Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is growing at a phenomenal pace. It has become a mantra of employment. Despite its momentous growth and bright future, the BPO industry continues to suffer from very high attrition rates. New employees come with a lot of enthusiasm but their motivation gets depleted as job realities unfold with the passage of time.

India is undoubtedly the most favored BPO destination of the world. From a negligible size in the early 2000 to a gigantic size today, the BPO sector has been growing at an unprecedented rate. In 2003, India accounted for 75% of the total BPO offshore delivery value that was expected to increase by 55% annually over the next five years (Neale, 2004). According to Scholl et al., 2003, India's revenue from BPO operations was expected to grow from approximately $1 bn in 2002 to $13.8 bn in 2007 and its share of supply was projected to be 57% of the offshore BPO market. Contrary to the sunny side of the story, we have a dark side of the BPO too.

According to Mehta et al. (2006), there are challenges posed to BPO organizations at various levels. At the lower management level, the major challenges include meeting targets, dealing with customers and maintaining work-life balance. At the middle management level, the major challenges are to motivate employees and handle attrition and absenteeism. At the upper management level, client demands, motivation, competition and costs are the main challenges. According to some analysts (BPO India, 2004), in general, the attrition rate fluctuates between 20% and 40%, while in the best companies, it averages around 15%. As per NASSCOM (2004) report, the outsourcing industry would have a shortage of 262,000 professionals by 2012. Despite potential for tremendous growth, BPO industry continues to suffer from high-level of attrition stemming from factors like high-levels of stress and lack of opportunities for growth. Attrition in BPO, though varying from industry to industry has reached an all-time high level of nearly 60% (BPO India, 2004).

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