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

Executive summaryIn recent years, BIDV North Saigon branch has showed some symptom of poorperformance in retail banking operation in comparison with average of entire BIDVsystem as well

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

Do Phat Tai

EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION IN RETAIL OPERATION AT BANK

FOR INVESTMENT AND

DEVELOPMENT OF VIETNAM – NORTH SAIGON BRANCH

ID: 22140042

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: DR PHAM PHU QUOC

Ho Chi Minh City – 2017

Executive summary

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

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

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 withthe oldest history of Vietnam (58 years), who has always accompanied with theimportant stages in the economic of the country In 2015, 20-year milestone - BIDVtransformed from a state capital serving to a commercial bank operating under marketprinciples After 20 years of renovation, the Bank has made great progress, becomingone 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 Till01/2008, Tan Binh Branch was officially renamed as Branch Commercial Bank forInvestment and Development of North Saigon.After 10 years, from initial 48 employeeswith 6 departments and 1 transaction office, the total number of staff now has reachedover 140 employees, with 16 departmentsincluding 4 transaction officeslocated in TanBinhDistrict, Go Vap District and District 10 BIDV North Saigon also completedexpanding network tasks entrusted by BIDV headquarter: the establishment of new TanBinh 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 (nowrenamed 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 branchcomprised: Individual Customers department and 4 transaction offices located at TanBinh district, Go Vap district, district 10 With the scale of 69 employees (accounting for42% total number of employee of entire branch), most of retail employees are young,enthusiastic, dynamic and equipped full of operational knowledge, suitable with businessenvironment.

In 2015, retail operation of the branch was structured with 5 departments as thediagram below:

RETAIL OPERATION

69 employees

ICT Dept IC Dept Cong Hoa TO Go Vap TO Nhat Tao TO

16 employees 14 employees 12 employees 14 employees 7 employees

ICT Dept Individual Customer Transaction Department

IC Dept Individual Customer Department

Abbreviation Description

Cong Hoa TO, Cong Hoa transaction office, Go Vap transaction

Go Vap TO, Nhat office, Nhat Tao transaction office

Tao TO

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 abank 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 bankingservices from investment banking, commercial banking or wholesale banking It mayalso 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 Thedefinition of retail banking often comes from services or customers that the productforward According to the most common interpretation, retail banking is activelyproviding financial products and services primarily to customers, who are individuals,households and small businesses Retail banking services provision application offinancial products and services to individuals through a network of individual branches,

transaction offices, or the customer can have direct access to banking products andservices 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 thefuture due to income growth and the growth of various types of enterprises Commercialbanks tend to move to the retail, improving access to individual clients, small andmedium-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 ofcommercial banks to its development strategy Following this trend of banking sector,BIDV has issued rational strategy to develop retail banking operation with propermethods and synchronistically organizing from head quarter to branches.Due to thisstrategy, result of retail banking operation in the period 2013 – 2015 was at high-levelgrowth 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 inVietnam with the retail banking scale of 495 thousand billion VND In some other mainretail banking criterions, BIDV has also made remarkable results:

- Retail Capital Mobilization in 2015 was 355 thousand billion VND, increasing1.7 times in comparison with 2013, which made BIDV lead at the 1th position aboutretail capital mobilization among comercial banks in Vietnam

- Retail Loan outstanding in 2015 was 140 thousand billion VND, increasing 2.4times in comparison with 2013, which made BIDV have the most loan outstandingamong 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 ofBIDV North Saigon branch has showed inefficiency in comparison with entire BIDVsystem 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:

Average growth rate 2013 - 2015 Criteria Entire BIDV system BIDV North Difference

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 lowlevel in comparison with entire BIDV system:

10

Proportion in 2015 Criteria Entire BIDV system BIDV North Difference

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 NorthSaigon branch is deviating with the development tendency of entire BIDV system whichprioritizes 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 incomparison 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 2,628billion 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 MinhCity region, whereas the average CM per retail employee in the region was 62.62 billionVND

Moreover, the retail CM/total CM proportion was just 27%, ranking the lastposition among 15 branches in the region Whereas the average of this proportion in theregion 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 inBIDV North Saigon branch is quite ineffective.

