EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION WITH CAREER DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INDIAN AND FOREIGN MNC BPO FIRMS

Abstract

This paper is based on an empirical study of five Indian and five foreign MNC BPO
firms operating in India, ranked among the top 100 by the International Association of
Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) for the year 2009. The data was collected using both
qualitative and quantitative methods from 243 employees of Indian MNCs and 163 employees
of foreign MNCs who constitute 1 per cent of the population under study. The present study
finds that, on an average, the level of satisfaction towards the career development practices is
at 69.71 per cent and 69.82 per cent among the respondents of Indian and foreign MNC BPO
firms respectively, both of which constitute ‘satisfied’ on our scale. Regression analysis, using
a significance level of 5 per cent, shows that three of the variables, namely, the variables of ‘I
have a clearly established career path’ (p=.001), ‘Viewing BPO sector as a long-term career
option’ (p=.000) and ‘Having a dynamic career path is a must in order to retain the
outstanding and highly-performing employees’ (p=.018) are significantly influencing the
satisfaction of the respondents of Indian MNCs and two of the variables, namely, the variables
of ‘I have a clearly established career path’ (p=.000) and ‘Having a dynamic career path is a
must in order to retain the outstanding and highly- performing employees’ (p=.042) are
significantly influencing the satisfaction of the respondents of foreign MNCs towards the
career development practices and all the other variables have emerged as the insignificant
variables. Interestingly, all the significant variables are positively associated with the
satisfaction of the respondents and all the variables used in the present study collectively
account for 38.9 per cent (R square = .389) and 41.5 per cent (R square = .415) of the
satisfaction of the respondents of Indian and foreign MNC BPOs respectively towards the
career development practices