Ineffective leadership at the online customer care division ssi securities joint stock company

1 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business --- Huynh Thi Thanh Thao INEFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP AT THE ONLINE CUSTOMER CARE DIVISION SSI SECURITIES JOINT S

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UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-

Huynh Thi Thanh Thao

INEFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP AT THE ONLINE CUSTOMER CARE DIVISION

SSI SECURITIES JOINT STOCK

COMPANY

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2021

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

2

International School of Business

-

Huynh Thi Thanh Thao

INEFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP AT THE ONLINE CUSTOMER CARE DIVISION

SSI SECURITIES JOINT STOCK

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ACKOWLEDGEMENT

Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr TRAN HA MINH QUAN, has enthusiastically guided and supported on the methodology, oriented how to apply PSO, how to approach the problem in a practical and effective way

Next, I also appreciate valuable suggestions from Dr Phan Thi Minh Thu and Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Trang in the process of identifying potential problems, assessing and selecting appropriate problems for the project to have high practical application significance

Thank you to the Board of Directors and my colleagues at SSI Securities Joint Stock Company for creating the best conditions for me to have full access to information, share and discuss throughout the implementation of this project

Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family for their comments and support during the implementation of this project

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In 2020, the rate of the voluntary turnover rate at the Online Customer Care Division (The

division newly upgraded from Team Call Center) is very high, reaching 60%, of which there are

2 unplanned manager changes This ratio has increased dramatically compared to previous years

and is much higher than other divisions in the company and industry benchmark This has led to

negative impacts on Retail Brokerage Division, SSI Securities Joint Stock Company such as:

- Directly affect the morale of employees such as increasing stress at work, the

remaining employees are overloaded due to lack of staffs, employees show signs

of burnout

- Employees expressed dissatisfaction, lack of trust in the new managers This also

creates additional challenges for new managers in running the division's

operations

- Indirectly affect service quality to customers Leads to many challenges for the

company to implement a new business expansion strategy - digital brokerage

Therefore, this research aims to find out the potential problems and root cause of the main

problem in order to propose suitable solutions to the current situation of the company

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

LIST OF TABLES: 5

LIST OF FIGURES 5

I INTRODUCTION 6

1.1 Company overview 6

1.2 Information about the company 7

1.3 The Unit of analysis: 9

2 PROBLEM CONTEXT 11

2.1 Business environment in 2021: 11

2.2 Identify rival companies: 14

2.3 Symptoms: 15

2.4 Importance of symptom: 16

3 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 18

3.1 Problem mess: 18

3.1.1 Stress at work 18

3.1.2 Lack of trust to new team leader: 24

3.2 Potential problems: 26

3.2.1 Lack of organizational career growth 26

3.2.2 Ineffective leadership 28

3.3 Validation the selected central problem 29

4 CAUSE VALIDATION 32

4.1 Exploration of potential cause: 32

4.1.2 The person (the leader him/herself), including: 33

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4.1.2 Interaction: leader and followers mainly referred to conflicts, leader has a closer

relationship to some of his followers 34

4.1.3 Environmental antecedents: 34

4.2 The fishbone map: 34

4.3 Validate the main cause: 35

4.4 The consequences: 36

4.5 Concluding: 37

5.1 The input to choose the solution concept: 37

5.1.1 Develop the design requirements which use to evaluate: 37

5.1.2 The present organization model: 38

5.1.3 The generic knowledge about design within industry: 38

5.2 Choose the solution concept: 38

5.3 Alternative design: 38

5.3.1 Substitutes for leadership 38

5.3.2 Developing successor personnel 39

5.4 Evaluate alternative solution: 40

6 ACTION PLAN: 41

7 SUPPORTING INFORMATION: 43

7.1 List of interviewees: 43

7.2 Summary of interview transcript 44

8 REFERENCES: 66

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LIST OF TABLES:

