A study on extent of impact shown by the occupational stressors on various types of consequences among call center agents

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1 A study on extent of impact shown by the occupational stressors on various types of consequences among call center agents M.V.S.Sudhakar PACE Institute of Technology and Sciences, Ongole Andhra Pradesh, India Abstract : Stress causes an employee to deviate from his normal functioning/performance. Occupational stress is a psychological feeling which makes the employees to deviate from their normal functioning in his job/occupation because of his/her work. Its effects are detrimental to the individual employee as well to the organization. The present study will try to find out the extent of impact shown by the occupational stress among CCAs in the form of physiological, cognitive, emotional and behavioral consequences. From the study it was found out that there is a significant relationship between occupational stress and all consequences. I. INTRODUCTION In today s world stress is a word which is hard to avoid. If one asks people about their stress and in particular how they know it exists, two general kinds of things are described; firstly, there are experiences of mental discomfort, often accompanied by feelings of not being able to cope, that things are falling apart, that one is not in control of oneself and one s situation (or) just a general unease that all is not well without any particular cause being apparent. Secondly the physiological manifestations of loss of appetite, sleeplessness, sweating, ulcers and other physical illness of various degrees. Different people have different views about it, as stress can be experienced from a variety of sources. Stress will have an impact on the well-being of the employees/workers in the organization. Various manifestations of stress are physiological consequence, emotional consequences, behavioral and cognitive consequences. Bosma et al. (1998) 1 examined associations between job stress and coronary heart disease. Doloresksong (1999) 2 stated that job stress is linked to heart disease and other health problems like gastrointestinal illness, immune system dysfunction back and joint pain, depression and absenteeism. Kivimaki et al. (2002) 3 found that high job strain and effort reward imbalance seem to increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality. French and Caplan (1973) 4 suggest that the behavioral consequences or role overload include job dissatisfaction and increased job tension. Many researchers supported that role stress does cause job dissatisfaction (Abdel-Halim, (1978) 5, Greene and organ, (1973) 6, Gross, Mason and Mc Eechern, (1958) 7, Johnson and Stinson, (1975) 8, Lyons, (1971) 9, Valenzi and Desseler, (1978) 10 but the studies of Hammer and Tosi (1971) 11, (1974) 12 and Tosi (1971) 13 found that role conflict and role ambiguity are not always negatively related to job satisfaction but that the amount of reported influence is positively related to the amount of perceived threat and anxiety while role ambiguity was negatively correlated to job satisfaction and influences positively related to job threat and anxiety. II. CALL CENTER INDUSTRY In our current service economy delivery of services is a major task for industry. Many organizations are now involved in delivering services of a kind and like to think of themselves as being client-oriented or clientcentered.as a part of that, companies had setup call centers to provide better services to their customers. Call centers are organizations or departments that are specifically dedicated to contacting clients and customers. This can either be the helpdesk, or client service department of an organization, but companies may also have outsourced this to a dedicated call center, which handles all client contacts for a variety of organizations. Different types of call centers can be distinguished: (1) Inbound call centers mainly respond to incoming calls and primarily deal with questions and complaints that customers may have. (2) Outbound call centers are mainly for contacts that are initiated by the organization; they are primarily for attempts to sell a product or service.the reason for the burgeoning of the call center industry is its advantage in reducing costs and cutting staff, both of which can be accomplished by centralizing services, reducing branch offices close to the customer, and taking advantage of lower cost real estate and labor costs in locations outside main business centers (Richardson and Marshall, 1999) 14. III. SIGNIFICANCE AND METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY Stress is becoming an increasingly global phenomenon affecting all countries, all professions and all categories of workers, families and society in general. Stress may contribute to the development of various symptoms of occupational ill health and of physical & psychological 49

