Emotional exhaustion in retail operation at bank for investment and development of vietnam – north saigon branch

Executive summary In recent years, BIDV North Saigon branch has showed some symptom of poor performance in retail banking operation in comparison with average of entire BIDV system as we

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

Executive summary

In recent years, BIDV North Saigon branch has showed some symptom of poor performance in retail banking operation in comparison with average of entire BIDV system as well as with other branches in Ho Chi Minh City region Through in-depth analysis and theory informed, “emotional exhaustion” was identified as the main problem that leads to poor performance of retail operation in the branch There are 3 causes considered to be reason for the main problem, they are performance appraisal bias from retail leaders, coworker incivility and work overload In consideration with the conditions of the branch and theories support, “coworker incivility” was appointed the main cause leading to the problem “emotional exhaustion” in retail operation Four potential solutions was suggested and evaluated, two of them (Issuing Branch Code of Conduct and Setting up extracurricular activities) were selected to solve the main problem “emotional exhaustion” to improve the performance of retail operation in BIDV North Saigon branch

Table of content

Executive summary 1

CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 6

1.1 Problem conceptualization: 6

1.1.1 Company overview: 6

1.1.2 Retail banking overview: 8

1.1.3 Symptoms: 9

1.2 Problem Identification 14

1.3 Problem definition 22

1.4 Problem existence 23

1.5 Importance of the problem-consequences and the validation 26

1.6 Causes of problem and the validation 28

CHAPTER 2: SOLUTION 33

2.1 Proposal of solution: 33

2.2 Potential Solution Evaluation: 36

2.3 Action Plan: 41

References 45

Appendix 1: Symptoms 50

Appendix 2: Problem Identification: 54

Appendix 3: Problem existence: (Question list from research of Maslach and Jackson, 1981): 56

Appendix 4: Problem importance and causes validation: 59

Appendix 5: Interview of solution and organizations of actions .62

Appendix 6: Survey form for proving existence of emotional exhaustion in retail operation in North Saigon branch and other branches in HCMC region .65

Appendix 8: Growth rate of retail criterias 2013 – 2015 in comparison with other

branches in HCMC region 67

Appendix 9: Productivity and Proportion of retail operation in comparison with

other branches in Ho Chi Minh city region in 2015 68

List of Figure

Figure 1 – Retail operation structure of BIDV North Saigon branch 7

Figure 2 – Initial Cause –effect map 19

Figure 3 – Final Cause-effect map 32

Figure 4 - Summarized timeline of Action Plan for dealing with Emotional

Exhaustion in retail operation 44

List of Table

Table 1 – Retail departments name abbreviation 8

Table 2 – Comparison on average growth of retail criteria 2013-2015 between

Entire BIDV system and BIDV North Saigon branch .10

Table 3 – Comparison on retail proportion of retail criteria between Entire BIDV

system and BIDV North Saigon branch .11

Table 4 – Comparison on Retail Capital Mobilization between BIDV North Saigon

branch and other branches in HCMC region 12

Table 5 – Comparison on Retail Loan Outstanding between BIDV North Saigon

branch and other branches in HCMC region 12

Table 6 – Comparison on Retail Profit between BIDV North Saigon branch and

other branches in HCMC region 13

Table 7 – Summary of opinions on potential problems in retail operation 19

at BIDV North Saigon branch 19

Table 8 – Comparison on number of day-off between retail employees and

employees from other operation in the branch .22

Table 9 – Result of emotional exhaustion survey in BIDV North Saigon branch and

some other branch 25

Table 10 – Solution suggested and evalution 40

CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

1.1 Problem conceptualization:

1.1.1 Company overview:

Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam JSC (BIDV) is the bank with the oldest history of Vietnam (58 years), who has always accompanied with the important stages in the economic of the country In 2015, 20-year milestone - BIDV transformed from a state capital serving to a commercial bank operating under market principles After 20 years of renovation, the Bank has made great progress, becoming one of the two banks which have the largest banking system in Vietnam

