and even human feelings. This can become difficult for the call center employees to adjust to in the first few years.

EMPLOYEES BEING ATTRACTED TO ALIEN CULTURE
The researcher asked the respondents whether they are attracted to the customer country's culture like their fashion, lifestyle etc. The responses were as follows:  Total 344 100 The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows: Table 7 reveals that 154 respondents out of 344 (45 %) mentioned that they get attracted to their customer's culture sometimes, 27 % mentioned that generally they find the customer's culture attractive, 24 % mentioned that they are never attracted by customer's culture and 4 % of the respondents mentioned that they are always attracted to the customer's culture. Thus 76 % of the call center employees find themselves attracted to the customer's culture either generally or sometimes. They try and emulate the alien culture and due to this they may not appreciate their own culture and customs.

CELEBRATING OF WESTERN TRADITIONS OVER INDIAN ONES
The researcher asked the respondents whether they feel that celebrating the Western traditions is better than celebrating the Indian ones. The responses were as follows:

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The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows:

NUMBER OF TIMES THE RESPONDENTS HAVE CHANGED THEIR JOBS
The researcher asked the respondents as to how many jobs he/she had changed so far. The responses were as follows: The above data can be presented in a diagram as follows:  Table 9 reveals that 178 respondents out of 344 (52 %) mentioned that they had changed their jobs three times, 35 % mentioned that they had changed their jobs twice and 13 % mentioned that they had changed their job more than 4 times. Thus 65 % of the call center employees have changed jobs more than 3 times. With an average experience of 4 year of the respondents this turns out that every year the call center employee changes his job. This shows that call centers face an acute problem of employee turnover.

TESTING OF HYPOTHESES.
The hypothesis stated at the beginning was as follows: 1. Null hypothesis -The employees in the call centers are having their job satisfaction.
2. The job profile and security arrangements in call centers are not satisfactory.
In order to test the above Null hypothesis a question was asked to the respondents as to how much are they satisfied with their call center job. The responses were framed in the Table 10 as follows: The degree of freedom is 3 hence at 5% level of significance the table value is 7.81. As the calculated value is 89.67 and it is higher than the table value hence the Null hypothesis is rejected and the research hypothesis is accepted. Therefore it is concluded that the employees in the call centers are not having their job satisfaction.
In order to test the hypothesis -The job profile and security arrangements in call centers are not satisfactory; the following question was asked to the respondents: a. Whether their Job Profile at the call center requires them to be creative. The responses were framed in the Table 11 as follows: The degree of freedom is 3 hence at 5% level of significance the table value is 7.81. As the calculated value is 4.651 and it is lower than the table value hence the research hypothesis that the job profile of call center employees is not satisfactory is accepted.
feelings. This can become difficult for the call center employees to adjust to in the first few years. 8. Approximately 76 % of the call center employees found themselves attracted to the customer's culture either generally or sometimes. They try and emulate the alien culture and due to this they may not appreciate their own culture and customs. 9. All call centers celebrated Western traditions over the Indian ones. This can impact our social fabric in an adverse way in the near future. 10. Approximately 74 % of the call centers management has provided the facility of a psychologist/ counselor at their workplace. This shows the genuine concern of the call center management towards their employee's mental health issues. 11. Approximately 65 % of the call center employees have changed jobs more than 3 times. With an average experience of 4 year of the respondents this turns out that every year the call center employee changes his job. This shows that call centers face an acute problem of employee turnover.

SUGGESTIONS
The researcher after analyzing the data available from the filled questionnaire of 344 respondents and reaching the conclusions would like to suggest the following points to the Management of Call Centers: 1. It was found that call center employee's job profile to be monotonous in nature; it leads to boredom, fatigue and stress. The management and the human resources department can allow the call center employees to have job rotation at regular intervals. This would not only give them a change in their routine job but also groom them to take additional responsibility in other work areas. 2. The call centers may refrain from using pseudo names for it employees. 3. As far as possible the call center executives may be trained in having a good vocabulary and tone. They need not be forced to adopt an ascent which is alien to them. They may be given the freedom to identify their actual name, location and nationality to the customer. 4. Call Centers may also promote Indian culture at workplace. A high sense of pride for Indian culture and customs can be felt by the employees. 5. The management of call centers may plan and retain its employees who stay in the organization beyond one year. Incentives like company sponsored higher education to employees who have put in a stipulated number of years in the organization may be of help to curb employee attrition to a large extent.