Table 1: Equity market share ranking of top 5 securities companies 14

Table 2: Derivative market share ranking of top 5 securities companies 15

Table 3: Turnover rate at SSI Operation Divisions 16

Table 4: Average number of calls and tickets per employee per day in Jan 2021 16

Table 5: The statistics of the number of experience year and the job title 28

Table 6: Effects of ineffective leadership on the superior, subordinate and the organization 37

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The organization chart of SSI in 2021 7

Figure 2: The Business Unit chart of Securities Services Retail Brokerage 7

Figure 3: The Organization chart of Online Customer Care Division 10

Figure 4: The initial cause - effect map 26

Figure 5: The update preliminary cause - effect map 29

Figure 6: The last update preliminary cause - effect map 32

Figure 7: The concept map of the antecedents of negative leadership 33

Figure 8: The fishbone map 35

List of abbreviations and definition

SSI SSI Securities Joint Stock Company

SSRB_BU Securities Services Retail Brokerage Business Unit

BOD Board of director

in the market, with the fastest growth rate with a charter capital increase of more than 1000 times Currently, the Company has a network operating widely in major cities across the country such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong, Nha Trang

- Vietnamese name: CÔNG TY CỔ PHẦN CHỨNG KHOÁN SSI (SSI)

- English name: SSI Securities Joint Stock Company

- Date Established: 30/12/1999 with the initial charter capital only VND 6,000,000,000

- Charter capital (at 31/12/2020): VND 6,029,456,130,000

- Equity capital (at 31/12/2020): VND 9,872,797,052,319

- Location of Headquarter: 72 Nguyen Hue street, 1 district, HCMC

- Website:http://www.ssi.com.vn/

❖ Vision - Mission - Core value

- Vision: "Business success"

- Mission: "Connecting capital with opportunities"

- Core value: Solution Ready - Thorough Expertise - Creative Imprint

❖ Headcount: Total number of employees (at 31/12/2020): 909 employees, including 487

employees with securities practice license

- Number of Branches/Transaction Offices: 13

o Northern region: 6 (5 at Ha Noi and 1 at Hai Phong)

o Southern region: 8 (7 at Ho Chi Minh; and 1 co-working office without office staff at Nha Trang)

back-❖ Business field: financial services including Retail Securities Services, Institutional

Securities Services, Asset Management, Investment Banking, and Treasury

❖ Service delivery channels:

o Traditional Brokerage: Customers have care brokers

o Digital Brokerage: Customers do not have care brokers, customers trade actively through online channels

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1.2 Information about the company

❖ Organization chart:

Figure 1: The organization chart of SSI in 2021

Source: Website of company

❖ Business Unit chart of Securities Services Retail Brokerage

Figure 2: The Business Unit chart of Securities Services Retail Brokerage

Source: Provided by the company

❖ Product: Retail Brokerage offers products and services to retail customer:

- Listed securities services:

INSTITUTIONAL BROKERAGE

RESEARCH &

ADVISORY

CENTER

PRINCIPAL INVESTMENT

SUPPORT UNIT

Customer and Brokerage Management

Quality Management Operations

North

Area

South Area

Branches Branches

Custody

Retail Brokerage

Online Trading Online Business

Online Customer Care

Traditional Brokerage

Service

Financial Services

Operations Control

- Trading other types of securities : Covered Warrant, ETF, Open Fund, Bond,

- OTC securities services (Over The Counter/ services for unlisted companies)

- Deposit service: S-Saving

❖ Market area: throughout Vietnam

❖ Customer segments:

- Individual investors (Including domestic and foreign individuals)

- Institutional investors (Including domestic and foreign institutions)

❖ Strategy:

- Medium - long-term development strategy of SSIRB_ BU

o Customers: take good care of existing customers and promote new customers

o Products: diversified and suitable for each customer segment

o Personnel: continue to improve the quality of the current team and recruit new ones

o About policy: updating policy for brokers and customers

- Action plan for 2021:

o Analyze current customer file behaviors in order to provide products and services that suit the taste of each customer segment

o Design products and services in accordance with the needs and behaviors of customers

o Update and adjust customer policies to increase investment opportunities of existing customers and develop new customers

o Update and adjust brokerage policy to promote customer care and development, recruit more new brokers

o Reconstruct a well-trained training program for the brokerage team based on the

