Dissertation Topic:

The impact of Employee empowerment on job satisfaction and intent to turnover in a contact centre

Abstract

Employee empowerment is one of the key areas of interests for managers in modern age. Companies are finding ways and means to gain competitive advantage through their key assets, the employees. The aim of this project is to explore the impact of employee empowerment on job satisfaction and employee turnover in a call centre. Strict managerial control, lack of autonomy at work and the very nature of a call centre representative (CCRs) job is resulting in CCRs dissatisfaction with their job and a growing number of employees leaving their jobs quickly, which in return has extremely negative impact on call centres in terms of selection and training costs. Empowerment of employees is thought to be the solution of this longstanding problem. This study aims to examine how empowerment is perceived by call centre employees and the impact of empowerment on job satisfaction and turnover. Frontline employees of a call centre will be asked to fill a questionnaire to find out about the extent of employee empowerment in the company and its influence on job satisfaction and turnover. Key literature will be reviewed to discuss the relationship between the responses to the questionnaire and existing literature. In the light of employees responses, suggestions will be made to improve employee empowerment in the company.

Introduction

Research Question

The main focus of this research will be to explore the concept of employee empowerment and its impact on call centre employees. The key aim is to examine the extent of employee empowerment in a contact centre and its influence on job satisfaction and intent to turnover, hence the research question:

What is the impact of employee empowerment on job satisfaction and employee turnover?

A critical review of the relevant literature will be conducted to answer the following:

What is employee empowerment?

And through primary research:

Has employee empowerment a positive effect on job satisfaction Does employee empowerment reduce intent to turnover?

Why is the question interesting?

Employee satisfaction and turnover is one of the major problems faced by call centre managers. Empowerment of employees is increasingly seen as a positive influence to increase job satisfaction and to decrease employee turnover. This study will help to explore the implications of empowerment. It will also help me personally as junior level manager in a call centre to bring positive improvements in my personal capacity.

Relation to previous Research

Empowerment has been analyzed as both relational and motivational construct. The relational approach is based on management practices. It focuses on the delegation of power and decision making authority. According to this approach, empowerment is based on the movement of power down an organization's hierarchy (Menon, 2001 ). The psychological dimension of empowerment moves away from the traditional study of management practices and instead emphasizes employees perceptions and experiences of empowerment. Conger and Kanungo (1988) claimed that empowerment involves a motivational concept of self-efficacy. Thomas and Velthouse (1990) refined the concept of psychological empowerment and developed a multidimensional cognitive model of empowerment. They defined empowerment as increased intrinsic task motivation and outlined four cognitions which they claim are the basis of worker empowerment: sense of impact; competence; meaningfulness; and choice.

Spreitzer (1995) operationalized this four-dimensional conceptualization and began the process of construct validation. Spreitzer et al. (1997) examined each of the four dimensions of psychological empowerment and their relationship to job satisfaction. A meta-analysis performed by Spector (1986) showed a relationship between perceived controls or the ability to exercise choice and intention to quit the organization. Most of the studies on empowerment indicate a positive association between empowerment and job satisfaction, and a negative association between empowerment and turnover.

Taylor and Bain (1999) suggest that call centre work represents and advanced form of Taylorism. They mention the powerlessness of call centre employees and their unskilled, repetitive and monotonous jobs which leads to stress, job dissatisfaction, absenteeism and turnover. Holman (2005) suggests that not all jobs in call centres fit the Taylorist description. Instead there is the whole range from Taylorist to empowerment. Holdsworth and Cartwright (2003) in their research on a UK based call centre found that overall perceptions of empowerment are significantly lower for the CSAs than for the more traditional office workers. They also reported lower job satisfaction, and poorer mental and physical health, than the general working population.

This study will use Spreitzer's (1995) measure of empowerment which comprises four components: Autonomy, competence, impact, and meaning. The study will be based on psychological empowerment which will discuss empowerment from employees perspective and measure and explore its impact on job satisfaction and turnover.

Ethics The main ethical issue is concerned with confidentiality of the company names and individuals participating in the questionnaires. Out of experience during MBA study and preparing assignment this was main ethical issue. This ethical problem will be overcome by keeping name of the companies and participant in research confidential. Other ethical 8 issue is transparency as companies doubt about misusing the information. To overcome this problem, full information about the researcher and the academic aims of the project will be provided to the participating firms. Research Methodology A quantitative field research will be conducted to collect primary data. Quantitative method is regarded appropriate to measure empowerment, job satisfaction and turnover. Primary data collection Self-completion questionnaire will be used to collect primary data. Frontline employees of a call centre in the UK will be emailed the questionnaire. Self-completion questionnaire is purposed because it is cheap and quick to administer. Self-completion questionnaires are also convenient for respondents, because they can complete a questionnaire at their own speed and time (Bryman and Bell, 2007). There is also evidence that in self-completion questionnaires respondents are less likely to under-report activities that induce anxiety or about which they feel sensitive (Tourangeau and Smith, 1996). Lower response rate is one of the major limitations of self-completion questionnaires which have negative implications on the validity of findings. A covering letter with guarantee of confidentiality will be used to improve response rate. Moreover, it is lot more convenient to send follow on emails to non-respondents (Bryman and Bell, 2007). Secondary data collection Library books, academic journals, articles, reports and magazines will be used to collect secondary data.

Measuring Results Except for the items that collect the employees personal information such as gender and age etc all items will be rated on a five point Likert scale ranging from very strongly disagree (1) to very strongly agree (5).