Ranking among 15 CAPITAL branches in HCM city Average

Value MOBILIZATION (CM) region (excepting MHB in the region

branches merged in 2015)

Table 4 – Comparison on Retail Capital Mobilization between BIDV North

Saigon branch and other branches in HCMC region

Loan outstanding

Ranking among 15 LOAN OUTSTANDING branches in HCM city Average

Value (LO) region (excepting MHB in the region

branches merged in 2015)

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 billionVND, ranking for the 11th of 15 branches in the region, less than 2.67 billion VND incomparison with the average LO per retail employee in the region Besides, the ratioRetial LO/Total LO proportion was very low (8%), ranking as the 14th of 15 branches inthe region In addition, RLO growth rate in 2013-2015 of the branch was also in thebottom group in the region.

Retail profit

Ranking among 15 branches in HCM city Average

RETAIL PROFIT (RP) Value

region (excepting MHB in the region

branches merged in 2015)

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 billionVND, ranking 9th of 15 branches in Ho Chi Minh City region (excepting MHB branchesmerged in 2015) About Retail RP/Total RP proportion, BIDV North Saigon branch wasranked 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 withproductivity of working of retail operation such as: received many complaint fromcustomers 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 Saigonbranch is ineffective in comparison to other branches in Ho Chi Minh City region Thiscan be resulted from some problems that should be analyzed seriously and generatesolutions to make improve Retail operation in the branch

1.2 Problem Identification

The method to find out the problem that makes retail operation inefficient inoperating is interviewing BIDV North Saigon branch’s staff The initial interviews wereconducted with five people of the branch who are relevant with retail operation, they areMrs Hien – Deputy Director of Retail operation who is responsible for setting up thegeneral development strategy for retail operation of the branch, Mr Hai-Headdepartment of Individual customers who is in charge of deploying, improving retailproducts at the branch and setting up action program to promote the development ofretail operation, Mrs Ngan - Head of Nhat Tao transaction office who is in charge ofdeveloping retail operation of the branch at the region of District 10, Mr Hung – formerretail employee of Individual Customers department and Mrs Thuy - Head department ofHuman Resource who is responsible for recruiting employees for all departments of thebranch 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 withother 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 retailemployees, Mrs Hien indicated that she often saw retail employees come to workplacewith tired faces She also saw tellers, who often communicated with customers, not smileand often show attitude of tardinesswhen making transactions with customers Mrs Hienalso implied that she had warned retail employees about this situation but the situationstill continued and was not improved Bozionelos et al2 also revealed the presence of asubstantial number of interaction effects in the relationship of emotion work withemotional exhaustion and work attitudes Therefore, with the effect of emotionalexhaustion on attitude of working, the branch has received many complaint fromcustomers about retail employees, especially retail tellers Mrs Hien also told that

the relationship among employees as well as relationship between employees and leaderswas not good, which could make employees feel uncomfortable when working in thebranch Therefore, Mrs Hien assumed that the situation of low working spirit of retailemployees 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 HumanResource 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 badmood and easily got angry with colleagues when there were conflicts The employeeswere 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 absentdays of retail employees was more than the average of other operation (wholesaleoperation, 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 comparisonwith other BIDV branches

Another interview with Mr Hung – former employees of Individual Customersdepartment 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 madehim 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 caretheir own work and there was no help or support among employees He also revealed thathis leader did not give any support or encouraging words to him, Mr Hung was oftenshouted 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 retailemployees are affected negatively by current work process of BIDV Peronja I.3 alsofound the relationship between business process change and performance.To be moredetail, Mrs Ngan assumed that the work process of BIDV is not logical and makes theemployees 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 atauthority 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 documentspending, customers often complain and put more pressure on retail credit employees,which makes them suffer stress from work Whereas in other banks, there is specificdepartment which is responsible for completing and bringing credit documents to benotarized at authority offices, with this mechanism, the employees can have more time tofind out new customers and reduce the stress from work Besides, Mrs Ngan alsoindicated that information technology system of BIDV is still outdated, which makes itlonger when making transactions with customers and increases handwork actions for

employees As a result, retail employees in the branch are working with the condition ofexcess their stamina.

