(Luận văn) high turnover rate in zpi department of abc corporation

TRAN HA MINH QUAN Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2020 tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg... TRAN HA MINH QUAN Ho

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-

Le Do Phuong Uyen

HIGH TURNOVER RATE IN ZPI DEPARTMENT OF ABC

CORPORATION

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

THESIS ADVISOR: ASSOC PROF TRAN HA MINH QUAN

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2020 tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-

Le Do Phuong Uyen

HIGH TURNOVER RATE IN ZPI DEPARTMENT OF ABC

CORPORATION

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

THESIS ADVISOR: ASSOC PROF TRAN HA MINH QUAN

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2020tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

CONTENTS

Acknowledgement 1

Executive summary 4

Chapter 1 background 5

I Company introduction 5

1.1 ABC Joint Stock Company 5

1.2 ZION Company Limited – ZION Co., Ltd 5

1.3 ZPI E-wallet Introduction 5

1.4 ZPI Department (ZPI) 6

II Problem context 7

2.1 Symptom analysis 7

2.2.1 Barrier of finding appropriate replacements 9

2.3 Personal reason 15

2.4 Low employees' job satisfaction 16

2.5 Unproductive teamwork 18

III Problem exploration 19

3.1 Theoretical framework 19

IV Problem validation 21

V Main problem identification 22

Chapter 3: Causes validation and solutions 33

I Potential causes analysis33 1.Ineffective leadership 33

2.Perceived lack of fairness 34

II Causes validation 34

1 Ineffective leadership 34

2 Perceived lack of fairness 34

III Main-cause identification 37

IV Sub-causes identification 35

1 Organizational politics 35

4 Theoretical framework 35

5 Sub-causes validation 42 tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

References 57

APPENDIX 63

A Supporting information 1.1.4 Interviewee’s Demographic 63

1.2 Interview guide 64

1.2.1 Introduction 63

1.2.2 Warm – up question 63

1.2.3 Main body of interview 63 tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

Executive summary

Over the span of many millennia, science and technology have made many glowing achievements and breakthroughs in an ever-changing society Henceforth, they accelerate the booming development of IT industry to enhance the quality of life as well as productive working performance Although the general public could not deny the imperative and crucial role of human beings, even we have novel and state-of-art technical machinery For this reason, any corporations also attach much importance to the workforce; somehow, IT industry has been facing encounters to attract and retain staff due to the fast-paced, competitive advancement

A turnover analysis on IT (Information Technology) industry reflects the pessimistic impact of high turnover rates could be significantly harmful to IT companies (1) In fact, the employees are the most valuable asset in this industry, which forms a stable development team to guarantee the fulfillment of conditions and terms of clients’ contracts

On the upshot, recruiting and developing new replacements for the fitting organization could cost much more huge time, effort and finance of recruiting, training new counterparts than maintaining current ones High staff turnover is acknowledged to be a detrimental and potential threat to the business's revenue The main purpose of this thesis is

to explore the causes that lead to a high turnover rate at ZPI Department The finding of the study indicated that ineffective leader style is the main drive why employees decided to leave the company and recommend some apt and applicable solutions to retain employees based on the method of using validated data from secondary data, in-depth interviews, statistical surveys in combination with theory-based approach /

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CHAPTER 1 BACKGROUND

I COMPANY INTRODUCTION 1.1 ABC Joint Stock Company

ABC Joint Stock Company is a leading technology company in the digital and IT industry in Vietnam market (Forbes, 2016) The company was founded in September 2014 by two founders: Bryan Pelz, and CEO Le Hong Minh ABC Corporation is an enterprise serving more than 80% of Internet users in Vietnam and is also the largest game publisher and developer in Vietnam ABC currently has more than 2000 employees working with the spirit

“Embracing challenge” for the mission “Make the Internet change Vietnamese lives.”

