This study examined work-family conflict as a predictor of burnout as well as the moderating role that optimism and pessimism may have had on this relationship. Participants were call centre employees from a financial institution in Cape Town (N = 94). Cross-sectional data was collected via electronic self-report questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated the unidimensionality of work-to-family conflict despite the two-dimensional model that was expected. Bivariate regression analysis showed that work-to-family conflict explained a significant proportion of the variance in both dimensions of burnout – emotional exhaustion and cynicism. Contrary to what was expected, the results of the moderation analyses were not significant. Optimism and pessimism did not moderate the relationship between work-to-family conflict and burnout. The results show that work-to-family conflict negatively affects call centre employees' well-being. The results are discussed and implications for management and suggestions for future research are presented.

The 21st century is characterised by a rapid technologically advancing environment, where organisations constantly change to gain and maintain a competitive advantage. The use of call centres in organisations has been in line with this technological advancement. South African organisations have not been an exception as they also have experienced the growth in call centres in the past few decades. Some of the benefits the business gains from the use of call centres include cutting costs and increased profits. However benefits to individuals working in call centres is not that obvious. Call centres have been labelled with such nicknames as electronic Sweatshops as they are characterised by poor working conditions, as individuals have to perform extremely routine tasks under extreme surveillance and harsh performance management systems. Such an environment has implications for the well being of individuals working in them. Previous research has indicated a relationship between organisational climate and employee well being. While this environment is viewed as toxic individuals continuously enter into it and some prosper than other, which brings into question whether the amount of control an individual perceives to have over his/her environment has any effect on their perception of the organisational climate. The main aim here is that work can be redesigned to benefit both the organisation and employees’ needs in the workplace. Therefore the aim of the current study is to investigate the organisational climate apparent in call centres, also looking at the relationship this construct has with Job Satisfaction, Life satisfaction and self esteem for call centre agents. The current research will also look at whether Locus of Control has an effect on this relationship. The findings of this research prove invaluable in its attempt to create awareness of the nature of work activities and quality of work life of call centre agents. The sample consisted of 97 call centre agents working in Johannesburg, South Africa. The results indicate there is a strong positive relationship between organisational climate including its subscales and Job Satisfaction, a weak and positive relationship between organisational climate and its subscale and Life satisfaction, while there was no observed relationship between organisational climate and self esteem. Furthermore the results indicated that Locus of Control does not moderate the relationship between organisational climate and job satisfaction, life satisfaction and self esteem.

Yes / Every contact centre engages in some form of Call Quality Monitoring in order to improve agent performance and customer satisfaction. Call centres have traditionally used a manual process to sort, select, and analyse a representative sample of interactions for evaluation purposes. Unfortunately, such a process is characterised by subjectivity, which in turn creates a skewed picture of agent performance. Detecting and eliminating subjectivity is the study challenge that requires empirical research to address. In this paper, we introduce an evidence-based machine learning-driven framework for the automatic detection of subjective calls. We analyse a corpus of seven hours of recorded calls from a real-estate call centre using a Deep Neural Network (DNN) for a multi-classification problem. The study draws the first baseline for subjectivity detection, achieving an accuracy of 75%, which is close to relevant speech studies in emotional recognition and performance classification. Among other findings, we conclude that in order to achieve the best performance evaluation, subjective calls should be removed from the evaluation process, or subjective scores should be deducted from the overall results.

Submitted thesis focuses on call center staff turnover. After short reference to work psychology and organization the theoretic part deals mainly with the characterization of this phenomenon. It aims to specify the main factors and it refers to possible stabilization measures. The second theme of the thesis is call centre and work of operators. Possible difficulties and risks of this job are described, the profesiogram of an employee of the particular selling point has been compiled. The last chapter deals with recruitment procedure. It specifies the single phases of the selection procedure, beginning with the preparation and compilation of necessary documents and ending with adaptation phase of a new employee at the end of the whole procedure. The empirical part of the thesis focuses on the turnover in company "A". The analysis of the personnel data from 2009 to October 2010 was the first step. Subsequently we tried to answer the question, if it is possible to use Time Crirtical Desecion Making Test (used in current selective procedure), sociability, ability to assert oneself a comunicability as predictors of continuance in company. As a diagnostic method the Bochum Personality Questionnaire was used.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T16:44:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria F Silva.pdf: 809554 bytes, checksum: 80422605344e4376d8b3606d0fd7e09a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-04-04 / This present Dissertation analyzes the human resources practices in Call centre and their impacts in an unit of business. The understanding of this Call centre Industry it wakes up national and international researcher s interest, for being a sector in great expansion in the last decade, besides being one of the sectors of services that employs most of professional. Therefore, the dimensions of the organizational practices are discussed, indicating that the section deserves a study to explain their characteristics and specificities, in the extent of the practices of people's administration, and their reflexes in the operational result of a unit of business. This discussion is made starting from of the analysis of the data companies subcontracted and own Call centre registered in ABT - Brazilian Association of Telesserviços. Finally, in the part of the study accomplished with base in the fulfilling of a questionnaire in which 103 companies took part, it was verified that for statistical significance shows that there is relation among monitoring and involvement in the sales and performance intensity of the monitoring the operator is associated with the involvement in the products and services sale. However, the study shows that the performance low relation of Call centre with the practices interactions of HR with the market segment and with the market strategy. Then, the study also concluded that, Call's Industry in Brazil has growth great possibilities for the nearby years of 2006, besides evidencing that training actions increase the skills of the professional / A presente Dissertação analisa as práticas de recursos humanos em call center e seus impactos em uma unidade de negócio. O entendimento da indústria de call center, desperta o interesse de pesquisadores nacionais e internacionais, por ser um setor em grande expansão na última década, além de ser um dos setores de serviços que mais emprega profissionais. Por isso, discutem-se as dimensões das práticas organizacionais, indicando que o setor merece um estudo que explique suas características e especificidades, no âmbito das práticas de gestão de pessoas, e seus reflexos no resultado operacional de uma unidade de negócio. Esta discussão é feita a partir da análise dos dados de empresas terceirizadas de call center, e daquelas que desenvolvem outros trabalhos como atividades principais, mas possuem, dentro de suas instalações, um departamento de call center, ambos os casos, com cadastros na ABT - Associação Brasileira de Telesserviços. Finalmente, na parte do estudo, realizada com base no preenchimento de um questionário em que 103 empresas participaram, verificou-se que a significância estatística mostra que existe relação entre monitoramento e envolvimento nas vendas, e que a intensidade de monitoramento do desempenho do operador está associada com o seu envolvimento na venda de produtos e serviços. No entanto, o estudo mostra que há baixa relação do desempenho do call center com as interações das práticas de Recursos Humanos (RH) com o segmento de mercado e com a estratégia de mercado. O estudo também concluiu que, a indústria de call center no Brasil tem grandes possibilidades de crescimento para os próximos anos de 2006, além de evidenciar que ações de capacitação em treinamento aumentam a profissionalização dos operadores no atendimento

