INTRODUCTION

India is pre-dominantly a service based economy with around 60% of GDP contribution
coming from service industry. BPO and IT sector are the major contributors to the service
sector in the country. The work environment and nature of job responsibility brings a lot of
stress to the employees in these sectors. The condition is such worse that recently Union
health minister of India have to call for a health policy for the tech centre. Stress is a situation
in which a person undergoes both physical and emotional pressure. With the modern
competitive environment stress has become the norm of the day for human form. The
situation is even worse in corporate jobs specially IT sector and BPOs. Stress related to
erratic work hours, pressure from reporting mangers, lack of defined role and career path are
some of the different type of issues which an employee experiences on daily bases in these
sectors. As a result, there is a recent trend among employees getting rid of BPOs and IT
sector jobs for alternative career alternatives.
Stress is physical and emotional strain caused in body in response to pressure exerted by the
outside world. It has a detrimental impact on performance of any person and can cause
several medical complications if unattended. For smooth functioning of any organisation in
this sector, there are steps required to be taken by the company for the stress management
especially because service industry revolves around employees as its key assets. Several
researches have been done regarding this in past as well. This study is also aimed for finding
possible causes of stress in workplace and how can companies take initiatives to manage it. A
lot has been done in this regard in past and this study aims to take those researches forward.

Review of Literature
During last 20 years, dysfunctional workplace relationships have also attracted attention of
researchers along with leadership and positive workplace environment in impacting corporate
performance. Robinson and Bennett (1995) [1] were the first researchers to focus on
importance of interpersonal workplace mistreatment. Patton and Goddard (2003) [2] found
that stress and burnouts are more popular in service industry as compared to other
professions.
Tepper and Henle (2011) [3] found that abusive supervision, victimization and social
undermining are among the major source of stress in a workplace. Supervisor behaviour of
making fun of employee in front of all, discarding his ideas as useless or giving him a silent
treatment results in low job commitment, satisfaction and psychological distress. Workplace
aggression including harassment, emotional abuse, identity threats, incivility, mobbing and
bullying also common in workplaces. (Aquino and Thau,2009) [4].
Shukla and Garg [5] while referring to bank employees wrote that those employees, who are
in massive competition and live in a fear to lose their jobs, are mostly suffering from high
levels of stress. Given the big size of IT industry and BPOs and he readily available fresh
graduates for these jobs create a sense of job insecurity among the current employees.

Chandrasekhar [6] in his article also highlighted the importance of balance working
environment. He determined that job factors like extended shifts, over-time are also causing
employee stress.
Prof. Sonal Bhargava [7] in her article wrote although it is not possible to remove stress
totally but it can be kept in check easily. This is the legal moral duty of an employer to ensure
that negative impact of work related stress is minimal in an employees life. Organisations
can initiate leaderships programs to broaden the future view of the employee in the company.
Idea acceptance and talent recognition programmes are also important to give confidence to
the employees which will help in creation of healthy working environment. The supervisor
cum mentor culture can also be a help in BPO sector to mange stress levels as this will
provide the young employees the opportunity to interact with someone senior without
hesitation. BPOs at present are not taken as a serious career opportunity and youngsters were
always looking for alternative career opportunities. NASSCOM, the government body for
the industry is also making attempts to make this a viable career option. The BPO industry
should come together and address the stress problem by conducting seminars and workshops
for their employees.

References
[1] Robinson, S. L., & Bennett, R. J. (1995). A typology of deviant workplace behaviors: A
multidimensional scaling study. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 555572.
[2] Patton, W. & Goddard, R. C., (2003). Psychological distress and burnout in Australian
employment service workers: Two years on. Journal of Employment Counseling, 40(1), 2-16.
[3] Tepper, B., & Henle, C. (2011). A case for recognizing distinctions among constructs that
capture interpersonal mistreatment in work organizations. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 32, 487-498.
[4] Aquino, K. & Thau, S. (2009). Workplace Victimization: Aggression from the targets
perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 717-741.
[5] Harish Shukla, Rachita Garg, A study on stress management among the employees of
nationalised banks,Voice of Research, vol. 2 Issue 3,
[6] Dr. K. Chandrasekar, Workplace Environment and its impact on organizational
performance in Private sector organizations,International
[7] Prof. Sonal Bhargava, Stress Problem in BPO sector, International Journal Of Core
Engineering & Management(IJCEM) Volume 1, Issue 2, May 2014