ABC is one of the 100th ideal working in Vietnam, which was voted by Anphabe and Nielsen during the past three years In ABC, members' abilities and contributions are

recognized not only by monthly salaries but also receive rewards from projects, products, year-end rewards, stocks that commensurate with work experience The environment drives creativity, ABC-ers open-mindedly welcome those who dare to embrace the challenges to pursue a passion

Currently, ABC operates and operates on four main product lines: digital content including news, training and online entertainment, community links and e-commerce;

software and utilities; e-commerce, payment gateway products The company has constantly made efforts to invest, develop, build Vietnamese products and bring the traditional cultural and educational elements of Vietnam into foreign online entertainment products ABC’s products are constructed as an ecology on the Internet, including online entertainment, news, social network products and platforms connected to the online payment system

Table 1 Summary table of business lines of ABC Joint Stock Company ITEM NAME OF SECTOR

1 Production of electronic components

2 Production of computers and peripheral devices of computers

3 Production of communication equipment

4 Producing civil, electrical goods

5 Retailing computers, peripheral devices, software and telecommunication

equipment in specialized stores

6 Retail of audiovisual equipment in specialized stores

(Source: Internal report – ABC Portal)

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1.3 ZPI Department

ZPI department comprises 05 main divisions (Building_Product, Use_Insight, Product_Design, Operation, ZMB) with 26 employees in total (not including 02 missing positions: product director, product manager)

Core_Payment team & P2P teamwork under the control and managing of Building_Product division (Div.) Their tasks are considered as one of the most complexes in e-wallet development, and these two teams must operate simultaneously To be particularly, P2P (Peer to Peer Payment) is the high-speed form of online payment which transfers directly between two individuals Users need Core_Payment team to support them to open a provider's account for connecting bank account’s services and sending money to the account for transactions and payments with other individuals also have accounts at that supplier)

Besides, ZPI Dept supervises, monitors both Product_design Div and User_insight Div to draw up and illustrate the product’s interface for responding to customers’ behavior’s demand

ZMB division has the vital role of integrating ZPI ecosystem into Zalo platform, developing features for TOPUP services (allowing customers with bank accounts to deposit money directly into prepaid accounts (Airtime) of telecom companies, online games, consulting, e-wallets, etc via SMS, GPRS, Internet or bank account to pay 3G/4G mobile fee;

water and electricity bills; booking tickets, hotels or airlines, etc.)

Operation division administers 02 lines – Promotion (providing campaigns, publicity to attract new users’ attention) and Operating (offer incentives to provide the loyal customer base)

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II PROBLEM CONTEXT 2.1 Symptom analysis

On the authority of ABC’s annual financial reports and internal data along with executives’ analysis from 2016 to Quarter 1/2020, ZPI Department has experienced the hardship, difficulties in the field of solving the workforce crisis due to the high turnover rate

Figure 2 ABC’s overall numbers of leaving employees from 2018 – Q1/2020

(Source: HRBP Report – ZPI, Updated to 1 st Mar 2020)

As can be seen from the graphs, ZPI Dept has taken the major quantity of leaving employees in ABC from 2018 to present, ranging from 11 employees (Q1/2020) to 24 employees (2018) These numbers reflect the significant human depletion at ZPI dept in these recent years

Figure 3 Turnover trends at ZPI Dept from 2017 – Q1/2020

(Source: HRBP Report – ZPI, Updated to 1 st Mar 2020)

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From the fiscal year 2017 to Q1/2020, the turnover rate has demonstrated remarkable upward trends Notably, the fiscal year 2018 witnessed the highest ratio of turnover (92,31%), followed by 2019 (65,38%) Although the turnover rate in 2019 decreased by 26.93%, Quarter 1/2020 has taken over nearly two-fold (40,74%) compared to the turnover rate of

2018

Figure 4 Average turnover rate and retention rate counted per quarters from 2017-2019

(Source: Financial Report & HRBP Report,

2016, 2017 & 2018; ABC’s internal portal source)

According to HRBP’s internal report about ZPI Dept, the number of resigned employees was pretty high throughout months from Q1/2018 to Q1/2020 To be more precise, the high turnover rate takes the major part in the first half of the years; especially in the late Q2 – mid Q3 (June-August), which is extremely abnormal to ABC (listed in 100 best working tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

As can be seen from figure 2.6, the average turnover rate of ZPI Dept in 2018 takes over greater than the year 2017’s counterparts Moreover, this is pretty significant from Q1/2018 to Q4/2018 (October & November) consecutively, which outweighs outweigh roughly twofold than the same time in 2017 Particularly, Q4/2018 counted from October to November had the higher amount average percentage of 03 months in Q1/2018 that demonstrate the positive workforce crisis Based on the graph, although the Q4/2018 only includes 02 months (October and November); however, the revenue is only less than ¼ and ½

of the revenue of the Q1 -Q2/2018 respectively Meanwhile, the turnover rate reached higher 1.5 and 0.75 times than such these phases