With the goal of development and expansion of the Bank's network across the country, especially in key economic areas in the south, BIDV Tan Binh Branch was established

on 01/12/2005, became the 8th BIDV branch presenting in HCM City at the time Till 01/2008, Tan Binh Branch was officially renamed as Branch Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of North Saigon.After 10 years, from initial 48 employees with 6 departments and 1 transaction office, the total number of staff now has reached over 140 employees, with 16 departmentsincluding 4 transaction officeslocated in Tan BinhDistrict, Go Vap District and District 10 BIDV North Saigon also completed expanding network tasks entrusted by BIDV headquarter: the establishment of new Tan Binh Branch, support human resources for merging Mekong Housing Bank (MHB) branches in 2015, for BIDV branches inside and outside the region

In June of 2015, the branch received Tan Son Nhat transaction office (now renamed to Nhat Tao transaction office) from the bank MHB, which was merged to

BIDV in April of 2015 Until December 31st 2015, the retail operation of the branch

comprised: Individual Customers department and 4 transaction offices located at Tan

Binh district, Go Vap district, district 10 With the scale of 69 employees (accounting for

42% total number of employee of entire branch), most of retail employees are young,

enthusiastic, dynamic and equipped full of operational knowledge, suitable with business

ICT Dept Individual Customer Transaction Department

IC Dept Individual Customer Department

Leader: 4 Surveyor: 1 Staff: 9

Leader: 3 RM: 3 Teller: 8

Leader: 2 Surveyor: 1 RM: 1 Teller: 3

Abbreviation Description

Cong Hoa TO,

Go Vap TO, Nhat

Tao TO

Cong Hoa transaction office, Go Vap transaction office, Nhat Tao transaction office

TR team Tax Refund team: The team works inside the

International Terminal – Tan Son Nhat International Airport, which

Table 1 – Retail departments name abbreviation

1.1.2 Retail banking overview:

Retail banking also known as Consumer Banking is the provision of services by a bank to individual consumers, rather than to companies, corporations or other banks Services offered include savings and transactional accounts, mortgages, personal loans, debit cards, and credit cards The term is generally used to distinguish these banking services from investment banking, commercial banking or wholesale banking It may also be used to refer to a division or department of a bank dealing with retail customers

Currently there is no exact definition of the concept of retail banking The definition of retail banking often comes from services or customers that the product forward According to the most common interpretation, retail banking is actively providing financial products and services primarily to customers, who are individuals, households and small businesses Retail banking services provision application of financial products and services to individuals through a network of individual branches,

transaction offices, or the customer can have direct access to banking products and services through the media, electronics and telecommunications

Vietnam, which has population of about 90 million people with growing income,

is a potential market of commercial banks This market will grow significantly in the future due to income growth and the growth of various types of enterprises Commercial banks tend to move to the retail, improving access to individual clients, small and medium-sized enterprises When switched to retail, banks will have larger markets, potential growth and of course, there may be increasing risk diversification in business

1.1.3 Symptoms:

Nowadays, retail banking has been identified as the major operation of commercial banks to its development strategy Following this trend of banking sector, BIDV has issued rational strategy to develop retail banking operation with proper methods and synchronistically organizing from head quarter to branches.Due to this strategy, result of retail banking operation in the period 2013 – 2015 was at high-level growth in scale, efficiency and quality In 2015, according to Internal report of BIDV

2013 - 2015, BIDV continues maintaining the 1th position in retail banking operation in Vietnam with the retail banking scale of 495 thousand billion VND In some other main retail banking criterions, BIDV has also made remarkable results:

- Retail Capital Mobilization in 2015 was 355 thousand billion VND, increasing 1.7 times in comparison with 2013, which made BIDV lead at the 1th position about retail capital mobilization among comercial banks in Vietnam