2 disorders. The Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) is no exception to this malaise, call centre agents work in prolonged shifts round the clock while accomplishing many tasks simultaneously under tight deadlines 15. To provide real-time services to global customers, call centre agents (CCAs) have to compromise with their own biological clocks. Consequently they become easy prey to various psychophysiological ailments. The present study will try to find out the extent of impact shown by the occupational stressors on various types of consequences of stress among the call center agents working for international call centers in Hyderabad. The sample size includes 781 CCAs working for 7 Indian International call centers in Hyderabad. A two stage simple random sampling process is followed, for selecting organization and respondents (CCAs) in the study. IV. MEASUREMENT OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES The Occupational Stress Index (OSI) instrument is used in this study to obtain the data required for measuring stress. The scale was constructed and standardized by Dr. Srivastav and Dr. Singh (1981) 16. It purports to measure the extent of stress, an employee experiences, due to various constituents and conditions of his occupation. It is a self reporting instrument consisting of 46 items alongwith five point rating scale. 28 of the items are positively phrased, while 18 negatively phased. The respondent is required to answer each item by stating whether he strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree or strongly agree. The index assesses occupational stress with regard to twelve dimensions of occupation. These dimensions include role overload, role ambiguity, role conflict, unreasonable group and political pressure, responsibility for persons, under participation, powerlessness, poor peer relations, intrinsic improvement, low status, strenuous working conditions and unprofitability. The occupational stress index is scored to yield twelve scores pertaining to the dimensions measured. The twelve scores are also cumulated together to obtain a single overall score on occupational stress. The more the score on the index, the greater the occupational stress experienced by the respondents. For studying the consequences of stressors, an instrument used to measure the symptoms (physiological, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral) over the past six months was used. This general instrument had borrowed from the book Principles of Stress Management authored by Vera Peiffer. The consequences are measured in terms of physical symptoms, Cognitive symptoms, Emotional symptoms, Behavioral symptoms, on a dichotomous scale. The instrument consists of 25 physiological symptoms, 14 cognitive symptoms, 15 emotional symptoms and 14 behavioral symptoms. Higher the score on the scale, higher the symptoms among the respondents. To ascertain the impact shown by the occupational stressors on various types of consequences, multiple regression is calculated among predictors (consequences) and dependent variables (stressors) from the primary data collected from the respondents (CCAs) by using questionnaires. V. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION physiological symptoms Physiological symptoms because of occupational stress will be in the form of Aches and pains, Diarrhea or constipation, Increased frequency of urination, Indigestion, Changes in blood glucose, Nausea, dizziness, Chest pain, rapid heartbeat, Loss of sex drive, Frequent colds, Irregular periods. Table No.1 Table showing significant relationship between Occupational Stressors and Physiological symptoms among CCAs ** a. Predictors: (Constant), Unprofitability, Role Conflict, Powerlessness, Role Overload, Strenuous Working Conditions, Unresnpolitpre, Under participation, Intrinsic Improvement, Role Ambiguity, Low Status, Responsibility for Persons, Poor Pear Relations b. Dependent Variable: Physiological Symptoms The F- (5.378) of the table is significant at 1% level of significance. Therefore it can be concluded that the multiple regression model results in significant better prediction of the reasons for physiological symptoms, because of occupational stressors. Table No.2 provides the details of the model parameters (the beta s) and the significance of these s. Equation (I) shows that b 0 is the Y intercept (constant) of the multiple regression equation. From the table, b 0 is and this can be the Y is The of b 1 (Role overload) from the table is 0.643, which tells that if the role overload is increased by then the physiological symptoms of employees will increase by 1. Similarly, b s of role ambiguity, poor peer relations and intrinsic improvement are 0.435, 0.394, respectively. The regression equation for the dependent variable (physiological symptoms) and independent variables (stressors) is given below. Y= X X X X I Y = physiological symptoms Variables X 1, X 2, X 8 and X 9 are Role overload, Role ambiguity, Poor peer relations and intrinsic improvement. From the above we can conclude that physiological symptoms among the CCAs working for international causing factors like Role overload, Role Ambiguity, 50