2.2 Business consequences reflected by symptom

Figure 5 Consequences of the business symptoms

(Source: Author’s synthesis)

2.2.1 Barrier of finding appropriate replacements

IT sector has been concerned as the billion-dollar industry due to its huge profits;

therefore, almost companies working in this field highly appreciate of attracting and retaining technical manpower Actually, ZPI Dept has been facing such a complex issue for recruiting employees having experience in mobile payment, which is in short supply Besides, those ones could have good in-sight knowledge of customer behavior, market trend along with wide networking, connections as banks, providers, dealers or shopkeepers, etc Actually, voluntary employee turnover directly involves the cost of hiring and training new employees, cost of lost time until new employees achieve full productivity and cost of unused production capacity during the period of adjustment of new employees (1)

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Employee turnover cost is concerned as the cost to hire a replacement taking a huge amount of budget to pay internal recruiters (Travelling costs to candidates or HR staffs, post-and- after interviewing costs, celebrating career fair for sourcing, etc.) or at least third parties – headhunters, advertising agency to place an ad for vacancies; opportunity costs are also the intangible must-paid expenses to any companies Therefore, companies or organizations should realize that turnover is an issue which can affect badly for finance, operation situation

in one company or organization

Indeed, the average time to fill in a replacement at ABC has increased years by years

The more time the vacancies are not fulfilled, the more stagnant, efficient the performance is

We have the formula to calculate how long the recruiter or talent acquisition business partner could find appropriate candidates for ZPI dept

𝐴𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑙𝑙 =𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐽𝑜𝑏 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔

𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐽𝑜𝑏 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠

Table 3 Average time to fill replacements at ZPI Dept

(Source: HRBP Report – ZPI Dept., ABC, 2018)

Besides, the depletion of the workforce could create an overlapped and overwhelming task for taking a long time to recruit new appropriate replacements, even training time

Absolutely, as can be observed, resigned employees’ workload would be transferred to current employees As a result, the employees definitely endure high-intense job stress caused

by a vast transferred workload (HAU) Therefore, all remarked facts could thrust to product image as well for not having enough labor forces so as to enable the platform’s advantage, which pretty fiercely meet the customer demands then shrink market share undoubtedly

According to FT Confidential Research (2018), the results reflect that ZPI possesses roughly half of the national market share after homegrown Momo Additionally, followed by the internal information and Mr.Tam Phan (Former Key Product Owner), the market share in terms of both online and offline markets from Q1 to mid-Q3/2018 reached just approximately 4%, indicating the dramatic and significant decreased outcome

2.2.2 The negative impact of turnover on financial business

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high revenue than any other years To be particular, ZPI has paid huge expenses for alternative job-matches

 Cost for recruitment:

ABC- Zion recruits new staff through internal and external sources In terms of internal recruitment, Talent Acquisition Business Partner Department will send the job announcement to all staff thanks to the Employee Referral Program (ERP) If the candidate could pass the interview and probation, the staff who introduce new employees will receive the commission at least VND 1.000.000 to the utmost extent (VND 15.000.000), which ranges from 15%-50% based on the level of referral staffs

Table 4 Commission expense of employee referral program

(Source: HRBP Report – ZPI Dept., ABC, 2019)

Furthermore, ABC could expense for a job posting and other services supporting recruitment on some channels as Jobstreet – SiVa, Vietnamworks, TopDev, MyWorks, ITViec, etc as below

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Table 5 Recruitment cost of online paid channels

Employer Branding

3E-IP TEST

 Cost for training:

Along with supports for foreign language learning: 1,000,000 VND / month for 18 months with three languages such as English / Korean / Chinese, ABC also provides a diverse wide array of courses for every employee, which is appropriate to each staffs’ demand so as

to optimize the human capital for enhancing working performance Training tasks not only belonged to the Learning & Development (L&D) team but also external organizations (PACE Institute, Institute of Human Resources and International Cooperation – INTIC, MindCoach Vietnam, etc.) with the high expenses

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Table 6: Training cost of ZPI Dept from 2017 to 2019

