New Delhi: The satisfaction level of BPO industry workers rose 9% in 2004 over the previous year despite 45% growth in employees base in the year 2003-04, with Daksh emerging as the most satisfying employer, a Dataquest-IDC survey has found.

The survey, which was based on interviews with 462 workers, also found that "salary" replaced "higher education" as the top reason for attrition. The work timings and commute time were found to be the top stress factors, according to the BPO E-sat (employees satisfaction) survey 2004.

High growth in business and employees base is often accompanied by workers' dissatisfaction, "but the $4 billion BPO services industry in India has managed to defy this equation," the survey said.

The industry averaged an E-sat score of 80.7, a growth of 9% over the previous year.

Daksh with E-sat score of 91.6 emerged as the top employer in terms of overall employee satisfaction, followed by iSeva (88.8), ICICI Onesource (88.6), eFunds (88), and Hinduja TMT (86.3). Daksh has improved its position from fifth last year.

The five largest companies in the survey averaged a satisfaction score of 85, versus the industry average of 81, while the smaller companies stayed in the 70s.

"BPO saw a further flight to scale this year. The five largest companies in the survey averaged a satisfaction score of 85, versus the industry average of 81, while the smaller companies stayed in the 70s," Dataquest group president Prasanto K Roy said.

He said unlike in the IT sector, money is a huge motivator in BPO, adding, "salaries replacing higher education as the top reason for leaving a company serves as a reminder of the trend". the survey found that Daksh Eservices, recently acquired by IBM, emerged at the top in terms of employees' cost to company, and yet it ranked low on employee satisfaction with salaries.