3 intrinsic improvement and Poor peer relation in their profession. Table No.2 Table showing Unstandardized and Standardized Coefficient s for Occupational Stressors and Physiological symptoms among CCAs. Model Unstandardized Standardized 1 Constant ** Role Overload ** Role Ambiguity ** Role Conflict Unres. polit. pressure Responsibility for Persons Under participation Powerlessness Poor Pear Relations ** Intrinsic Improvement ** Low Status Straneous Working Conditions Unprofitability a. Dependent Variable: Physiological Symptoms **- cognitive responses Cognitive responses because of occupational stress will be in the form of Memory problems, Inability to concentrate, Poor judgment, Pessimistic approach or thoughts, Anxious or racing thoughts, Constant worrying. Table No.3 provides the summary of the multiple regression model which tells the relationship between occupational stress factors and cognitive responses. The R from the table is 0.523, which tells that there is a positive correlation between the occupational stressors and cognitive responses. The of the R 2 tells about percentage of outcome (cognitive responses) explained by the predictors i.e., 12 stress causing factors. For the model the is which means that predictors can account for 27.3% variation. The adjusted R 2 gives an idea of how well the model generalizes the difference ( ).074 or 7.4%. This shrinkage means that if the model were derived from the population rather than a sample it would account for approximately 7.4% chance of variation in the outcome. Table No.3 Table showing significant relationship between Occupational Stressors and Cognitive Responses among CCAs ** a. Predictors: (Constant), Unprofitability, Role Conflict, Powerlessness, Role Overload, Straneous Working Conditions, Unresnpolitpre, Under participation, Intrinsic Improvement, Role Ambiguity, Low Status, Responsibility for Persons, Poor Pear Relations b. Dependent Variable: Cognitive Responses From the above table it can be understood that the F is significant at 1% level of significance. Therefore it can be concluded that the multiple regression model results in significant better prediction of the reasons for cognitive responses, because of occupational stressors. Table No.4 provides details of the model parameters (the beta s) and the significance of these s. Equation (II) shows that b 0 is the Y intercept (constant) of the multiple regression equation. From the table, b 0 is 2.629, and this can be the Y- is The of b 1 (Role overload) from the table is 0.564, which tells that if the role overload is increased by then the cognitive responses of employees will increase by 1. Similarly, b s of role ambiguity, powerlessness, poor peer relations, intrinsic improvement, low status and strenuous working conditions are 0.672, 0.659, 0.759, , 0.476, respectively. The regression equation for the dependent variable (cognitive responses) and independent variables (stressors) is given below. Y= X X X X X X X II Y = cognitive responses Variables X 1, X 2, X 7, X 8, X 9, X 10, and X 11 are Role overload, Role ambiguity, powerlessness, poor peer relations, intrinsic improvement, low status, and strenuous working conditions. 51

4 Table No.4 Table showing Unstandardized and Standardized Coefficient s for Occupational Stressors and Cognitive responses among CCAs. Model Unstandardized Standardized 1 Constant ** RoleOverload ** RoleAmbiguity ** RoleConflict Unresnpolitpre Responsibility for Persons Under participation Powerlessness ** Poor Pear Relations ** IntrinsicImprovement ** Low Status ** Straneous Working Conditions ** Unprofitability a. Dependent Variable: Cognitive Responses **- From the above we can conclude that cognitive responses among the CCAs working for international causing factors like poor peer relations, powerlessness, Role overload, Role Ambiguity, intrinsic improvement, low status and strenuous working conditions in their profession. emotional responses Emotional symptoms because of occupational stress will be in the form of Moodiness, Irritability or short temper, Agitation, inability to relax, Feeling overwhelmed, Sense of loneliness and isolation, Depression or general unhappiness. Table No.5 provides the summary of the multiple regression