The impact of job related factors, job context and work design on job satisfaction in Australian call centres

Past empirical research related to call centres’ has had a preoccupation with panoptic extrapolations and suggestions of stereotyping of call centres using ‘sacrificial HR’ strategies that encourage, high staff turnover, absenteeism and stress as the norm. The aim of this research is to investigate the nature and extent of job related factors on job satisfaction for customer service representatives (CSR’s) in five Australian call centres. The study used a broad sample to capture the diversity of call centre structures which included different industries and work designs -inbound, outbound and outsourced call centres. The study used a mixed methods approach of an adapted Job satisfaction quantitative survey N= 205 and indepth and focus groups N= 60 in five diverse Australian call centres. The study found that, CSR’s perception of fairness, equity and relevance of monitoring practices, together with a participative work environment and flexible work life balance practices are the most important contributors to job satisfaction. The findings also suggest that the manner in which work is designed has an impact on CSR satisfaction levels which appear to be higher for inbound CSR’s as contrasted to outbound cold-calling and sales, and blended approaches. The study concludes that utilizing a mixed methodology has unearthed nuances in the data that confirm and extend the extant literature of call centres. In particular organisations that embark on a ‘one size fits all’ HR strategy by ignoring these job related factors could eventually face further problems such as high staff turnover associated costs and potential sacrificial customer service strategies that will impact on the bottom line