This Paper has won First Prize in the CoolAvenues' Paper-writing Competition - "In Search of Excellence" - for the Year 2005.

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SYNOPSIS

Attrition in the BPO industry is one of the biggest issue which the growing ITES industry in India is facing. The effects of attrition are wide varying and impacts the firms in terms of losses (due to training and administration cost, high recruitment cost), incompetent processes, inability to offer services for highly technical process, etc.

Attrition though a nuisance also has some associated benefits along with such as low cost of operation, knowledge sharing amongst the firms benefiting the overall industry in increasing its competencies. Attrition usually occurs on two fronts - people leaving the industry and people shifting jobs inside the industry. Both of them have separate causes which have been identified in this paper.

The paper attempts to understand the underlying reasons for attrition by analyzing the BPO industry through Maslow's Hierarchical model of Needs. The Maslow's framework helps in giving a better perception about the motivation of the employees in the BPO industry and identifying gaps in their expectations which needs to be filled up.

Finally, the paper concludes by recommending a Win-Win Model which endeavors to satisfy the needs of both the employer and employee. The model encloses the employee by 4 level of strategies thus reducing the attrition rate as well as minimizing the impact whenever it occurs.

It is a 4 stage framework consisting of -