- Retail Loan outstanding in 2015 was 140 thousand billion VND, increasing 2.4 times in comparison with 2013, which made BIDV have the most loan outstanding among comercial banks in Vietnam

- Retail Profit in 2015 was 8.6 thousand billion VND, increasing nearly 2 times after 2 years, average growth in 2013-2015 period was 33%

In the trend of retail operation development, in contrast, the retail operation of BIDV North Saigon branch has showed inefficiency in comparison with entire BIDV system and other BIDV branches in Ho Chi Minh City region

Inefficient in comparison with entire BIDV system

In the period 2013-2015, the average growth rate of BIDV North Saigon in all main retail criteria (Retail Loan Outstanding, Retail Profit, Number of Retail customers) were much lower than entire BIDV system Specific figures are shown in the table below:

Criteria

Average growth rate 2013 - 2015

Difference Entire BIDV system BIDV North

Saigon

Table 2 – Comparison on average growth of retail criteria 2013-2015 between

Entire BIDV system and BIDV North Saigon branch

Besides, about the proportion criterias, BIDV North Saigon branch is also at a low level in comparison with entire BIDV system:

Criteria

Proportion in 2015

Difference Entire BIDV system BIDV North

Saigon

Table 3 – Comparison on retail proportion of retail criteria between Entire BIDV

system and BIDV North Saigon branch

From those figures above, it can be seen that retail operation of BIDV North Saigon branch is deviating with the development tendency of entire BIDV system which prioritizes to promote and develop retail banking operation

Inefficient in comparison with other branches in Ho Chi Minh City region

The performance of retail operation in the branch is also not satisfactory in comparison with other BIDV branches in Ho Chi Minh City region on many criteria:

Capital Mobilization

At the end of 2015, retail capital mobilization of BIDV North Saigon was 2,628 billion VND, ranking 7th among 15 BIDV branches (excepting MHB merged in 2015) in

Ho Chi Minh City region Besides, capital mobilization (CM) per retail employee in

2015 was 46.11 billion VND, ranking 13th among 15 BIDV branches in Ho Chi Minh City region, whereas the average CM per retail employee in the region was 62.62 billion VND

Moreover, the retail CM/total CM proportion was just 27%, ranking the last position among 15 branches in the region Whereas the average of this proportion in the region was 53%, which means that retail CM accounts more than a half of total CM in

the region With those figure and comparison, it can be seen that retail CM operation in BIDV North Saigon branch is quite ineffective

Table 4 – Comparison on Retail Capital Mobilization between BIDV North Saigon

branch and other branches in HCMC region

Table 5 – Comparison on Retail Loan Outstanding between BIDV North Saigon

branch and other branches in HCMC region

In 2015, Loan outstanding (LO) per retail employee of the branch was 12.7 billion VND, ranking for the 11th of 15 branches in the region, less than 2.67 billion VND in comparison with the average LO per retail employee in the region Besides, the ratio Retial LO/Total LO proportion was very low (8%), ranking as the 14th of 15 branches in the region In addition, RLO growth rate in 2013-2015 of the branch was also in the bottom group in the region

Table 6 – Comparison on Retail Profit between BIDV North Saigon branch and

other branches in HCMC region

In 2015, Retail Profit (RP) per retail employee of the branch was 1.09 billion VND, ranking 9th of 15 branches in Ho Chi Minh City region (excepting MHB branches merged in 2015) About Retail RP/Total RP proportion, BIDV North Saigon branch was ranked at the last position with 21%, much lower than the average (36%) in the region

Besides, in recent years there are also many signs that show problem with productivity of working of retail operation such as: received many complaint from customers about attitude of working, high turnover rate of retail operation, many day-off

of retail employees, bad relationship among employees…

Based on some analysis above, we can see that retail operation in North Saigon branch is ineffective in comparison to other branches in Ho Chi Minh City region This can be resulted from some problems that should be analyzed seriously and generate solutions to make improve Retail operation in the branch