Number of new employees attending

to internal orientation courses

employees Number of internal training courses

for new employees

17 courses 49 courses 93 courses

(Source: L&D Dept.’s Report for ZPI Dept., ABC, 2019)

Followed by all mentioned facts above, the abnormally significant turnover rate affect badly to the business situation of ZPI Dept., which also has affected adversely for financial or operational matters of internal ABC company at the end of the year

Figure 6 Subsidiaries & Associated companies’ profit contribution of ABC through the years

( Source: Financial Report, 2016, 2017 & 2018; ABC’s internal portal source)

As can be seen from the graph, Zion is the worst subsidiaries of ABC in terms of gaining profit; meanwhile, it has also been continually diminishing respectively since 2017

Zion's loss is understandable because the company is still in the process of approaching and exploring the market, in the context of consumers still not interested in mobile payments in general and Zalo has not sparked the brand image ZPI effectively, efficiently

According to the explanation of item 13.1 "Investing in subsidiaries" in ABC's financial statements recorded a long-term provision for financial investments in Zion at the end of 31/12/2018 of VND 180,174 billion A year earlier, ABC had a shortfall of VND 38,609 billion for its investment in Zion; whereas, in 2018, ABC- Zion lost about 141,566 billion dong, which outnumbered approximate five times The fierce reduction in profit

Subsidiaries & Associated companies’ profit contribution of ABC (Billion)

Gains/Losses (2017) Gains/Losses (2018) Gains/Losses (2019) Value Investing tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

profoundly takes place in Q4/2018, followed by Q3 as well as Q2; which occur concurrently over the period of the uppermost peak at the highest turnover rate (19%) in October – early Q4/2018

From these pessimistic results, which have been declared as below, not having enough manpower so as to research and develop ZPI’s features for adapting customers’ demands, they could mislay their market shares that impact directly towards the business outcomes of Zion in particularly and ABC in general Turnover rate is one of the most crucial issues which the Board of Directors (BOD) and involved departments as Human Resources (HR Dept.) need to pay more attention to manage under the controllable performance

High turnover rate is a symptom which ZPI Dept in particular and ABC-Zion in general, whose prominent long-term mission so as to dominate Vietnamese market nation-widely and globally, had made the board of directors (BODs) reconsiders and figure out the reasons why ZPI dept.’s employees left and whether the symptoms would get extremely worse Therefore, ABC has been analyzing potential problems affecting the high turnover rate, which could be the main drive to the huge loss in profit 2018 of ABC-Zion The targeted intention in this study is investigating the causes leading to employee turnover actions and proposing applicable solutions to conquer this matter

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CHAPTER 2: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

ABC-Zion also encounters this matter in ZPI sector; somehow, the result illustrates the dramatic fluctuation towards the retention rate as well as turnover rate According to historical data and in-depth interviews with related persons in terms of external and internal perception, those ones are current employees, ex-workers, resigned staff, including top managers, senior and junior executives in ZPI The result shows how much ZPI’s employees satisfy with their job and to find out why they want to quit their jobs

Figure 8 The initial cause-effect map

(Source: Author’s synthesis from the 1 st in-depth interviews)

Correspondingly, low job satisfaction in ZPI’s employees and personal reasons have

an impact on the high turnover rate To the extent of this thesis, the author has synthesized some potential problems which are demonstrated in the initial cause-effect map through 04 in-depth interviews that were conducted with voluntarily resigned staffs in ZPI

I Potential problems

1 Personal reason

Shah et al (2) affirmed that personal reasons stated as several causes relate to healthiness, educational conditions, family issues and social status that could lead to turnover within the organization In terms of these criteria, health matters, relocation, attending military service, start-up, or another family issue are the main drives Personal reasons also tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

showed the ability to adapt to new working conditions in case employees could not fit with the working environment, they will easily change jobs (3)

In ZPI Dept setting, the personal reason was a justification accounted second-ranked percentage The health issue was also mentioned in some exit surveys A shred of typical evidence is Mr ThxnV3 (VG-071x5), he revealed that high and strain workload of ZPI made him have significant insomnia

Besides, he also gave a further explanation about not favor the strategy of moving to the new headquarter – ABC Campus in the next future since his living place will be far from the workplace