model which tells the relationship between occupational stress factors and emotional responses. The R from the table is 0.551, which tells that there is a positive correlation between the occupational stressors and emotional responses. The higher the occupational stressors among CCAs the higher will be the emotional responses and vice versa. The of the R 2 tells about the percentage of outcome i.e., emotional responses is explained by the predictors i.e., 12 stressors. For the model the is which means that predictors can account for 30.3% variation. The adjusted R 2 gives an idea of how well the model generalizes the difference ( ).186 or 18.6%. This shrinkage means that if the model were derived from the population rather than a sample it would account for approximately 18.6% chance of variation in the outcome. Table No.5 Table showing significant relationship between Occupational Stressors and Emotional Responses among CCAs ** a. Predictors: (Constant), Unprofitability, RoleConflict, Powerlessness, RoleOverload, Straneous Working Conditions, Unresnpolitpre, Under participation, Intrinsic Improvement, Role Ambiguity, Low Status, Responsibility for Persons, Poor Pear Relations b. Dependent Variable: Emotional Responses From the above table it can be understood that the F is significant at 1% level of significance. Therefore it can be concluded that the multiple regression model results in significant better prediction of the reasons for emotional responses, because of occupational stressors. Table No.6 provides details of the model parameters (the beta s) and the significance of these s. Equation (III) shows that b 0 is the Y intercept (constant) of the multiple regression equation. From the table, b 0 is and this can be the Y- is The of b 1 (Role overload) from the table is 0.483, which tells that if the role overload is increased by then the cognitive responses of employees will increase by 1. Similarly, b s of role ambiguity, unreasonable group and political pressure, powerlessness and low status are 0.483, 0.375, 0.392, 0.455, and respectively. The regression equation for the dependent variable (emotional responses) and independent variables (stressors) is given below. Y= X X X X III Y = emotional responses Variables X 1, X 2, X 4 and X 7 are Role overload, Role ambiguity, unreasonable group and political pressure, powerlessness and low status. 52

5 From the above we can conclude that emotional responses among the CCAs working for international causing factors like powerlessness, Role overload, low status, unreasonable group and political pressure and role ambiguity. Table No.6 Table showing Unstandardized and Standardized Coefficient s for Occupational Stressors and Emotional Responses among CCAs. Model Unstandardized Standardized 1.Constant ** RoleOverload ** RoleAmbiguity ** RoleConflict Unresnpolitpre ** Responsibility for Persons Under participation Powerlessness ** Poor Pear Relations IntrinsicImprovement Low Status ** Straneous Working Conditions Unprofitability a. Dependent Variable: Emotional Responses **- behavioral responses Behavioral symptoms because of occupational stress will be in the form of eating more or less, Sleeping too much or too little, Isolating oneself from others, Procrastinating or neglecting responsibilities, Using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax, Nervous habits (e.g. nail biting, pacing). Table No.7 provides the summary of the multiple regression model which tells the relationship between occupational stress factors and behavioral responses. The R from the table is 0.551, which tells that there is a positive correlation between the occupational stressors and behavioral responses. The higher the occupational stressors among CCAs the higher will be the behavioral responses and vice versa. The of the R 2 tells about the variability of the outcome i.e., behavioral responses accounted by the predictors i.e., 12 stressors. For the model the is which means that predictors can account for 20.3% variation. The adjusted R 2 gives an idea of how well the model generalizes the difference ( ).085 or 8.5%. This shrinkage means that if the model were derived from the population rather than a sample it would account for approximately 8.5% chance of variation in the outcome. Table No.7 Table showing significant relationship between Occupational Stressors and Behavioural Responses among CCAs ** a. Predictors: (Constant), Unprofitability, Role Conflict, Powerlessness, Role Overload, Strenuous Working Conditions, Un reasonable group & political pressure, Under participation, Intrinsic Improvement, Role Ambiguity, Low Status, Responsibility for Persons, Poor Pear Relations b. Dependent Variable: Behavioral Responses From the table No.7 it can be understood that the F is significant at 