1.2 Problem Identification

The method to find out the problem that makes retail operation inefficient in operating is interviewing BIDV North Saigon branch’s staff The initial interviews were conducted with five people of the branch who are relevant with retail operation, they are Mrs Hien – Deputy Director of Retail operation who is responsible for setting up the general development strategy for retail operation of the branch, Mr Hai-Head department of Individual customers who is in charge of deploying, improving retail products at the branch and setting up action program to promote the development of retail operation, Mrs Ngan - Head of Nhat Tao transaction office who is in charge of developing retail operation of the branch at the region of District 10, Mr Hung – former retail employee of Individual Customers department and Mrs Thuy - Head department of Human Resource who is responsible for recruiting employees for all departments of the branch including departments of retail operation and responsible for other problems

relevant with human resource in the branch The interview questions and transcripts are

shown in Appendix 1

According to the result of interviews, each interviewee showed their own opinion

on the problem that made the retail operation in the branch inefficient in comparison with other branches in the region In summary, problems that interviewees supposed to be the

potential problems leading to inefficiency of retail operation were: Emotional

exhaustion, Bad business process and Inappropriate recruitment policy

Emotional exhaustion

Through the interview, Mrs Hien supposed that the inefficiency of retail operation

in the branch was resulted from situation of emotional exhaustion of retail employees Cordes & Dougherty1 also indicated that staffs who suffer from intensively

emotional exhaustion are not able to fulfill their tasks and have poor performance

in delivery service To describe more detail about the situation of emotional exhaustion of retail employees, Mrs Hien indicated that she often saw retail employees come to workplace with tired faces She also saw tellers, who often communicated with customers, not smile and often show attitude of tardinesswhen making transactions with customers Mrs Hien also implied that she had warned retail employees about this situation but the situation still continued and was not improved Bozionelos et al2 also revealed the presence of a substantial number of interaction effects in the relationship of emotion work with emotional exhaustion and work attitudes Therefore, with the effect

of emotional exhaustion on attitude of working, the branch has received many complaint from customers about retail employees, especially retail tellers Mrs Hien also told that

the relationship among employees as well as relationship between employees and leaders was not good, which could make employees feel uncomfortable when working in the branch Therefore, Mrs Hien assumed that the situation of low working spirit of retail employees can be resulted from working condition and environment of the branch, in

detail, she implied that retail employees are almost emotionally exhausted from work

With the similar opinion with Mrs Hien, Mrs Thuy - Head department of Human Resource also assumed that retail employees are in the situation of emotional exhaustion Mrs Thuy informed that she often saw retail employees come to workplace with bad mood and easily got angry with colleagues when there were conflicts The employees were looked very exhausted and sometimes she detected that retail employees often slept

on desk in working time Moreover, as statistical figure, the average number of absent days of retail employees was more than the average of other operation (wholesale operation, internal management operation…) Therefore, Mrs Thuy assumed that there

was problem with emotion of retail employees when working, which leads to many

negative symptoms and makes performance of retail operation inefficient in comparison with other BIDV branches

Another interview with Mr Hung – former employees of Individual Customers department has been performed to get the experience and opinion of an ex-employee According to Mr Hung, there were many reason that made him decide to quit the job, such as: high pressure from work, unchanged benefit and unsatisfactory recognition…However, Mr Hung supposed that working environment is the main reason that made him decide to leave In detail, Mr Hung informed that he could not get on well

with his coworker He supposed that their coworker were very selfish, they seem to care their own work and there was no help or support among employees He also revealed that his leader did not give any support or encouraging words to him, Mr Hung was often shouted by this leader for many times although he tried to work very hard to achieve the

target With all of those reasons, he assumed that he had to handle emotional stress,

which made him unsatisfied about his job and decide to leave the branch

Bad business process

For Mrs Ngan - Head of Nhat Tao transaction office, she indicated that retail employees are affected negatively by current work process of BIDV Peronja I.3 also found the relationship between business process change and performance.To be more detail, Mrs Ngan assumed that the work process of BIDV is not logical and makes the employees confused For instance, Mrs Ngan implied that retail credit employees have