Furthermore, Ms VanPxN (VG-04x86) is going to migrate with her family (3) and learn post-graduate degrees majoring in data mining in the Netherlands, while Mr ChanhLx2 (VG-042x4) decided to start-up

2 Low employees' job satisfaction 2.1 Imbalance Work-Life Balance (WLB)

Work-Life Balance (WLB) is a common concept across sectors (4) WLB is a consideration of individual choices contributing to the different behavior of each individual It

is responding to personal conditions to complete one’s responsibilities and ambition in terms

of “mutual benefit of the individual, business and society.” That means people should know how to “control over when, where and how they work” (5) When employees achieve their personal and accomplish WLB, they have different approaches to respond to their work (6) In practice, WLB improves productivity, motivates and satisfies employees greatly (7)

In fact, almost IT developers are unsatisfied with the OT working, the intense pressure and strain stress affecting their work-life balance and health issues, (8),(9), (10)

Along with health issue, Ms ThxnV3 (VG-071x5) also wanted to change another career path or working for SMEs that could reduce the workload and have more additional

time at the weekend; especially on the occasional holiday with his parents (11)

2.2 Job anxiety

The nurture of work at ZPI Dept is more complex than any other project, particularly the late-year period near Tet Holidays for developing and accomplish platform features, especially the Lucky money attribute All staff should bring to an end the flawless finished product on target and on scheduled time from design steps (brochures, marketing ads, UI/UX tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

products for 03 consecutive periods, or their negative project management calibration results last year rating Bottom/ Middle for two consecutive years, even they were rated poor performance by Dept Head

2.3 Ineffective working conditions

Working conditions comprise of subjective factors - related to the employees, environmental factors, and organizational factors (12) Employees who work under poor working condition are less satisfied than who work in normal working condition (12) As a consequence, working conditions have a relationship with satisfaction or dissatisfaction (13) and it is necessary to improve the working conditions to boost employee satisfaction (12)

Stagnant & unproductive processes, tools such as ERP systems, and HRIS are mentioned that affect job satisfaction

2.4 Un-challenging work

Challenging work is how difficult or complex that employees perceive their job (14)

This factor has two characteristics of variety and autonomy (15) Challenging work plays an important role in encouraging employees’ cognitive and emotion in their work When employees perceive their work challenged, they put more effort into their job and wish to meet task requirements, usually resulting in more valuable job experiences (14) It means that the attitude of the employee to work becomes more positive and satisfied Decker & Borgen (16), on the contrary, claimed that unchallenging work has a significantly negative influence

on job satisfaction regardless of occupational groups With the Motivation-Hygiene theory, Herzberg (13) confirmed challenging work is one factor leading to job satisfaction It is also approved in some studies (14), (16), (17)

Some team-leaders have strain conflicts that lead to stagnant and delayed tasks and thus, this fact makes most subordinates in ZPI feel stressed, confused, tired at with un-challenging task-works ZPI’s employees have to follow the usual and unattractive tasks of their team-leaders Furthermore, not any proposals could be approved from the overall department because they could be able to access more challenging work due to not having the right to contribute innovative ideas

2.4 Strain superior-subordinate-relationship

Some empirical studies (18), (19), (20) revealed that extrinsic items, including good interpersonal relationships, friendly working environment, were cited by employees as key motivational variables that influenced their retention in corporations In Bassett-Jones and

Lloyd (21), they stated that the dissatisfied factors also comprises weak co-worker relationships

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According to observation and employee records collected by Ms QuanTx - that high and middle manager in ZPI is quite conservative, hot-temper and want to show-off, which creates the bureaucracy, intense power gap among them, lower the teamwork activities

Additionally, Mr NamTx3 (VG- 045x4) showed the unsatisfied matter about the responsibilities level since the company did not focus on employees who really work, contribute to each part of ABC

2.5 Unproductive teamwork

Internal conflicts decreased cross-collaboration among teams, individualism in the

feeling employees perceived, the more job satisfaction decreased Moreover, workload allocation is not divided fairly compared to other departments; some teams take too much responsibility for main tasks; other teams do some simpler and less complicated work

Figure 9 Teamwork evaluation

(Source: HRBP’s synthesis, 2019)