“Broker development roadmap”

o Develop modern and intuitive products related to training, analysis and investment advice to create effects suitable for young investors

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o Development of online transaction channels: building a specialized and independent online transaction channel aimed at convenient and convenient online trading by investors, with high convertibility, combining many convenient utilities for multi-needs, vivid in content, the size of assets is often not high, the cost is low, etc

1.3 The Unit of analysis:

The unit recommended by the author for analysis in this thesis is the Online Customer Care Department in the field of Human Resource Management

Through discussion, Mr Trung - Deputy Managing Director - said that the trend of modern investors has gradually shifted to active trading Investors can update information quickly and accurately for their own analysis, market research and make decisions to trade securities with cheaper fees without consulting from brokers Not out of that trend, the Board of Directors of SSI has oriented mid-term and long-term strategies related to customer strategies: "focusing on taking good care of existing customers and promoting new customers"

Accordingly, the first task in the next stage is building an effective model of customer care according to the new market trend, building and stabilizing a team of advanced professionals to improve customer care quality By the end of December 2020, the Company has established a new business channel - Digital Brokerage Service - with 3 newly established departments: Online Business, Online Trading, Online Customer Service In particular, the Online Customer Service division is upgraded from Team Call Center - Switchboard that receives requests, supports and answers questions from customers

❖ Headcount:

5 employees at the time of the upgrade from Team Call Center in December 2020 Including 1 deputy manager, 2 senior specialists (2-3 years of experience) and 2 staff under 1 year of experience

❖ The Organization chart of Online Customer Care Division

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Figure 3: The Organization chart of Online Customer Care Division

Source: Provided by the company

❖ Duties of Online Customer Care Division:

- Supporting SSI customers and insiders to understand and use products and services on online trading channels, answer questions and respond to customers' requests across the Contact Center switchboard

- Performing works to support other departments to use online trading channels

to provide products and services to customers (sending newsletters, announcements, reports, statements, via email, SMS) or perform other internal tasks such as surveys, collecting customer opinions via contact center, email, survey online

- Execution of the Client's orders and requests such as placing orders, transferring money, registering purchase rights, registering services,

- Build processes, forms, work instructions related to products and services for the online trading channels for internal use and customers

General Director Retail Brokerage

Director Digital Brokerage Service

(New recruit)

Digital Brokerage Service

Depury general Director Retail Brokerage

Manager Online Customer Care

(New recruit)

Deputy Manager (1) Online Customer Care

(From Call Center Team)

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- Coordinate with Quality Control Department to implement and adjust processes related to products and services in online trading to improve the quality of services and products on these channels

❖ Customer segments:

Online Customer Care Division takes care of segments Local individual, foreign individuals, domestic institutions and potential customers; Including 2 customer care lines: passive (inbound) and active method (outbound)

Mr Trung shared that the goal for 2021 is to build a model of customer care Accordingly, the prerequisite task is to stabilize the current team, to early recruit enough headcount as planned

to implement the new trend-oriented customer care strategy The Board of Directors assessed that the Human Resource Management field is very important for the Online Customer Care Division and the company's mid-term and long-term development strategy and agreed to choose the Online Customer Care Division as the unit analyzed in this thesis

The 5-year plan is divided into 2 phases: 2021-2022 (recovery phase) and 2023-2025 (acceleration phase) Therefore, for 2021, the Government will continue to loosen monetary policy and implement an expansionary fiscal policy The budget deficit will continue at a high level, even in absolute terms, as GDP at current prices is increased according to the new calculation

❖ Macro-Economic Outlook 2021:

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Although Vietnam will inevitably continue to be affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the damage will be lower than that of other countries in the region As for the baseline scenario, SSI believes that outbreaks of the Covid-19 pandemic are still possible, so international commercial flights can only gradually resume from Q2 / 2021, and the volume of travel International visitors will increase gradually by the end of the year Unlike other economies, Vietnam's economy will not be in recession in 2020 This has been proven with GDP growth of 2.91% over the same period, helping Vietnam maintain its leading position among the fastest growing economies in 2020, second only to the marginal and exceptional economies such as Bangladesh, Guyana and Turkmenistan As observed, Vietnam's economy officially started to recover from Q3 /2020, and is likely to achieve a high growth rate in the coming time when the growth rate improves quarterly SSI maintains its GDP growth forecast for 2021 to be stable at about 6.5% over the previous year (higher than the Government's plan of 6%) Growth will start to accelerate from Q2 / 2021 and keep that momentum going until 2022 (up to more than 7%)

❖ Vietnam's economic growth drivers in 2021 include:

The impact of the V-pattern globally can help Vietnam grow higher, as Vietnam has become

a more important center in the global manufacturing ecosystem In Q4 / 2020, the Industrial Production Index (IPP) increased by 6.3% over the same period (December alone: up by 9.5% over the same period), while the manufacturing industry achieved significant growth in 9% over the same period This confirmed that a production recovery had returned to the level prior to Covid's outbreak

Stronger impact from free Trade Agreements such as CPTPP, EVFTA or RCEP;

When public investment growth returns to normal, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) may return to a leading role Registered FDI inflows in 2020 will only decrease -8.7% over the same period (total registered FDI capital is about 21 billion USD in absolute value, about 2 billion USD lower than in 2019) This makes the year 2021 promising in terms of prospects for FDI inflows;

Domestic consumption will recover from 2021;

Some economic restructuring activities such as: The first is the improvement of the business environment, in which many new laws will take effect from 2021 - such as the Investment Law, Enterprise Law, Securities Law, Law Public-Private Partnership (PPP), Law on Environmental Protection, etc The second is the reform of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), which is the last step when most SOEs are privatized In this final step, it is important that the Government clears

Self-analysis and market research to make securities trading decisions have been around for

a long time in developed countries with technological power

In Vietnam, in recent years, when the Internet has exploded, transactions based on knowledge about new markets have exploded more strongly

self-Accordingly, modern securities investors tend to make their own trading decisions without

consulting from investment advisor -brokers at securities company

❖ Vietnam stock market Outlook 2021:

Regarding the prospect of Vietnam's stock market in 2021, in addition to the strong internal strength of the economy, the ability of Vietnam's stock market to rise lies in the story of market upgrading and the possibility of putting Covid vaccines into use in near future In the latest evaluation, MSCI announced that the proportion of Vietnam in the MSCI Frontier Market 100 index basket will increase from 12.5% to 28.76% in November 2021 after 5 periods Currently, Vietnam has 14.2% share in this index basket On the one hand, this could be a positive factor attracting foreign capital inflows into the Vietnamese market in 2021

In particular, the stock market capitalization for the whole market by the end of 2020 has reached over 5.2 million billion VND, an increase of about 19% compared to the end of 2019, equivalent to over 85% of GDP

According to VnEconomy Magazine (2), there are four main factors that determine the trend

of the stock market in 2021:

(1) Cheap money is still a huge fulcrum for the global market in general and Vietnam's stock market in particular Most of the time in 2021, the interest rate level in Vietnam is still low, equivalent to the interest rate at the end of 2020 At the end of next year, interest rates may inch up slightly when demand for credit, investment needs to expand business karma increased again

(2) Vietnam's GDP growth will bounce back from the low base of 2020

(3) Expect a return of foreign capital inflows to emerging markets, including Vietnam Besides, the prospect of upgrading Vietnam's stock market from frontier market to emerging

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market is also a factor helping Vietnam's stock market to welcome the return of foreign capital inflows in the coming year

(4) Large-scale recovery prospects for listed companies (3)

According to data from the Securities Depository Center (VSD), the number of securities accounts opened by domestic investors in 2020 is more than 393,000, double that of 2019 and the number of newly opened accounts peaked in December 2020, the highest monthly level ever (reached 2,771,409 investors) That shows an extremely positive signal for the stock industry outlook in 2021 and the following years