to complete the credit documents as well as bring credit documents to be notarized at authority offices; therefore, they almost do not have time for finding out new customers

to develop new customer basis In addition, when there are too many credit documents pending, customers often complain and put more pressure on retail credit employees, which makes them suffer stress from work Whereas in other banks, there is specific department which is responsible for completing and bringing credit documents to be notarized at authority offices, with this mechanism, the employees can have more time to find out new customers and reduce the stress from work Besides, Mrs Ngan also indicated that information technology system of BIDV is still outdated, which makes it longer when making transactions with customers and increases handwork actions for

employees As a result, retail employees in the branch are working with the condition of excess their stamina

Inappropriate recruitment policy

According to Mr Hai - Head department of Individual customers, there are some weakness in recruitment policy of the branch Rafii et al.4 also found a relationship between the recruitment with employee performance Patimah5 has also stated that a good recruitment program can provide a positive influence towards increasing employee commitment, productivity, the work quality and performance In detail, Mr Hai indicated that there are some retail employees recruited mainly due to private relationship with some leaders of the branch although these employees are not qualified for the job In some case, Mr Hai often receives complaint from customers about employees in his department, they often show improper attitude when communicating with customers and seem to be lack of knowledge when consulting banking products to customers, as a result, in some case these employees cannot be guaranteed to accomplish the missions set by the leaders Moreover, although the employees are just punished by reducing the level of salary when they cannot do the job well, the employees are still retained to work for the department, which makes the inefficiency of retail departments become more serious gradually Therefore, Mr Hai assumed that recruitment policy affects directly to the performance of retail operation

Through the interviews with many employees from different departments who are relevant to retail operation of the branch, the potential problems that led to the inefficiency of retail operation can be summarized in the table below:

Interviewees Potential problems

Mrs Hien

Mrs Thuy

Mr Hung

Emotional exhaustion of retail employees

Table 7 – Summary of opinions on potential problems in retail operation

at BIDV North Saigon branch

To generalize the cause-effect relationship between negative symptom happening

in retail operation and potential problems detected, initial cause-effect map was set up:

Figure 2 – Initial Cause –effect map

Interviewing with Mr Thuy - Head of Human Resource department have been performed to define the problem in retail operation of BIDV North Saigon branch and whether it could be easily proposed to change in conjunction with branch’s current resources and general target

For the potential problem Bad work process, Mrs Thuy indicated that this problem

also exist in other operation (wholesale operation, internal management operation) and even in retail operation in other branches in BIDV system This problem can be classified

as a systematic problem because all BIDV branches apply the same working process issued by BIDV Headquarter and it takes very long time to change the business process Therefore, Bad work process cannot be considered as main problem leading to the

inefficiency of retail operation

Discussing about inappropriate recruitment policy of retail operation in the

branch, Mrs Thuy supposed that inappropriate recruitment policy cannot be considered

as the main problem that lead to the inefficiency of retail operation of the branch Mrs Thuy indicated that there are more than 80%of retail employees graduated from top famous economic university in Vietnam Besides, graduation mark of retail employees is almost high, more than 90% of retail employees get the graduation markhigher than 7.5

on the scale of 10 Moreover, retail employees are compulsory to attend training course

to upgrade knowledge and information relevant to daily working, some training course can be listed such as: communication skill training, services products information training After every training courses, the employees will be tested to assure that they can

master all the knowledge supplied from the training courses Besides, all the employees will be compulsory to do the “Ability test” periodically once in 2 years, the employees must pass this test to sign the new labor contract with the branch In addition, if employees do not do the job well, with the suggestion from leaders they will be moved to other department or even forced to be fired Therefore, Mrs Thuy assumed that the inefficiency of retail operation is not resulted from recruitment policy of the branch, because retail employees in the branch almost get good educational background from the beginning and often equipped enough knowledge and skills to meet the requirement of works.