Questionnaire responses will be codified and Persons correlation coefficient will be used to test the relationship between empowerment (independent variable), job satisfaction (dependent variable) and turnover (dependent variable). Pearsons correlation gives a measure of the strength of association between two variables. The coefficient will almost certainly lie between 0 (no relationship between two variables) and 1 (a perfect relationship. Pearsons r is also useful to derive further useful statistics, for example, by squaring the value of Pearsons r we can derive the coefficient of determination, which expresses how much of the variation in one variable is due to the other variable (Bryman and Bell, 2007). Even though the coefficient is statistically significant, it must also be practically meaningful. Regression analysis will be used to sort out confounding effects. The data will be interpreted using the SPSS (Package for Social Sciences) and the results will be shown by means of tables and graphs.

As to test the pre-set hypothesis, t-test will be employed to find out the relationship between the two variables, education level and level of interest on ecotourism travel, so as to test the difference between two sample means and to conclude if the hypothesis stands or not.

Spreitzer's (1995) measure of empowerment was used and comprises four components: Autonomy, competence, impact, and meaning. )Spector (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey, JSS is a 36 item, nine facet scale to ... Spector, P. E. (1997). Job satisfaction: Turnover intentions are measured using four items (Bluedorn, 1982 1- I often think about quiting

Data analysis

A self administered survey will be conducted to measure empowerment, job satisfaction and turnover. Frontline employees of a call centre will be requested to fill questionnaire to collect primary data. Library books, academic journals, reports and magazines will be used to collect secondary data. Hypothesis The following three hypotheses will be tested in this study. H1 Employee empowerment is positively associated with job satisfaction

H2 Employee empowerment is negatively associated with employee turnover

H3

Job satisfaction is negatively associated with employee turnover

Data Collection

Limitations

Measuring Results Except for the items that collect the employees personal information such as gender and age etc all items will be rated on a five point Likert scale.

Questionnaire responses will be codified and Persons Spearman Rank Correlation matrix will be performed to test the relationship between empowerment (independent variable), job satisfaction (dependent and independent variable) and turnover (dependent variable). Pearsons correlation gives a measure of the strength of association between two variables. Pearsons r is also useful to derive further useful statistics, for example, by squaring the value of Pearsons r we can derive the coefficient of determination, which expresses how much of the variation in one variable is due to the other variable

Spreitzer's (1995) measure of empowerment was used and comprises four components: Autonomy, competence, impact, and meaning. )Spector (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey, JSS is a 36 item, nine facet scale to ... Spector, P. E. (1997). Job satisfaction: Turnover intentions are measured using four items (Bluedorn, 1982 1- I often think about quiting The Spearman Rank Correlation matrix is used to show the correlation followed by the pvalue (level of significance) and whether the correlation is different from zero.

The researcher has chosen to use this particular survey to measure the job satisfaction of the staff, as it is affordable, is reported to have a high degree of validity and reliability and it is appropriate for the study. While the same can be said for the commonly used JDI, the researcher has opted to use the JSS because it assesses 9 facets of job satisfaction whereas the JDI only assesses five facets. Spector (1997)

Structure of Final Report

Executive Summary

Chapter 1: Introduction and Background Chapter 2: Review of Literature Chapter 3: Research Design and Methodology Chapter4: Results Chapter 5: Analysis and Discussions Chapter 6: Conclusions and Recommendations Reference List Appendices

Chapter 1: Introduction and Background

Introduction and background explains the basic ideas and objectives of the study. It also provides information about the hypothesis and definitions of different terms.

Chapter 2: Review of Literature

This chapter offers review of the key literature linked to the topics of discussion. It will elaborate different models and theories related to empowerment, job satisfaction, employee turnover and implications of different theories to call centre environment.

Chapter 3: Research Design and Methodology

The focus of this chapter is the investigation of hypotheses referring to the sample of respondents in this study. It also explains the procedure of the study and the measurement instruments used in statistical analysis.

Chapter 4: Results

This chapter will discuss the finding of this project. The data will be interpreted using the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) and the results will be shown by means of tables and graphs.

Chapter 5: Analysis and Discussions

This chapter will consist of a comprehensive analysis of the data collected. The discussion will confirm whether the various hypotheses have been accepted or rejected.

Chapter 6: Conclusions and Recommendations

This chapter will offer conclusion of the research and make some recommendations about the problem under discussion. It will also i dentify the limitations of the project and future scope and direction of research.

Limitations Some limitations need to be mentioned. First, data were collected from a single organization in the call-centre industry and therefore the generalizability of the findings is questionable. Second, although the in-role performance of followers was rated by their leaders to circumvent the effects of common method bias, it would have been better if the in-role performance of followers was measured using objective data such as average call time. These data are collected routinely by caxll-centers but the researchers were not allowed access to such data. Finally, the data for transformational leadership, empowerment, trust, and satisfaction were obtained via a common method from a single source (i.e. followers) and this method may bias the relationships between these variables.

Data will be collected from a single organisation in the call centre field; therefore, it will be hard to generalize the validity of this research. Moreover, empowerment will be discussed from employee perspective which only provides a partial analysis of empowerment construct. This study will only investigate the influence of employee empowerment on job satisfaction and employee turnover, although employee empowerment is not the only factor which affects job satisfaction and turnover.

Time Table The following proposed timetable is subject to change after receipt the proposal result from the University. Task Proposal Submit Literature Review Data Gathering Statistical Analysis Write Up Submit January February March April May