Impact of job location on relationship between job satisfaction and self‐esteem of employees: Evidence from the Indian BPOs

• Author: Mani P. Sam,Deepak Babu,Imran Ahmed Khan
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2006

PRACTITIONER PAPER

Impact of job location on relationship between job satisfaction

and self-esteem of employees: Evidence from the Indian BPOs

Mani P. Sam

1

| Imran Ahmed Khan

2

| Deepak Babu

2

1

Operations Management Area, Rajagiri

Business School, Kochi, India

2

Department of Business Administration,

Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Kochi, India

Correspondence

Mani P. Sam, Rajagiri Business School. Kochi

682 039, India

Email: manipsam@rajagiri.edu

Does job location impact on job satisfaction and self-esteem? To answer this ques-

tion, a sample of 298 responses was drawn from business process outsourcing

employees working in four different locations in two south Indian states. The study

conducted in both rural and urban locations witnessed that the job location (rural/

urban) has a significant impact on job satisfaction and self-esteem despite similar job

demands and resource support conditions for all the respondents. Results show a

very large divergence in self-esteem between rural and urban settings and some

divergence across genders. Location of delivery centres in smaller towns could thus

be an effective solution for the high turnover experienced at urban delivery centres

handling data capture and such low end processing.

1|INTRODUCTION

Digitization of transaction processing enabled the introduction of

standard business rules (the sequence in which operations are to be

carried out, the method of verifying an entry against the supporting,

how to decide on the entry when the data on supporting document is

different from what is entered in the form, etc. are all business rules).

Use of computers and software systems is essential for digitization.

The ability of digital systems to carry out systematic checks allows the

mistake proofing of processes and facilitated outsourcing of business

processes with sound control and monitoring practices.

Reduction in cost of internet bandwidth facilitated remote

processing of transactions on a real-time basis. Outsourced service

provider in such cases will not be co-located with the principal. Finan-

cial transaction processing has additional requirements of data secu-

rity and privacy. Processing is normally carried out in a central server,

and no local storage of data will be permitted. In other words, the

transaction processing operator accesses the central server and car-

ried out the transaction and no local copy is created in the computer

used by the operator. The study was conducted in such an environ-

ment where the transactions were processed on the central server by

operators from one urban location and three rural locations. The

nature of work, business rules followed, and source of transaction

thus remained the same for all the participants. All the participants

had the freedom to pick up the next available job, and there was no

preallocation or assignment of transactions based on the location of

the operator.

2|CHALLENGES FACED BY INDIAN BPO

COMPANIES WORKING FOR INDIAN

PRINCIPALS

Indian BPO companies working for Indian principals (those who are

carrying out transactions for Indian principals and not processing

offshored transactions) have an additional challenge. They also draw

from the same pool of resources but are compensated on a lower

level than the organizations carrying out off-shored transaction

processing. As a result, the compensation earned by the personnel

working for such BPOs is much lower than what is paid by

offshoring BPOs. However, the employees encounter higher level of

stress because, as explained earlier, not all BPOs pay similar wages

to employees carrying out comparable tasks. As a natural corollary,

there is a higher employee turnover in the BPOs. To sustain the

human capital, as well as to keep them happy and engaged, is the

key objective of the business organizations, and this lays tremen-

dous pressure on the management and, often, this becomes a signif-

icant variable in generating stress among employees too (Haque &

Aston, 2016).

Received: 29 July 2019 Accepted: 31 July 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2006

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