As a result, both Bad business process and Inappropriate recruitment policy should not be considered the main problem that leads to inefficiency of retail operation

According to Mrs Thuy, the main problem that leads to low working spirit is resulted from negative emotion of retail employees in workplace To prove that, Mrs Thuy showed the noticeable figure: the number of day-off of retail employees in 2016

was 7.6 days a year, whereas the average number of day-off of all employees in the branch was just 5.6 days a year Schaufeli et al 6 also found the relationship between emotional exhaustion and duration of sick leaves

Operation Number of employees Average day-off

Table 8 – Comparison on number of day-off between retail employees and

employees from other operation in the branch

Besides, in recent years number of retail employees leaving the branch increases remarkably which made turnover rate of retail operation get high at 80% in 2015 There was also research by Wright et al.7 assuming that emotional exhaustion has been shown

to predict future voluntary turnover

Mrs Thuy also assumed that retail employees are considered to meet problem with relationship with their coworkers There seems to be intangible barrier among employees, which makes working atmosphere always in situation of tension With this working environment, emotion of retail employees is affected negatively and they cannot

be enthusiastic As a result, the branch should focus on emotion of retail employees as the main problem that must be solved In collation with literature review, the main problem that retail operation is faced with is called “emotional exhaustion”

1.3 Problem definition

According to Maslach et al.8, emotional exhaustion is described as being emotionally overextended due to a worker's perception that their job's demands exceed available resources to do the job In addition, Lee et al.9 and Wright et al.10 have also stated that when individuals are emotionally exhausted they feel emotionally and physically drained and overextended Maslach et al.10 assumed that the most

frequently discovered negative impact of workplace incivility on employee outcomes

in the literature is emotional exhaustion, defined as feelings of emotional helplessness and the depletion of an individual’s emotional resources Wright et al.7

also stated that increased emotional exhaustion generally produces a negative impact

on employee and organizational outcomes such as work stress and low job satisfaction As a result, Bakker et al.11 supposed that emotionally exhausted employees feel unwell during work, question the sense of their job, and are likely to have higher turnover intentions Generally, emotional can affect negatively to mental problem of employees and especially to employees’ performance, which can lead to many serious problems in the branch

1.4 Problem existence

In order to confirm the existence of the problem, the questionairewere also conducted with retail employees in BIDV North Saigon branch about their opinion and attitude towards emotional exhaustion in retail operation of the branch Emotional exhaustion was measured using the nine-item emotional exhaustion component of the Maslach Burnout Inventory developed by Maslach et al.8 The survey was conducted

with the style of Yes/No question: (please refer at Appendix 3):

1 Do you feel emotionally drained from your work?

2 Do you feel used up at the end of the workday?

3 Do you feel fatigued when you get up in the morning and have to face

another day on the job?

4 When working with people all day, do you feel it is really a strain for you?

5 Do you feel burned out from your work?

6 Do you feel frustrated by your job?

7 Do you feel you’re working too hard on your job?

8 When working with people directly, does it put too much stress on you?

9 Do you feel like you’re at the end of your rope?

Due to the lack of time, the survey was just conducted at BIDV North Saigon branch and some selected BIDV branches in Ho Chi Minh city region The selected branches was Saigon branch, East Saigon branch, Nam Ky Khoi Nghia branch which got the equivalent year of operation with North Saigon branch

Based on the definition and the result of the survey, the retail employees of the branch are really facing with the problem of emotional exhaustion In detail, the result of

the survey conducted at North Saigon branch showed that there was 61% of retail employees attending the survey answering “Yes” for all 9 items of the survey Whereas,

the result of the survey at other branch was much lower, the comparison of the survey’s result at branches is in this table below:

answering “Yes” for all 9

items of the survey

Table 9 – Result of emotional exhaustion survey in BIDV North Saigon branch

and some other branch

To confirm more clearly about the existence of the problem “emotional exhaustion”, 4 of 9 question from the survey of Maslach et al.8 was used to conduct

interview with 4 retail employees in the branch including: Ms Trang – retail employees

at Individual Customers department, Mrs Tim – Vice Head of Nhat Tao Transaction office, Mr Dung – Retail employee at Go Vap Transaction office, Ms An – retail teller

at Individual Customers transaction department

Due to the limitation of time, there are just 4 of 9 questions from the survey was chosen to conduct interview, including:

- Question 1: Do you feel emotionally drained from your work?

