Feeling unsure: quit or stay? Uncovering heterogeneity in employees' intention to leave in Indian call centers

International audienceEmployee turnover remains to be one of the biggest human resource problems facing the Indian international call center industry. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive study of how the attitudes of call center employees toward different aspects of their work affect their intention to leave. Our specific contribution to the literature is in understanding the heterogeneity among employees and how this affects meaningful inference in studying employees' intention to leave. To achieve this goal, we compare and contrast between traditional ordinary least squares regression models that have been used in the extant literature with latent class analysis. Latent class analysis suggests the presence of three distinct groups of employees, thus confirming the heterogeneity present in the data. The three groups can be represented as the two polar groups, one keen on staying and the other keen on leaving, and a significantly large third group of employees who are unsure. We also find that the impact of different attitudes vary between groups in terms of both economic significance (magnitude of coefficients), and statistical significance. This study throws important light on the research on turnover and has significant research and practical implications