Factors Influencing High Turnover in Multinational Call Centres in Malaysia

Abstract

The call centre industry in Malaysia has been registering tremendous growth making its way to becoming the hub for the Asia Pacific region. This is most certainly a move in the right direction as it creates employment opportunities thus improvement in the country’s economy. In line with this vision, companies venturing into call centres should place high standards in the running of these call centres. Unfortunately call centres are experiencing high turnover and it is not industry specific. This problem, if persists, will derail the country from its track to becoming the call centre hub of the Asia Pacific region. This research studied the factors contributing towards high turnover and proposed corrective measures to eliminate this problem. The major findings of the study were that age and level of education were insignificant in predicting employee turnover. Managers were more inclined to leave compared than non- managers. The nature of work and relationship with supervisors were insignificant in turnover intent, so was the perception of alternate employment opportunities. Despite that job hopping was a highly significant contributor and organisational commitment was the most important predictor of turnover intent. This calls for organisations to be employee focused by releasing control and subscribing to shared values to increase employee engagement.