- Question 2: Do you feel used up at the end of the workday?

- Question 3:Do you feel fatigued when you get up in the morning and have to face another day on the job?

- Question 4: When working with people all day, do you feel it is really a strain

for you?

Through the result of interview, it can be seen that all interviewees are really attached with some exhibition of the problem “emotional exhaustion” The detail of

result of the interview is performed in Appendix 3

From the survey and interview conducted, it can be confirmed that retail employees are really in the situation of “emotional exhaustion” This problem will be

analyzed deeper to find out suitable solutions in order to deal with this problem effectively

1.5 Importance of the problem-consequences and the validation

From the literatures and definition, the list of questions was prepared to interview BIDV North Saigon’s retail employees about the consequences of emotional exhaustion

to validate the importance of the problem

The interview was conducted with 4 retail employees at the branch (Mr Huy – employees at Individual customers department, Ms Trang - employees at Individual customers department, Ms Tim – Vice Head of Nhat Tao transaction office, Mr Trong – employees at Cong Hoa transaction office) The interview questions and answers of

interviewees are in the Appendix 4

From interview and theory informed, there are 4 consequences thatthat affect

negatively on employees and lead to the inefficiency of retail operation, they are: low job

satisfaction, poor performance, work-family conflicts, declining mental health

Low job satisfaction

According to Wright et al.10 , emotional exhaustion can lead to low job

satisfaction Clark et al 12 also defined job satisfaction as a direct measure of utility

an employed worker derives from his/her current job Verhaest et al.13 stated that lower job satisfaction can result in lower individual productivity All the interviewees confirmed that they do not feel satisfied with the recent job about the salary and the relationship with their colleages at the workplace; therefore, they often feel boring about the job and do not want to strive hard to dedicate for the branch

Poor performance

Cordes et al.1 has stated that staffs who suffer from intensively emotional

exhaustion are not able to fulfill their tasks and have poor performance in delivery

service The interviewees said that they are often lack of focus and make errors at even simple tasks due to the negative affect from the workplace environment Sometimes they are exhausted and do not have determination and health to complete their jobs Besides, statistical figures have already proved that performance of retail operation at the branch is inefficient in comparison with entire BIDV system and other branches in Ho Chi Minh City region

Work-family conflicts

According to Demerouti et al.14 and Hall et al.15, there is evidence of

reciprocal relations between work-family conflicts and emotional exhaustion, such

that conflicts lead to exhaustion, which leads to more conflicts and more exhaustion According to Greenhaus et al.16, work-family conflict is the situation the participant

in the role of work is difficult to involve in the role of family The interviewees informed that they often have problem with members of their family every time they come back from the working office Interviewee – Mrs Tim said that she does not have enough time to relax and take care of her children and family because she often comes back home late from work and sometimes she has to go to work on some day off Therefore, Mrs Tim often argue with her husband about spending more time for family With the same situation, other interviewees also cannot fulfill their family

obligation because of commitment with their jobs In this situation, work and life is not balanced which can result in conflict between work and family

Declining mental health

According to research of Ramirez et al.17, emotional exhaustion can cause

general declines in mental health All the interviewees confirmed that they often

feel stress, headache and other relevant symptoms The interviewees also reveal that they use the healthcare service more often than before and spend more money for those services The interviewees also informed that they often get problem with their sleep, most of the retail employees are in the situation of insomnia

