STRM059: Analyzing Employee Attrition & Retention at Accenture

This research report investigates the factors influencing employee attrition and retention at Accenture in Mauritius, within the outsourcing sector. It begins with an introduction to Accenture, its outsourcing services, and the research objectives, including analyzing the causes of attrition and retention, assessing employee motivation, and evaluating the financial impact of attrition. The literature review explores outsourcing challenges, factors affecting attrition (such as compensation, career opportunities, work environment, and work-life balance), and retention strategies. The methodology section details the research philosophy, approach, design, data collection methods, sampling design, and sample size. The results section presents findings from statistical analysis using SPSS, including reliability tests, frequency statistics, correlation analysis, ANOVA, and linear regression models. The discussion and evaluation chapter interprets these findings in relation to the literature. The report concludes with recommendations for Accenture to improve employee retention and mitigate the negative effects of attrition.

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Executive Summary
The present research study provides an overview on the factors that affect the
employee’s attrition and retention in Accenture located in Mauritius. The first chapter mainly
focuses on the aims and objectives of research, background study of Accenture, reasons
behind choosing the project, explanation of how project assist Accenture, consultation
procedure undertaken with the company. The second chapter reviews on the literature of
research project, which includes- outsourcing segment in this company, challenge faced by
this company regarding their employees retention and attrition, factors affecting employees
attrition and retention in this enterprise. The third chapter elucidates on the methods
integrated for conducting this research study such as research philosophy, research approach,
research design, data collection method, sampling design, sampling size. The fourth chapter
highlights on results obtained from the research through SPSS. The fifth chapter focuses on
the discussions and evaluations of the findings of result with reference to the literature
review. In the last chapter, the conclusion and recommendation is drawn from the research
findings.

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Table of contents
Chapter 1- Introduction..............................................................................................................3
Introduction............................................................................................................................3
Background of Accenture......................................................................................................4
Aims and objectives of research............................................................................................4
Research questions.................................................................................................................4
About the project....................................................................................................................5
Reasons behind choosing the research project.......................................................................5
Describing how this project assist the Accenture..................................................................5
Consultation process undertaken with the enterprise.............................................................6
Chapter 2- Literature review......................................................................................................7
About Outsourcing service in Accenture...............................................................................7
Challenge faced by Accenture in Mauritius regarding employee’s attrition and retention in
outsourcing sector..................................................................................................................8
Factors affecting employee’s attrition in the outsourcing sector of Accenture...................11
Factors affecting employees retention in the outsourcing segment of Accenture...............12
Chapter 3- Research Methodology...........................................................................................15
Introduction..........................................................................................................................15
Research philosophy............................................................................................................16
Research approach...............................................................................................................16
Research design....................................................................................................................17

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Data collection method........................................................................................................17
Sampling design...................................................................................................................18
Sample size...........................................................................................................................18
Ethical consideration............................................................................................................19
Chapter 4-Results.................................................................................................................20
Reliability:............................................................................................................................20
Frequency Statistics:............................................................................................................22
Correlation Analysis:...........................................................................................................25
ANOVA Analysis:...............................................................................................................28
Linear regression Model:.....................................................................................................33
Chapter 5-Discussion and Evaluation......................................................................................39
Discussion:...........................................................................................................................39
Chapter 6-Conclusion and Recommendation...........................................................................41
References................................................................................................................................43

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Chapter 1- Introduction
Introduction
The purpose of this research project is to analyse the factors affecting employees
attrition and retention in the outsourcing sector. The research study has been done with
reference to Accenture enterprise in Mauritius. Now- days, outsourcing has become
acknowledged, established and accepted business strategy. One of the acquainted forms of
outsourcing is BPO (business process outsourcing), which refers to transferring of operational
ownership of more than one business processes of firms to the external supplier (Srivastava
Tiwari and Kumar, 2011). This relates to the rearrangement of business functions to other
service providers basically in the low cost locations. The companies now- a- days are facing
formidable challenge for retaining the employees while at same time manage loss of talent in
the outsourcing sector through attrition owing to downturn of sector or through individual
turnover. Attrition of employees also results in loss of performance, which in turn have long
term adverse impact on enterprise. In today’s world, the employers are getting more
conscious of certain factors which helps in keeping a worker committed in the outsourcing
sector.
Background of Accenture
Accenture is a global professional services and management consulting firm which
provides strategy, digital, technology, consulting and operation services. This company has
six divisions such as- Accenture strategy, consulting, digital, technology, federal services and
operations. Accenture common equity has been listed on New York Stock Exchange. This
company has more than 442,000 employees and has been listed in Fortune global 500
enterprise. Accenture takes innovation approach for helping clients imagine as well as invent
their future (Accenture.com 2018) Through Accenture innovation architecture, they combines
capabilities to develop, deliver and invent disruptive innovations for the clients and scale

