Globalization has created a dynamic business environment in which industrial workforce must learn to adapt and accommodate the diversity of all its stakeholders. This is more true in the BPO industry. It has to manage a diverse workforce in terms of levels of education, geographical areas, religions, caste, culture, values, ideologies and principles. And the workforce also, on a daily basis, has to interact with different national and international customers. Though diversity in itself is highly beneficial as it brings along augmentation of varying ideas and thought processes, it leads to conflict and stress building. This article focuses on the BPO industry in view of the problems associated with the diversification of its various stakeholders and steps taken by the management to motivate the employees and discourage destructive and disruptive conflicts.

India is a happy hunting ground for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). It is a preferred destination due to low-cost advantage, large pool of English speaking workforce, good technical knowhow, supporting government policies and is at an advantageous geographic position as compared to the US (being at 12 hour time zone difference with US). According to Nasscom-McKinsey report 2004, India accounts for 46% of global outsourcing. India assists a bulk of ITES/BPO activities such as customer service, technical support/ troubleshooting, telemarketing, handling credit card enquiries, preparation of invoices, cheques, reconciliation of daily accounts, preparation of medical transcription, processing application, billing and collections. According to Nasscom-Everest, the projected growth of Indian BPO industry is going to be up to $50 bn by 2012 which would make it the second largest employer by 2012

It is an attractive destination for prospective employees as it requires no special skills and no high educational qualifications, but provides high salary package, flexible working time and good transportation facility. WNS Group , Wipro Spectramind, Daksh e-Services are ranked as the three best BPO employers in India in terms of employee size (Operation-level executives), Percentage of last salary hike, Cost to company, Overall Satisfaction Score, Composite Satisfaction, Company Culture, Job Content/ Growth, Training, Salary and Compensation, Appraisal System, Peoples' Preferred Company: (Percentage of respondents of a company who named their own company as the preferred one), Dream Company: (Percentage of respondents in the total sample who preferred).

There is bound to be corporate cultural differences between the outsourcing partners in terms of recruiting process, compensation and benefits, organizational values and ethos. The outsourcing partners should look for optimizing the shared values. The shared values include common goals, interest, norms, etc. The objective of individual employees and the outsourcing partners should be aligned with the organizational goals. For a long and beneficial relationship between the outsourcing partners, they maintain the two Cs Communication and Confidentiality. There should be constant and frequent communication between the two partners in taking up and understanding of the project planning, organization and monitoring and execution of the project through instant message system, e-mail and teleconferencing. Project website or ftp can be maintained in monitoring progress of the project bringing client-specific product improvisation and innovation.

HRM Review Magazine, BPO Industry, Business Process Outsourcing, BPO, Government Policies, Indian BPO Industry, Non-Disclosure Agreement, NDA, Organizational Goals, HR Policies, Stress Management Program, Risk Management, BPO Sector, Corporate Culture.