Consequently, the overall working performance is also pending for not having direct and good cooperation between two teams and superior-subordinate-relationship In fact, the linkage between fierce conflicts team-leaders and outcome has poorly affected that lead to delay progress as well as make the subordinate staff confuse and not know how to follow whose perception whether to their team-leader line’s plan or another team-leader’s decision

0 2 4 6 8 10

Team Foundation

Team Functioning

Team Performance

Team Skills Team Culture

Team Relation Leadership

Teamwork Evaluation

ZPI GSN DnD GS6

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leaving decisions Somehow, they could never say they are true reasons due to some barrier of expression, gaining dis-merits

In summary, personal reasons are the most common and simplest reasons which most employees easily choose to quit their job In fact, the organization hardly manages this issue because it is one of the external factors To be specific, personal reasons come from the workforce’s self-thinking and it often happens in almost co-operations, which is concerned as the objective and reasonable fact towards leaving decisions Generally, HR practices in any enterprise could not solve at all the reason of resigning by personal reasons

In stark contrast, employees’ job satisfaction could be minimized effectively, efficiently

by organizational capital or HR and management practices Each organization could improve and resolve high turn overate by elevating general staffs’ perceive of high satisfaction better than meeting multiple personal demands This essay will continue to discover central problems that created a high turnover rate in the ZPI Dept and provide solutions in order to address this matter

II Problem exploration

2.1 Theoretical framework

Govaerts (22) stated that the success of the corporation was mainly based on their human-assets Subsequently, a mandatory obligation for each company so as to retain those ones (23) Employee-retention is often well-known as “the intention of employees of staying loyal towards their current company” (24) when employees are motivated to remain in corporations for a long-term or until the on-going project has been completed (25)

Subsequently, as per studies of (26), (27), (28), (29) working environment, balance and superior-subordinate-relationship were noted as the commonly identified factors affecting employee- turnover Therefore, the updated cause-effect map is illustrated as below:

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Figure 10 The 1st updated cause-effect map

(Source: Author’s synthesis from literature review)

2.1.1 Working environment

Janet Cheng Lian Chew (17) stated human motivations depend on their own leadership and relationship behaviors in working culture and corporate structure, working

working environment which have generous human resource policies that create a very good chance to satisfy and retain employees by providing them an appropriate level of privacy and sound control on work environment which enhances the motivation levels to commit with the organization for the long term Motivate them to keep on commitment and loyal to firms for longer-period (35) On the other hand, (31), (32), (33), (34) stated that organizations should

do better in the working environment for their employees Meanwhile, (35) mentioned that organizations in case of not paying attention to the working environment that would adversely affect job satisfaction and working performance, leading to low retention levels The working environment is the key factor in employee satisfaction, if someone is feeling down, they will bring everyone else down with them and poor working environment it does not only decrease productivity but also cause of employee resignation

According to Abdul and Raheela’s study (35), the working environment plays a

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a great working environment, yet, having a low retention rate This factor impacts the level of satisfaction of employees that may trigger turnover rate as well The working environment is everything around staffs that affect employee performance and employee satisfaction with their job if they perform their job well; that is why a company needs to improve their working environment for success (36)

2.1.2 Workplace Aggression

Workplace aggression is a significant and prevalent organizational problem An organization's procedural justice climate, such as unfairness or employee mistreatment, often results in workplace aggression (37) Assault at the office could harm employees (38) and lower productivity, increased employee tension, absenteeism (39), lawsuits, increased insurance payment, tarnished reputations, reduced customer satisfaction, and costly property impairment, which tend to surge up in subsequent years (40)

III Problem validation

The 2nd interview is operated to verify whether workplace aggression or unattractive working environment was cited by the literature indicated above and profoundly conferred for more findings on central problems

3.1 Unattractive working environment

Mrs.TrucNx (VG-071x5) and Mr.DuLx (VG-045x4) response that employees in ABC could only attend training programs if they could get well performance in continuous two terms consecutively and their leadership is adequate Therefore, those employees who do not achieve excellent performance, it would take a long time to participate in the development program because of high-position limitation

On the other hand, they also expressed that an energetic working environment and having experience in making helpful, innovative products, especially in IT area ZPI are the key attributes to keep them stay loyal to the company and ZPI Furthermore, in terms of female aspects, Mrs Truc also does not move other companies for aiming at stable jobs; yet, she has affirmed that perceived the environment less active than BO (Business Operation) division, which is the previous unit before HR assigned her to ZPI