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them in faster way. Their core values mainly shape their work culture as well as define the
enterprise character.
Aims and objectives of research
The aim of the research is to identify the factors that impacts the employees attrition and
retention in the outsourcing sector. The objectives of research study are-
 Analyse the main causes of attrition and retention of employees in Accenture located
at Mauritius.
 Assess the employees motivation and satisfaction level
 Impact of employees attrition in the financial performance of this enterprise
Research questions
 Whether attrition in BPO of Accenture in Mauritius has adverse impact on the
enterprise?
 Do the employees retention and attrition cost enhances the cost of the enterprise?
 Whether employees attrition in outsourcing sector influences the productivity and
performance of the enterprise?
About the project
The research project elucidates on the significance of outsourcing services in
Accenture. The project provides huge scope to the managers of Accenture as it helps them to
know about the causes that leads to attrition of employees in the outsourcing sector. It also
facilitates the managers to know about the factors that can retain the employees in the
company.
Reasons behind choosing the research project
This research project has been chosen in order to gain knowledge about the factors
that impacts the employees attrition and retention in the outsourcing sector. It also helps to

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know about the retention challenges that Accenture face over the last few years. It also
facilitates to analyse the impact of employees attrition in Accenture (Cruz-Cunha, da Gloria
Fraga, and Amaral 2012). Moreover, another reason behind selecting this research topic is to
analyse the importance of outsourcing service in this global organization.
Describing how this project assist this company
This research project helps Accenture by providing an overview on the main cause
behind employees attrition in outsourcing sector. It also assist the management of the
company to implement effective strategies for retaining its employees. Apart from this, this
specific project facilitates Accenture to focus on the main factor that influences its
employee’s retention and attrition in the outsourcing sector and thus assists them to adopt
different methods for working on it accordingly.
Consultation process undertaken with the enterprise
Consultation refers to an active procedure in which the researcher consults with the
employees of the organization for gathering accurate information about the research. While
conducting this research project, the employees of Accenture were consulted in order to
collect information about this specific research topic. Besides them, the leaders of the
enterprise were also consulted for knowing about the causes behind the employees attrition
and the factors that influence an employee to retain in business.

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Chapter 2- Literature review
About Outsourcing segment in Accenture at Mauritius
In today’s business world, every enterprise attempts to attain high productivity by
attaining economies of scale and increasing return on investment. In this context, the firms
are focusing on main business functions as well as outsourcing other business activities to the
third party that are competent in business procedure. Due to rise in demand for the
outsourcing services, the outsourcing practice of Accenture situated in Mauritius has grown
considerably during the last few years. This company offers widest range of outsourcing
services across the globe underpinned by cost- effectiveness and operational excellence.
Accenture has been consistently recognized as leader in BPO. According to Korsakienė et al.,
(2015), huge range of the service offerings facilitates this company to offer end- to end
service in horizontal and vertical BPO. The transformational outsourcing services of this
organization involve creation of alignment between business processes of clients and their
corporate performance. This company also offers numerous outsourcing models, which
involves- DBR (Design, Build and Run), Application Management Service, Procurement
BPO, ITO (Information Technology Outsourcing). Gibb, Zeng and McKeown, (2012) has
found out that outsourcing services provides huge benefit to the company as it reduces capital
expenditure, cuts business costs, reduces investment in fixed infrastructure, saves manpower
as well as training cost, increases efficiencies through economies of scale and so on. On the
contrary, few researchers have also found out that outsourcing has several disadvantages that
adversely affects the enterprise. One such disadvantage that outsourcing creates for
Accenture is that it reduces direct communication between the clients and company.
However, it restricts this organization from building relationship with customers and thus
leads to dissatisfaction on both sides. Over the years, Accenture has benefitted from strong

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growth in its outsourcing sector. The performance of Accenture’s outsourcing sector
continues to beat the market expectations over the last few years. Even the employee’s
attrition level also reduced and retention level also increased in these years (Oshri, Kotlarsky
and Willcocks 2015).
Challenge faced by Accenture in Mauritius regarding employee’s attrition and retention
in outsourcing sector
Nicholson and Aman have discussed about managing attrition regarding offshore
finance and outsourcing of accounting through exploring the interplay of competing
institutional logics. Managing attrition is one of the important challenges for every
outsourcing vendor. Offshore outsourcing indicates the practice of a company to contract
with outside vendors of other country where the client company does not possess any direct
ownership. In Mauritius, the number of capable outsourcing vendors with low costs has
increased significantly and consequently has provided opportunities to hierarchical
organization for assessing various functions like call centers, software development and
accounting. This offshore outsourcing has included finance and accounting functions. This
Offshore finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) has become an attractive option for
various companies as the process has offered costs reduction, competition and using of scarce
skills. Instead of this rapid expansion of the FAO industry, especially in Mauritius, it has
experienced various challenges related to the staff attrition, which means reduction of
employees in an organization through resignation or retirement. Attrition means higher rates
of annual turnover, reduction of qualified work force at entry level, increasing wage cost and
limited capability of middle managers (Ahmed et al., 2014). Hence, this process is costly to
any organization including Accenture when it losses highly talented workers. Moreover, due
to attrition, both provider and client experience losses, as provider hires and trains
replacement employees and clients face interruption to service due to leaving of an