1% level of significance. Therefore it can be concluded that the multiple regression model results in significant better prediction of the reasons for behavioral responses, because of occupational stressors. Table No.8 provides details of the model parameters (the beta s) and the significance of these s. Equation (IV) shows that b 0 is the Y intercept (constant) of the multiple regression equation. From the table, b 0 is 1.830, and this can be the Y- is The of b 1 (Role overload) from the table is 0.343, which tells that if the role overload is increased by then the behavioral responses of employees will increase by 1. Similarly, b s of role ambiguity, poor peer relations and intrinsic improvement are 0.327, 0.252, and respectively. The regression equation for the dependent variable (behavioral responses) and independent variables (stressors) is given below. Y= X X X X IV Y = behavioral responses Variables X 1, X 2, X 8 and X 9 are Role overload, Role ambiguity, poor peer relations and intrinsic improvement. From the above we can conclude that the behavioral responses among the CCAs working for international 53

6 causing factors like Role overload, Role ambiguity, intrinsic improvement and poor peer relations. Table No. 8 Table showing Unstandardized and Standardized Coefficient s for Occupational Stressors and Behavioral symptoms among CCAs. Model Unstandardized Standardized 1. Constant ** Role Overload ** Role Ambiguity ** Role Conflict Un reasonable group and political pressure Responsibility for Persons Under participation Powerlessness Poor Pear Relations ** Intrinsic Improvement ** Low Status Straneous Working Conditions Unprofitability a. Dependent Variable: Behavioral Responses **- VI. CONCLUSION Call center industry is considered to be a sun shining industry in the present business world, if the stress causing factors in the industry is not addressed properly the industry will be at a great risk, it will soon take early death. It is evident from the present research that role overload, role ambiguity, intrinsic improvement and poor peer relations cause higher stress and thus leads to various types of consequences among call center agents. The call centers have to find out ways, methods to address the problems to relieve CCAs from occupational stress and its consequences. REFERENCES [1] Bosma, H., Peter, R., Siegrist, J. & Marmot, M. Two alternative job stress models and the risk of CHD. American Journal of public health, 88(1), [2] Doloreskong. Job stress linked to heart disease, other health problems. Boston globe milwankee journal sentinel. Vol.2, Pg.28-31,1999 [3] Kivimaki, M., Leino Arjas, P., Luukkomen, R., Riihimaki, H., Vahtera, J. & Kirjonen, J. Work stress and risk of cardiovascular mortality prospective cohort study of Industrial employees. British Medical Journal, Vol.1, Pg , [4] French, J.R.P. & Caplan, R.D. Organisational stress and individual strain. New York: American Management Association. Vol.2, [5] Abdel-halim, A.A. The impact of task design on employee reactions to role stress in two organizational settings. Proceedings of the Eastern Academy of management, Pg. 9-13, [6] Greene, C. & Organ, D. An evaluation of causal models linking the perceived role with job satisfaction. Administrative Science Quarterly, 18, Pg , [7] Gross, N., Mason, W.S. & Mc Eechern, W.W. Explorations in Role Conflict. New York: Wiley. Vol.2, Pg.22-27,1958. [8] Johnson, T.W., & Stinson, J.E. (1975). Role Ambiguity, Role Conflict and Satisfaction: Moderating effect of individual differences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60 (3), [9] Lyons, T.F. Role clarity, need for clarity, satisfaction, tension and withdrawal. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Vol.6, Pg , [10] Valenzi, E. & Desseler, G. Relationships of leader behavior, subordinate role ambiguity and subordinate job satisfaction. Academy of management journal, Vol. 21, Issue-4, Pg , [11] Hammer, W.C. and Tosi, H.L. Relationships among various role involvement measures. Academy of Management, Proceedings (Boston), Vol. 7, Pg , [12] Hammer, W.C. & Tosi, H.L. Relationship of role conflict and role ambiguity to job involvement measures. Journal of Applied Psychology Vol.59, Pg ,

7 [13] Tosi, H. Organization stress as a moderator of the relationship between influence and role response. Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 14, Pg. 7-20, [14] Richardson, R. and J.N. Marshall. Teleservices, Call Centres and Urban and Regional Development, Service Industries Journal, 19(1), Pg , [15] Sanjeev Sharma Human issues in call centers and BPO industry-a report, 2007 [16] Srivastava, A.K., and Singh, A.P. Construction and Standardization of an occupational Stress Index: a pilot study. Indian Journal of Clinical Psychology, Vol.8, Issue-2, Pg ,