Business process outsourcing firms in Bangalore are 'shy' to take part in a study to understand how working in call centres and data processing units affects the lives of employees, a top BPO firm official said on Thursday.

The study, done jointly by National Association of Software and Services Companies,  Canara Bank Institute of Management (Bangalore University) and National Institute of

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Mental Health and Neurosciences, has covered 300 people in the last five months as against the targeted 3,000 workers in the BPO industry.

"It is very disappointing," ICICI OneSource president and chief operating officer Raju Bhatnagar said at a seminar on HR issues for the BPO industry in Bangalore.

He said the study was to cover about 3,000 people from 20 BPO firms in Bangalore, but it has screened just about 300.

"We are pretty anguished by the response from the industry. It is all well for us to sit and talk on the HR issues, but we are not allowing people to talk to the associates and agents on their jobs," Bhatnagar, who chairs the team involved in the survey, said.

He later told reporters that there was a mismatch in the timings by researchers, who worked in the day and the agents who work in nights.