1.6 Causes of problem and the validation

The causes of emotional exhaustion are taken from the result of the previous interviews and literature To validate those causes, some questions were developed to interview retail employees of the branch and the interview was also taken at the

branch (Refer to Appendix 4)

Performance appraisal bias from leaders

According to Jawahar18, inaccurate performance appraisal will result in employee dissatisfaction Moers19 also assumed that bias in performance appraisal is problematic since it makes it difficult to make appropriate personnel decisions, such

as promotion As a result, performance appraisal bias from leaders makes retail employees lose their spirit of working hard, which can affect negatively to employees’ emotion From the result of the interview of a retail employees, they indicated that their leaders almost do not recognize their effort and contribution

properly Bennis et al.20 also stated that team leaders can affect other team members’ behaviors by encouraging and facilitating competencies

To discuss more detail on this situation, the interview was also conducted with Mrs Thuy – Head department of Human Resource Mrs Thuy admitted that the retail leaders of the branch were really not responsible enough to manage the operation of their department well Mrs Thuy also considered that the retail leaders were still very bureaucratic because they were still affected with the thought of working for a state-owned enterprise With this attitude of working, the retail leaders almost do not focus on suggesting the business strategy for development of their department; as a result, retail department cannot develop and retail employees therefore feel depressed and cannot find the standard orientation to make effort for achieving the business target

Work overload

Secondly, according to Karatepe21, work overload can increase emotional exhaustion for employees Parasuraman et al.22 stated that work overload is “the perceived magnitude of work-role demands, and the feeling that there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them” In addition, according to Iverson et

al.23 , another definition of work overload is the extent to which the “job performance

required in a job is excessive overload due to performance required on a job” Dormann et al. 24 also assumed that there are many signs of work overload such as stress, headaches, problems related to sleep, neglect, short temper and low job satisfaction Through interview with some retail employees, the retail employees

admitted that they often have headaches when working and usually get angry with colleagues because of the pressure at workplace The retail employees often come back their home very late at night because there are too much work to do for a working day Excepting ordinary works as usual, due to the weakness of information technology system of BIDV, retail employees often have to spend a lot of time to make many kinds of report manually at the end of months or quarters of the year instead of making the reports automatically like many other banks in Vietnam

Overall, from the result of interview, the interviewees confirmed that working overload take part in leading to emotional exhaustion of retail employees but they are not the major cause Besides, performance appraisal bias from leaders is resulted from the mechanism of BIDV because BIDV has not applied KPI system, this cause also happen in many other branches in the region and cannot be solved in short term

Almost interviewees admitted that coworker incivility is the main cause that

contributed to emotional exhaustion This root cause will be used to find out the solution for the business central problem

CHAPTER 2: SOLUTION

In order to improve the working environment and enhance the productivity of retail operation, solution to tackle the problem “emotional exhaustion” is being investigated Due to the limitation of budget and other specific conditions in the branch, solutions suggested must be considered to solve the problem thoroughly and fast effect Interview with 5 informants were continued to get their opinion for alternative solution,

detail information is in Appendix 5 Literature review is done for each solution in order

to get firm theory support

2.1 Proposal of solution:

Through interview and theory informed, there are 4 solutions suggested by

interviewees to solve the root cause “coworker incivility”, they are: creating skill

training courses for retail leaders, issuing Branch Code of Conduct, setting up

extracurricular activities and organizing periodic collegial conversation in every

retail department

Creating skill training courses for retail leaders

Chakrabarty et al.28 reported that in order for sales managers to succeed, they need to be competent in coaching their salespeople Honeycutt et al.29 stated that the ability to provide supervisory feedback plays a crucial role in improving sales force productivity, with a need for training sales managers in that trait Firms can increase the accuracy of experienced managers by adopting a long-term approach toward training and retraining30 Such training efforts could include coaching sales managers

to elaborate on their prior knowledge by teaching pattern recognition through