Abstract
As the business world becomes more and more entrenched in globalization there are complementary challenges that define companies’ operations. One major challenge for the human resources departments in the current business environment is the employee turnover. Working with organizations from developing nations that provide non – core functions constitutes an advantage for organizations form developed regions, as they have the opportunity to save financial resources, while paying workers with lower financial demands. On the other hand, they face a major issue, which is the employee turnover. Employee turnover affects the general environment in an organization and large turnover rates can affect companies’ services and performances. Because this is not a desired situation, the topic of employee turnover constitutes the topic of the intended research. The research will gather primary and secondary data for delineating the causes and effects of employee turnover, focusing on a call center department of Genpact, located in Jaipur, India.
Key words: globalization, employee turnover, performances, causes and effects, Jaipur, India.
Introduction (10 Marks)
Background to the project
Employee turnover defines workers’ voluntary action of leaving the company (Ongori, 2007). High employee turnover attracts cause more employee to quit their jobs and put a great pressure and stress on the remaining employees, whose productivity and customer service abilities decrease, in the context of their lack of motivation to perform (Arokiasamy, 2013). Therefore, employee turnover affects not only the remaining employees’ moral, but the entire business, giving the fact that the company will have to invest time in training new employees while facing new dismissals and underperforming employees among the remaining staff.
Considering the high significance of employee turnover for the business environment, this topic has received considerable attention in academic journals, specialty books or business blogs. 1,270,000 results were found when requesting the key words causes and effects of employee turnover. The topic has gained increasing popularity in the recent decades, suggesting that managers and employers have become more aware of the great significance that employee turnover have on their business.
Major turnover rates are registered in the call center segment, where the average rate of employees’ who voluntarily decide to quit their jobs is 30% (Tuten & Neidermeyer, 2004). This is why, the research will focus on an organization activating in the call center segment, namely Genpact, a global provider process management and services for other corporations (Genpact official website). The company is an outsourcer for non – core functions, such as accounting or finance, serving over 800 clients in more than 70 countries in 30 languages, hiring around 70,000 employees (Genpact official website). Call center is an important function of Genpact.
Research Scope
Since Genpact provides a complex range of services, the focus of the research project will be on the call center business. Furthermore, considering its overwhelming business reach (across 70 countries), it would be unrealistic to say that the research is generally reflecting the situation across all Genpact’s call centers. Instead, the research will focus on the call center in India, Jaipur office (Genpact official website).
Purpose & Catalyst
The main aim of the research is to identify the principal causes of the employee turnover within Genpact, Jaipur, and also to define the effects of the turnover.
The need for researching this topic is given by the changes that occur in the business world, where the rapid advancement of globalization has changed the way people work. For the call center business, especially, the globalization facilitated the supply of outsource work from the developing nations to the developed regions. The high rates of 40% turnover registered in Indian call – centers severely affects the effectiveness of outsourcing services in India, which calls for the intended research (Holman, Batt & Holtegrewe, 2007).
Employee turnover is one of the main challenges in human resource management, one that attracts decreased quality of work and higher organizational costs for replacing and training newcomers (Budhwar, Varma, Malhotra & Mukherjee, 2009). This reality has shaped the purpose of the intended research. Understanding the causes and effects of employee turnover in the Indian call center is of great importance for the Indian employment market, but also for the entire business world, considering that many multinationals from developed countries rely on the Indian outsourcing services.
Research Objectives / Questions
The objectives of the research refer to analyzing the specification of the call center market at a global level, for identifying the causes of the high turnover in this segment. A more focused objective is to investigate the Indian call center market and to understand if there is a special context that advantages the high annual turnover rates. Specifically, an important research objective is to conduct a primary research in order to challenge the secondary research. The findings retrieved from secondary data such as journal articles, books, media articles that relate to the global and Indian call center market and the employee turnover trends will be compared with findings gathered from primary research. The conducted research is also expected to identify the effects of the employee turnover for the call center industry.
In this sense, the following questions will need to be answered:
What factors cause employee turnover generally?
What factors cause employee turnover in the call center industry?
Are there specific factors for the high employee turnover rates in India? What are those?
What are the effects of the employee turnover?
Methodology
The methodology of the research will comprise a mix of research techniques, in order to cover the research topic both qualitatively, with an in – depth focus on the Indian call center turnover, and quantitatively, with a general overview of the turnover trends.
Inside Primary
The chosen technique for the primary research is the semi – structured interview. This strategy implies the formulation of questions that will be addressed to respondents, although during the actual interview other questions may arise and the interview may take a different course than the one established prior to conducting the interview (Seale, 2012). This research technique is preferred to other qualitative approaches, such as focus group or participant observation, because it seeks to find answers for the research questions from the respondents’ point of view, unlike the other models where the researcher’s opinion would be highlighted (Brennen, 2012).
