Research has shown that staff members of call centres are experiencing high
levels of job stress due to the demands of their jobs. Employees frequently have
no control over their work environment and external factors that affect their
performance and job satisfaction. They could, however, develop and utilize
internal resources, like specific personality factors that can enable them to
manage their job stress more effectively. The aims of the study was to determine
the levels of job stress and burnout of staff members of a call centre and to
identify specific personality factors that could be valid predictors of the ability of
employees of a call centre to manage job stress and burnout effectively. Several
studies have focused on the relationship between personality, job stress and
burnout, but the Big Five personality traits and resilience as predictors of job
stress and burnout have not received adequate attention. Non-probability
sampling and specifically accidental sampling was used in a call centre in
Bloemfontein, South Africa. The call centre involved is an out-bound, debt
collecting call centre, with clients in South Africa and neighbouring states. A total
of 187 employees in the call centre were involved in the study. The respondents
were mainly black, female, single, South Sotho, between 21 and 25 years of age,
acquired a grade 12 qualification and have served for less than one year. The
measuring instruments that were used, include the International Personality Item
Pool, the Resilience Scale, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Human Services
Survey) and the Experience of Work and Life Circumstances Questionnaire.
Multiple stepwise regression analysis was used as statistical technique to
process the data. Respondents exhibited a high level of job stress, an average
level of emotional exhaustion, a high level of depersonalization and a low level of
personal accomplishment. A significant linear relationship was found between
job stress and specific Big Five personality factors, namely emotional stability
and openness to experience. A significant linear relationship was also identified
between conscientiousness and specific dimensions of burnout, namely
emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Resilience and more specifically acceptance of self and life was also found to be a valid predictor of
depersonalization, a dimension of burnout. Conscientiousness, agreeableness
and resilience were found to be valid predictors of the personal accomplishment
dimension of burnout. Future research in this regard should be done with a more
representative sample of call centres in South Africa in order to generalize the
results to call centres in general. The personality factors that have been
identified in this study as valid predictors of the effective management of job
stress and burnout could be used for purposes of selection and training in call
centres.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-08302010-094446 |
| Date | 30 August 2010 |
| Creators | Lamb, Shannon |
| Contributors | Prof M Kotze, Prof CL Bester |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-08302010-094446/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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