Impact of Burnout on Quality of Life among Business Process Outsourcing Employees

Business Process Outsourcing has been the latest mantra in India today. As the current sources of revenue face slower growth, software companies are trying new ways to increase their revenues. BPO is top on their list today. Whereas, employees are leading under stress and burnout in this competitive global world, specially in BPO sectors. Burnout was initially a very slippery concept in the early 1980s (Maslach & Jackson, 1981), this popular psychological phenomenon was defined as a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. The second important explanatory factor is quality of life (physical, psychological, social and environmental). The present study was evaluated to the impact of burnout on quality of life among business process outsourcing employees. Data were collected from 422 BPO employees (Call Centre, Medical Transcription and Software Development) by using two different and standard scales, namely, Quality of Life (QOL) and Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Employee groups were subdivided into high and low groups on each of the three burnout dimensions to examine the impact of burnout on quality of life. Overall, results revealed that medical transcription employees have more physical quality of life than other BPO employees. Software development employees have significantly high score on psychological aspects of quality of life and call centre employees are found to have more personal and social relations than other BPO employees.