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outsourced employee. In addition to this, excessive attrition leads the risk of diluting service
quality to increase further through affecting efforts of business development and impacts
regarding client relationships (Nicholson and Aman 2012).
On the other side, Wong, Wong and Tong (2015) have focused on the attrition issues
and challenges related to retention of employees. Accenture in Mauritius experiences several
challenges to recruit and retain talents and to manage this talent loss at the same time through
attrition due to downturns of industry or turnover of voluntary individual. The company also
faces negative impacts during long term through losing talents and workers due to
performance losses. According to James and Faisal (2013), various factors can affect attrition
and those are money, insufficient mobility of career and challenges, working environment,
excessive stress and lack of work-life balance. Some other factors can also influence attrition
like lack of employee-job fit, limited confidence in supervision, insufficient feedback and
insufficient clarity of role along with unscientific and unclear performance goals. This
attrition of employees has both direct and indirect impact on the company. Direct impact of
attrition implies that the company fails to set effective human resource priorities. Moreover,
internal strengths and weaknesses of the company are highlighted. On the other side, indirect
impact represents decrease in productivity, other employees face difficulty to work and
consequently more attrition happens. Thus, those impacts can negatively influence a
company to sustain in a competitive environment. However, attrition can be considered as
good if it helps the company to develop its business in a healthy way through hiring new
workers with lower costs along with new ideas and approaches (Bacea and Bordean 2016).
The authors have also described about retention, which are policies and practices that
companies use to prevent their workers from the leaving the job.
Retention is one of the biggest challenges for this enterprise to compete with others
within an industry. To retain employees, Accenture adopts various strategies through

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providing good working environment and introducing positive work culture. Moreover, the
company also provides medical facilities, good work life balance and flexible working hours
to retain employees for long-term (Kwenin, Muathe and Nzulwa 2013) cites that for
conducting the business successfully, employees play significant role. However, high rates of
attrition can be seen in this industry that further reduce this company’s profit and growth as
well. Thus, Nepoleon (2017) has conducted a research focusing on the issue that how this
company can keep talent through constructing various factors to retain workers. Those factors
are based on individual, firm and market, where each of these factors are highly correlated
with each other for which this company needs to give equal importance to these. According
to two-factor theory of Herzberg, those employee retention factors are growth and
development of the company and the person himself or herself, working environment along
with the working culture, recognition, empowerment and remuneration that can motivate an
employee through giving job satisfaction.
In this context, Silva (2017) has also discussed about employee retention strategies
adopted by the Accenture Company through conducting research. Moreover, young work
force have been employed by Accenture located offshore. However, Accenture have also
faced challenges regarding staff motivation and retention. Due to higher rate of turnover,
Accenture have incurred huge amount of loss as they spend huge amount of money to recruit
and train new employees. Moreover, this company has also experienced sustainability issues
at their performance levels, which is other major challenge in routine working conditions.
Hence, understanding of job satisfaction and performance of staff is very important, as this
can influence employee retention and motivation (Akunda, Chen and Gikiri 2018). The
research study has also focused on the performance and job satisfaction of employees in
Accenture. For this, information from the recruitment managers of the company have been
collected through formal and informal interviews, where supervisors, immediate supervisors

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along with staff and clients of those companies have been taken under consideration as well.
Through applying Hackman and Oldham’d Job Characteristics model, the research paper
have generated some hypothesis. To motivate employees for giving higher levels of
performance, this model helps the company to improve psychological states of them through
developing meaningfulness of work, knowledge of outcomes and responsibility of result. As
most of the employees have come from families of lower-income group, their levels of
expectations are different from other workers and their performance level related to
outsourcing tasks is different (Graf and Mudambi 2005). In this context, teamwork in
Accenture also help their workers to earn higher income from this outsourcing sector.
Factors affecting employee’s attrition in the outsourcing sector of Accenture situated in
Mauritus
Bacea and Bordean (2016) has entitled that there are different workers related factors
that leads to attrition in the outsourcing sector and establishes extent of association between
attrition rate and these factors. James and Faisal (2013) opines that attrition refers to gradual
reduction in employees owing to various reasons such as resignation, retirement and so on.
During the past few years, the attrition level of employees in Accenture has increased even
though they have adopted new rules in the BPO segment. As per Oshri, Kotlarsky and
Willcocks (2015), there are numerous factors that trigger to the employees attrition in the
outsourcing sector of Accenture in Mauritus. These are described below-
 Improper identification of work- The self- esteem as well as commitment of
employees working in this sector enhances the way they are treated in Accenture.
Moreover, improper identification of work leads to increase in attrition of productive
employees.
 Lack of opportunity and career growth- Few employees of Accenture addresses
issues regarding their career opportunities as career growth is less and work is