3.2 Workplace aggression

According to additional information from Mr TamPx, one spotlight story for workplace aggression is the strain conflicts between two team leaders of the Core_Payment team and the P2P team In fact, the tension drives to the high-level that ZPI used to work at the same 15th Floor - FV office (Le Dai Hanh Str.side); yet, after intense debates, P2P Product manager insists on voluntarily asked for moving his team’s workplace to 15th floor –

SV office (Phu Tho stadium side)

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Obstructionism was reported in may exit surveys of ZPI’s resigned employees They mentioned that the information sometimes is failed to be transmitted Another team causes others to delay action on matters important to the target, sometimes

IV Main problem identification

According to the literature and in-depth interviews, it could be drawn that both an unattractive working environment and workplace aggression are central problems However, followed the opinion poll, workplace aggression possesses a more crucial issue than the unattractive working environment In fact, the unattractive working environment could be easily solved, and many ZPI’s employees evaluate low job satisfaction as well as high turnover rate derived from mainly workplace aggression (83.3%) Besides, apart from not having an on-site project that gives staffs the chance to challenge in order to enhance their hands-on experience inasmuch as ZPI has just published in the Vietnamese market in recent three years; ABC’s working environment is quite good and a bit higher than some competitors such as BOSCH, VinID – Vingroup, FPT Corp, Cybersoft and so forth Therefore, workplace aggression is the

main problem selected to be analyzed in the following steps

Figure 11 The 2nd updated cause-effect map tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

CHAPTER 3:CAUSES VALIDATION AND SOLUTIONS

I POTENTIAL CAUSES ANALYSIS

1 Ineffective leadership

Dawson (41), Oladapo (42) address the challenges that managers are facing dynamic changes in the composition of the talented labor force within the firms In fact, management support plays a crucial role in establishing the appropriate career plan, inspiring and motivating their immediate subordinates According to Caldwell and Dixon (19), leaders provide extended supports to staff, so they could grow and develop themselves to be the best and fit in the cultural corporation Ultimately through increased trust and love, a greater engagement propels the workforce so as to walk the extra mile and achieve targeted goals, especially in IT industry (13)

Figure 12 The impact of leadership practice Followed by some findings, leadership practices were negatively correlated with employees’ turnover intention, which indicates that the more effective leadership practices are, the lower turnover intention is To be more specific, practices of leadership comprise being a role model, executing motivation, visioning, empowerment, appreciation and sympathy, which would predict a high level of job satisfaction and results in a low level of turnover simultaneously

A study of Gwavuya (44), Chew (17), confirms that incompetent leadership results in low job commitment, high stress, poor employee performance, little employee satisfaction and turnover intention Netswera (14) confirmed in his study that management styles were the most prominent retention factor in South Africa

Nwokocha & Iheriohanma (45) Ngethe, Namusonge & Iravo (14), Wakabi (15) have confirmed the different leadership characteristics and styles and how they influenced employee intention to stay with the company and consequently heighten the productivity of the organizations From empirical studies as Long, Thean, Ismail & Jusoh (16) also revealed a direct negative relationship affecting to turnover intention Some other papers also examine that leadership style attributes to employee retention among junior executives (25) Towers Watson’s result on the Global Workforce in 2012 reinforces the view that managers have a profound impact on human cohesion with their work, stick up with the company and boost tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

them to be willing to contribute to the success of their company This research unveils that there is existed a positive relationship between management styles and retention (17)

Henceforth, literature has demonstrated that leadership is a crucial factor in job retention

2 Perceived lack of fairness

Fairness at work is considered as organizational justice (49), including perceived justice, whose perceptions demonstrate necessary workplace results such as commitment motivation and job performance (50, 51) Fairness is thus seen as a beneficial device that could bring about favorable outcomes as well as reduce job anxiety about being exploited by other members within organizations (42)

Additionally, individual cognitive to ambiguous situations is a personality trait

of tolerance for ambiguity (TFA) (52) In other words, a person with low TFA often discomforts with vague, incomplete, or inconsistent information Norton (34) Another justice research regarding performance appraisal has stated the tight relationship between organizational citizenship with interactional justice (53), employee satisfaction and the adoption of work appraisal (54) In case that employees believe in the appraisal process is irrelevant, political, or biased, they could perceive extreme job dissatisfaction Skarlicki and Folger (91)