Inappropriate recruitment policy

According to Mr Hai - Head department of Individual customers, there are someweakness in recruitment policy of the branch Rafii et al.4 also found a relationshipbetween the recruitment with employee performance Patimah5 has also stated that agood recruitment program can provide a positive influence towards increasing employeecommitment, productivity, the work quality and performance In detail, Mr Hai indicatedthat there are some retail employees recruited mainly due to private relationship withsome leaders of the branch although these employees are not qualified for the job Insome case, Mr Hai often receives complaint from customers about employees in hisdepartment, they often show improper attitude when communicating with customers andseem to be lack of knowledge when consulting banking products to customers, as aresult, 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 forthe department, which makes the inefficiency of retail departments become more seriousgradually Therefore, Mr Hai assumed that recruitment policy affects directly to theperformance of retail operation

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

Interviewees Potential problems

Mrs Hien

Mrs Thuy Emotional exhaustion of retail employees

Mr Hung

Mrs Ngan Bad business process

Mr Hai Inappropriate recruitment policy

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 beenperformed to define the problem in retail operation of BIDV North Saigon branch andwhether it could be easily proposed to change in conjunction with branch’s currentresources and general target.

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

problem also exist in other operation (wholesale operation, internal managementoperation) and even in retail operation in other branches in BIDV system This problemcan be classified as a systematic problem because all BIDV branches apply the sameworking process issued by BIDV Headquarter and it takes very long time to change thebusiness process Therefore, Bad work process cannot be considered as main problemleading 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 topfamous economic university in Vietnam Besides, graduation mark of retail employees isalmost 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 coursecan be listed such as: communication skill training, services products informationtraining 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 employeeswill be compulsory to do the “Ability test” periodically once in 2 years, the employeesmust pass this test to sign the new labor contract with the branch In addition, ifemployees do not do the job well, with the suggestion from leaders they will be moved toother department or even forced to be fired Therefore, Mrs Thuy assumed that theinefficiency of retail operation is not resulted from recruitment policy of the branch,because retail employees in the branch almost get good educational background from thebeginning and often equipped enough knowledge and skills to meet the requirement ofworks.

As a result, both Bad business process and Inappropriate recruitment policyshould 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 isresulted 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

Operation Number of employees Average day-off

Total of the branch 139 5.6

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 increasesremarkably which made turnover rate of retail operation get high at 80% in 2015 Therewas 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 problemwith relationship with their coworkers There seems to be intangible barrier amongemployees, which makes working atmosphere always in situation of tension With thisworking 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 asthe main problem that must be solved In collation with literature review, the mainproblem 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 beingemotionally overextended due to a worker's perception that their job's demands exceedavailable resources to do the job In addition, Lee et al.9 and Wright et al.10 have alsostated that when individuals are emotionally exhausted they feel emotionally andphysically drained and overextended Maslach et al.10 assumed that the most

frequently discovered negative impact of workplace incivility on employee outcomes inthe literature is emotional exhaustion, defined as feelings of emotional helplessness andthe depletion of an individual’s emotional resources Wright et al.7 also stated thatincreased emotional exhaustion generally produces a negative impact on employee andorganizational 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 andespecially to employees’ performance, which can lead to many serious problems in thebranch

1.4 Problem existence

In order to confirm the existence of the problem, the questionairewere alsoconducted with retail employees in BIDV North Saigon branch about their opinion andattitude towards emotional exhaustion in retail operation of the branch Emotionalexhaustion was measured using the nine-item emotional exhaustion component of theMaslach 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 Saigonbranch and some selected BIDV branches in Ho Chi Minh city region The selectedbranches was Saigon branch, East Saigon branch, Nam Ky Khoi Nghia branch which gotthe equivalent year of operation with North Saigon branch

Based on the definition and the result of the survey, the retail employees of thebranch 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:

Number of retail Percentage of employees Year of

Branch employees attending answering “Yes” for all 9

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 “emotionalexhaustion”, 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 waschosen 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 reallyattached 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 problemeffectively.