This diploma thesis deals with the process of recruiting and selecting staff from the personnel management point of view. The thesis describes the Czech Republic and New Zealand, characterizes their banking systems, analyses the process of recruiting and selecting for the position of Customer Service Representative, Phone Assist and Cards Inbound into the Call Centre Group at two international banks operated on the different parts of the world and on the different labour markets. At the end, it indicates strengths and weaknesses and suggests some recommendation for more efficient process by using the theoretical knowledge.

The objective of this study was to: (1) assess the overall wellness climate profile of a sample of higher education call centre employees for national benchmarking purposes; (2) explore the relationship between the participants‟ sense of coherence, affective wellbeing and burnout; and (3) determine how the participants differ regarding these variables in terms of socio-demographic contextual factors such as gender, race, age, and marital status. The South African Employee Health and Wellness Survey was used as a measuring instrument. Compared to the national norm, the results indicated a risky wellness climate reflecting a burnout propensity, lower morale (affective wellbeing) and lower resilience (sense of coherence). Significant relations existed between the participants‟ sense of coherence, affective wellbeing and burnout levels. Significant differences regarding these variables were also detected between males and females and the various marital status groups regarding the participants‟ sense of coherence, affective wellbeing and burnout. The findings of this study contributed new knowledge that may be used to inform employee wellness programmes within a higher education call centre environment. The study concluded with recommendations for future research and practice. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. Comm. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

The objective of this study was to: (1) assess the overall wellness climate profile of a sample of higher education call centre employees for national benchmarking purposes; (2) explore the relationship between the participants‟ sense of coherence, affective wellbeing and burnout; and (3) determine how the participants differ regarding these variables in terms of socio-demographic contextual factors such as gender, race, age, and marital status. The South African Employee Health and Wellness Survey was used as a measuring instrument. Compared to the national norm, the results indicated a risky wellness climate reflecting a burnout propensity, lower morale (affective wellbeing) and lower resilience (sense of coherence). Significant relations existed between the participants‟ sense of coherence, affective wellbeing and burnout levels. Significant differences regarding these variables were also detected between males and females and the various marital status groups regarding the participants‟ sense of coherence, affective wellbeing and burnout. The findings of this study contributed new knowledge that may be used to inform employee wellness programmes within a higher education call centre environment. The study concluded with recommendations for future research and practice. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. Comm. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

The context of this research is the coping and wellness of call centre agents in a characteristically high-stress work environment. The purpose of the study was to construct a psychological coping profile by investigating the relationship between individuals‘ wellness-related dispositional attributes and their resiliency-related behavioural capacities which has been under researched in a call centre work environment. A quantitative cross-sectional survey approach was followed. The population comprised predominantly of a non –probability sample of (N=409) predominantly early career permanently employed black females employed in call centres in Africa. Correlation and multivariate statistics highlighted cognitive (cynicism and hardy-control), affective (managing own emotions) and conative (hardy-commitment) behavioural elements that should be considered in the psychological coping profile of call centre agents. Age and gender were also shown to be significant moderators of the relationship between the wellness-related attributes and the resiliency-related capacities. The main findings are reported and interpreted in terms of an empirically derived psychological coping profile. The findings may provide valuable pointers for the design of wellness intervention practices which add to the body of knowledge concerned with employee wellness in call centres / Industrial & Organisational Psychology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

Title: Unified standart of operational informational system management and upgrading technology for receiving emergency calls. Objective: Operation description and modernizastion of information systems and the Emergency Call Centre and usability compared to other lines in the CR and a single line in the European Union Method: Data search and collection about the operation and modernization of information systems from available sources and compared with previous technologies Results: Presentation of research results and comparison with previous data at a national level and compare the current situation in the Czech Republic and the EU Key words: Emergency Call Centre, Integrated Rescue System, information systems, the single European emergency number 112