II Causes validation

The 3rd interview is operated with the aim of verifying whether workplace aggression or unattractive working environment was cited by the literature indicated above and profoundly conferred for more findings on the main cause

Many current employees in ZPI perceived dissatisfaction with the upper-superiors and their unproductive management skills Mr.Tuannx3- VG-031x4 also gave his thought in the first stage that his new product manager – P2P team has no effective organizing skills and leadership skills Furthermore, followed by continuous interviews with Mr.TamPx, Mr

LuanxK, they concerned the injustice decision-making process has a significant impact on the perceived lack of fairness

Almost resigned staffs have not fired; somehow, some of them feel unsafe because few line managers, direct mentors, often assess outcomes unequally and execute bureaucratic leadership, which creates the strain, high- pressure atmosphere At the heart of this matter, IT employees are often well-trained and educated; they definitely dissatisfied with low morale, tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

Furthermore, although ABC periodically provides both internal and external

leadership courses (The 1 st line manager development of L&OD Dept., professional coaching

of Mind Coach Vietnam, Effective Training & Coaching Skills of PACE Institute, Train the trainer of VMP Academy) to middle-high positions at ZPI over the years, the results of

turnover rate are still pessimistic Therefore, fairness perception reinforcement should be selected to be analyzed in the following steps with the hope is better than the conventional method – conquering ineffective leadership skills Mrs PhuongVx – and Mr TamPx also agreed with this selected cause

In conclusion, the perceived lack of fairness is the main cause of ZPI’s problem

Figure 13 The 3rd updated cause-effect map

III Sub-causes identification

1 Organizational politics

Organizational politics (OGP) is one type of complex mixture of influence, power relationships at the workplace (55) OGP reflects a unique domain of interpersonal relations, which is characterized by indirect or direct (passive or active) human engagement at the expense of other’s benefits and organizational goals (56-61)

These kind activities are also defined as unsanctioned influence attempts in order

to execute tactics and dominate individuals’ activity with the aim of seeking to promote short term or long-term personal interest (57)

Besides, organizational politics could be concerned as the tool to secure or stimulate the collective interests of teams, groups, organizations, or society At the heart of this matter, organizational politics is harmful to the whole organization, because it not only leads to the brunt on the working performance of employees (62) but creates power struggles (2006:7) as well

Selected causes

tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

Followed by HRBP in charge of the ZPI dept belonged to Zalo Field, Mrs Phuongvn also know that the high turnover rate derived from serious individual issues – struggling among management levels and staffs, which were viral and spread to her through daily dialogues Besides, Mrs QuanTx2 also claimed that workforce crisis came to leader conflicts

by different mindsets between developers and line managers, Dept heads and other reasons stem from the intense debate in power & position competition among management levels

To be specific, the high-tide occurs with some arguments in the quarterly meeting of SMT (Senior Management Team – including Mr Dungdv – Head of Zalo.Payment Business) and BOD (Board of directors) In fact, Mr Dungdv wants to enhance the competitive advantage of ZPI Dept by enhancing the workforce and divide the workload fairly

Therefore, he proposed to cut down the workload by hiring more headcounts (HCs) approximately 10 persons for ZPI

Somehow, in terms of financial making-decision, Mr.Dungdv’s request conflicts with Mrs.Thanhtt, who is in charge of budgeting and controlling ABC’s finance mainly After Mrs ThanhTT’s politicking to other members in BOD, and thus SMT’s members also prioritize her unreasonable decision This fact led to Mr Dungdv (Former CEO of Uber Vietnam then working as Head of Payment Business at ABC Corp) quitted in October/2018

He perceived failing to have a decision-making right of himself

Additionally, few reasons are quite tactful as favoring one person over another, overemphasizing someone along with mental discords or infighting among colleagues, teams within ZPI dept., which stem from office politics Many politicking activities are also recorded in some certain divisions in ZPI, typically P2P, and Core_ Payment

From all collected interviews and reports as well as the supported theoretical framework, organizational politics is the main sub-cause

tot nghiep down load thyj uyi pl aluan van full moi nhat z z vbhtj mk gmail.com Luan van retey thac si cdeg jg hg

Figure 14 The Final Cause & Effect Map