1.5 Importance of the problem-consequences and the validation

From the literatures and definition, the list of questions was prepared to interviewBIDV 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 Individualcustomers 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 jobsatisfaction can result in lower individual productivity All the interviewees confirmedthat they do not feel satisfied with the recent job about the salary and the relationshipwith 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 evensimple tasks due to the negative affect from the workplace environment Sometimes theyare 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 MinhCity 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 toGreenhaus 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 oftenhave problem with members of their family every time they come back from the workingoffice Interviewee – Mrs Tim said that she does not have enough time to relax and takecare of her children and family because she often comes back home late from work andsometimes she has to go to work on some day off Therefore, Mrs Tim often argue withher husband about spending more time for family With the same situation, otherinterviewees also cannot fulfill their family

obligation because of commitment with their jobs In this situation, work and life is notbalanced 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 thehealthcare service more often than before and spend more money for those services Theinterviewees also informed that they often get problem with their sleep, most of the retailemployees 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 previousinterviews and literature To validate those causes, some questions were developed tointerview 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 employeedissatisfaction Moers19 also assumed that bias in performance appraisal is problematicsince 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 ofthe interview of a retail employees, they indicated that their leaders almost do notrecognize 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 withMrs Thuy – Head department of Human Resource Mrs Thuy admitted that the retailleaders of the branch were really not responsible enough to manage the operation of theirdepartment well Mrs Thuy also considered that the retail leaders were still verybureaucratic 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 onsuggesting the business strategy for development of their department; as a result, retaildepartment cannot develop and retail employees therefore feel depressed and cannot findthe standard orientation to make effort for achieving the business target

Work overload

Secondly, according to Karatepe21, work overload can increase emotionalexhaustion for employees Parasuraman et al.22 stated that work overload is “theperceived magnitude of work-role demands, and the feeling that there are too manythings 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 24also assumed that there are many signs of work overload such as stress, headaches,problems related to sleep, neglect, short temper and low job satisfaction Throughinterview with some retail employees, the retail employees

admitted that they often have headaches when working and usually get angry withcolleagues because of the pressure at workplace The retail employees often come backtheir 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 technologysystem 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 thereports automatically like many other banks in Vietnam

Coworker Incivility

According to Laschinger et al.25 and Sliter et al.26, coworker incivility canincreaseemotional exhaustion Pearson et al.27 also supposed that coworker incivilityincludes deviant behaviors with ambiguous intent to harm the target, such as neglecting

to say “please” or “thank you”, ignoring others or raising one’s voice From interviewwith retail employees, there are many signs from they indicated that they often receiverude words when discussing or havingconflict with other employees.Besides, retailemployees do not receive any encouraging talking or supports from leaders, sometimesthe retail leaders even often shouted at the retail employees whenever they mademistakes or not achieve the business target Interview also mentioned some expression toprove the existence of this cause in the branch For example, when an employee say

“hello” or nod head for greeting to a colleague, that colleague do not respond in kind.Inthis case, retail employees often fall in the situation of stress and as a result, they arereally emotionally exhausted

Overall, from the result of interview, the interviewees confirmed that workingoverload take part in leading to emotional exhaustion of retail employees but they are notthe major cause Besides, performance appraisal bias from leaders is resulted from themechanism 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 thebusiness central problem

CHAPTER 2: SOLUTION

In order to improve the working environment and enhance the productivity ofretail operation, solution to tackle the problem “emotional exhaustion” is beinginvestigated 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 toprovide 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 ofexperienced managers by adopting a long-term approach toward training andretraining30 Such training efforts could include coaching sales managers to elaborate ontheir prior knowledge by teaching pattern recognition through