Methodology

Research Design
The survey was designed and carried out in two phases. In the first phase, an HR questionnaire was sent to about 120 BPO companies to get the company specific data that was to be used in analysis and for devising the sample break up for each company. A large-scale survey was then conducted in the second phase among 1,749 employees in 19 companies across the country. The eight major regions covered were: Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, NCR, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Bangalore. In each city, a sample quota was assigned based on the companys employee strength in that city. This quota system was followed strictly to get a proper representation of the different types of employees in the sample. The employee survey included only call-floor executives and operational managers at all levels but excluded back-end support staff from departments like HR and administration. These interviews were based on a structured questionnaire that comprised a number of statements classified under different broad parameters like company image, culture, job content or growth, training, salary & compensation, appraisal system, and people. The employees were asked to rate each of the statements on a 10-point scale. Other than the above parameters, they were also asked about their salary structure, preferred company in the industry, overall satisfaction, reasons for joining or reasons for leaving a company, and work-related stress and ailments if any. In order to retain objectivity, every attempt was made to take an unbiased sample. Every effort was also made to ensure that the management of the company neither influenced the employee responses nor got an opportunity to select respondents for the interviews.

The E-Sat Score 2007
The employee satisfaction score was calculated based on 11 parameters, and was weighted and indexed on a score of 100. Parameters taken for calculating the E-Sat scores are: Employee size; Percentage of last salary hike; Cost to company; Overall satisfaction score; Company image; Company culture; Job content or growth; Training; Salary and compensation; Appraisal system; People; 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 a particular company excluding their own company.

A correlation analysis was run between overall satisfaction and the statements across all these broad parameters. It gave us the dependency of the dependent variable (overall satisfaction) on each of these statements, which in turn provided the weights of each of the statements. The weighted average of the individual scores of statements gave us the score, at the level of each of these broad parameters, and this score was used for the final ranking.

IDC India team
led by Shailendra Gupta and assisted by Shakyadev Mitra