The correlation between pay satisfaction and turnover intent among call center agents in company X

Abstract

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies have become a major source of revenue and employment for the country since its induction to the Philippines back in 1992. The Philippines have become the mecca of call centers and customer services around the world with over 50 globally recognized organizations and more than 700 branches nationwide,. By offering low tax regimes, cheap labor and excellent services, the Philippines is continuously attracting more and more large-scale foreign investments and generating thousands of employment for Filipinos every year. However, along with the rise of BPO companies comes their greatest challenge: the increasing turnover rate of their call center agents. A number of possible reasons for the escalating turnover rate have been hypothesized, but no single major factor has been verified as the cause of the booming turnover rate. With that in mind, this study investigated the relationship between pay satisfaction and turnover intent among call center agents in one BPO company. The sample of the study comprised of 60 call center agents employed under Company X using convenience sampling. A survey questionnaire was administered to the respondents which measures the variables used in the study. After analyzing the data gathered from the respondents using Spearman’s rank correlation, the results showed that at 5% level of significance, there is a significant correlation between pay satisfaction and turnover intent (p-value: 0.001 (2-tailed)) and there exists a negative monotone (rs=-0.402) relationship between the said variables. From the results of the study, it was concluded that there is an inverse relationship between pay satisfaction and turnover intent which means that as the respondent’s level of pay satisfaction increases, their turnover intent decreases. The same is true for the reverse wherein a low level of pay satisfaction can result to high levels of turnover intention. Future studies may include replication of this research as a comparative study between two other BPO companies with improvements on sample size and sampling method as well as the inclusion of other factors that may also affect turnover intent and adding a qualitative method into the study to improve the overall results of the study.