Process
The process of conducting the semi-structured interview should follow specific steps. Primarily, there should be found respondents from the call center representatives. Once the selected respondents agree to take part in the research, they will be informed on the exact date and hour of the interview and the expected duration. At this point, the respondents should be informed about the nature of the research and they should give their informed consent, in order to conduct an ethical research. The questions for the interview will be developed in accordance with the literature findings, in order to test or challenge the existent theories. The same set of questions will be available for all the subjects, although during the interview the discussion might take different paths for each respondents. The interviews will be carried on online, using Skype program, which allows for both and audio connection. In order to be able to analyze the data, the interviews will be recorded. Therefore, technology (Skype software) and a recorder, in addition to the interview sheet and paper and pencil for noting important observations, will be the research instruments.
Population Definition
Ten respondents will be the target of this research, considering the fact that the semi-structured interviews are lengthy face to face discussions that can take up to one hour. They must be members of the call center department working in Jaipur office, working for at least three months in that department. The study should aim at selecting five women and five men respondents, but there should not be any criteria regarding the age factor. The sampling technique will be based on a form of probability sampling, namely the stratified sampling, chosen based on their pertinence to the call center department, as the common trait (Seale, 2012).
Secondary (Internal)
The research will also integrate secondary data, collected from the company’s internal environment, which will be composed of: HR reports and call center reports that will highlight the turnover rate and identify the reasons of leaving the job, as per the exit interview (Nigham & Mishra, 2014). There will also be analyzed financial statements no older than five years, for identifying whether there is a trend in turnover in this Indian call center. The sampling instruments will be precisely the databases and reports or statements retrieved from the internal environment. In this case, the sampling technique will be based on the non – probability model, respectively the quota sampling, which implies defining a representative population (reports no older than five years) and choosing the reports by using judgment (Seale, 2012). As a process for gathering data from these internal sources, the researcher will request that the identified reports to be scanned and emailed, further reading the documents received and drawing knowledge from them.
Consistent with the ethical considerations, these data will be reviewed with the full access and agreement of the office administrator, who will be informed about the nature of the study and about how the collected data will be used. The researcher will also inform the office administrator that the research will be made available for his office, helping them identify and solve the causes of employee turnover in the call center department. There, the research will serve as an external audit for the organization that will allow Jaipur Genpact to improve its services.
Secondary (External)
The research will also benefit from other secondary data, collected from the external environment, which will include: news reports, company’s annual reports available in public domain, academic, peer reviewed journals and books and other references found online. In terms of process, the desktop research will be carried on using key words to identify relevant resources, then collecting important information and integrating them in a critical research. In relation with the ethical aspects, all information gathered from the external, online environment will be properly cited and referenced.
Timeframes
The research will be carried on across one year. The targeted institution will be informed about the decision of conducting a research on its call center for understanding the employee turnover’s causes and effects. In the meantime, the proponent of the research will start gathering information from the secondary, external environment, and work on the literature review, developing a critical and argumentative research. After receiving Jaipur Genpact’s approval for carrying on the research, there should be requested the secondary internal data and a number of ten respondents must be selected using non-probability sampling. After the interview questions will be drafted, they will be tested and the respondents will have to give their informed consent before going through with the interview. The interviews will be carried on during one week, as two to three interviews per day will be scheduled. After the completion of the interviews there will be written the methodology chapter and the data analysis chapter, when the interpretation of the data will be done. There will be reviewed the entire documents before drawing conclusions. Finally, the first completed draft will be submitted for analysis and based on the received feedback the research will be revised and re-submitted.
Budget
As this will be a qualitative research, there are not consistent budgetary consideration. There must be accounted a budget of $50 for potential subscriptions to access paid peer reviewed journals. For motivating employees to participate in one hour of semi – structured interview, they will be recompensed with $20 each, reaching a total budget of $200 for incentives. There should be also considered a research instrument, namely the recorder, needed for gathering data during the semi – structured interviews, for which a budget of $50 is considered. The total budget for this research will raise up to $300.
Timeframes & Budget
References
Arokiasami, A.R.A. (2013) A qualitative study on cause and effects of employee turnover in the private sector in Malaysia. Middle – East Journal of Scientific Research. 16(11): 1532 – 1541.
Brennen, B. (2013) Qualitative research methods for media studies. Oxon: Taylor & Francis.
Budhwar, P.S., Varma, A., Malhotra, N. & Mukherjee, A. (2009) Insights into the Indian Call Centre Industry: Can Internal Marketing Help Tackle High Employee Turnover? Journal of Services Marketing. 35(5): 1-35.
Genpact official website. Official website Retrieved from http://www.genpact.com/.
Holman, D., Batt, R. & Holtgrewe, U. (2007) The global call center report: International perspectives on management and employment. The Global Call Center Report.
Nigam, R. & Mishra, S. (2014) Exit interview - A strategic tool to measure attrition. International Journal of Research in Business Management. 2(5): 129-136.
Ongori, H. (2007) A review of the literature on employee turnover. African Journal of Business Management. 049-054.
Seale, C. (2012) Researching society and culture. London: SAGE Publications Inc.
Tuten, T.C. & Neidermeyer, P.E. (2004) Performance, satisfaction and turnover in call centers. The effects of stress and optimism. Journal of Business Research. 57: 26 – 34.