2.2 Identify rival companies:

Analyze advantage over competitors in the Securities brokerage segment Based on 2 criteria below:

[1] Business model subgroups of securities companies:

o Group of foreign securities companies do business with cheap capital costs: Mirae Assets | KIS | KBVN | Maybank KimEng | Yuanta

o Group of securities companies approaching online direction: TCBS | PineTree |

o Domestic "Multipurpose" Securities Company: SSI | VPS | HSC | VND | VCSC | MBS | BSC | FPTS…

[2] Maket share:

For the equity market (HOSE, HNX, UPCOM), compared to Top 5 rival companies, SSI is leading the market share for 2 consecutive years 2019 and 2020 with detailed market share as follows:

Table 1: Equity market share ranking of top 5 securities companies

Source: Website of Stock Exchanges https://www.hsx.vn ; https://www.hnx.vn

For the derivative market, compared to the top 5 rival companies, SSI is ranked 5th in 2019 and 2020

Table 2: Derivative market share ranking of top 5 securities companies

Source: Website of Stock Exchanges https://www.hsx.vn

Up to now, in terms of market share data and business model subgroups of securities companies, the main competitors of SSI are: VPS, HSC, VND and MBS

Currently, SSI's advantage is still only shown in the underlying market, while for the derivative market, SSI is losing quite a lot compared to other competitors

However, for the underlying market, comparing Q4 / 2020, VPS is showing a fairly fast market share growth and is currently likely to have a first position dispute with SSI in Q1 / 2021 (VPS is demonstrating the superiority of the market on all exchanges: HOSE, HNX, UPCOM and Derivative Market)

❖ Career opportunities for employees in the securities industry

The stock market has grown extremely fast and strongly recently It also leads to fierce competition for personnel at all levels from senior management, highly specialized management levels as well as employees with experience from 2 years or more

Career opportunities are quite attractive for employees in the securities sector This is one of the important factors that greatly affects the employee's intention to change jobs The companies need to be very careful to have the right strategy to retain employees

2.3 Symptoms:

After conducting in-depth interviews with 7 people in “Being working” or “Resigned” The

symptom can be observed is “high turnover rate” in Online Customer Care Division (Call

center Team before Dec 20220)

According to the analysis of data provided by the Human Resources department regarding the total number of employees, the number of employees quited and the turnover rate of operation division from 2018 to 2020 Over the years, the turnover rate of divisions has ranged from 8% to 29% However, in 2020, the turnover rate of the Call Center Team is very high (60%) compared to the common ground of other divisions (the highest rate is 27%) are as follows:

Table 3: Turnover rate at SSI Operation Divisions

Source: Provided by company Compared to 2018 (25%) and 2019 (0%) at Call Center Team, this rate (60%) is also exceptionally high compared to the rate of 2 year before

According to "The Global Call Center Report (4): International Perspectives on Management and Employment", the typical call center reports a total turnover rate of 20% per year of Call Center jobs This includes promotions, voluntary quits, retirements, and dismissals However, the Turnover rate at Call Center Team in SSI in 2020 reached 60%, including 2 times

of changing the manager in 2020 In terms of the number of headcounts as of the end of 2020 are

5 employees, including 2 seniors with 2-3 years of experience, 2 new employees with less than 1 year experience and 1 deputy department also newly transferred from another room

2.4 Importance of symptom:

- Negative impact on the remaining employees:

o Over workload for remaining staff:

Through the statistics provided by Ms Tra My Considering only measurable tasks such as calls and tickets, it takes an employee almost 9 hours to process a day's work Employees often has to work overtime as in the table below:

The average calls 1 employee to handle on 1 day 105 3.5

The average tickets 1 employee to handle on 1

Table 4: Average number of calls and tickets per employee per day in Jan 2021

Source: Provided by company

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Consequences of over-workload:

o Directly affect the morale and health of employees such as increasing stress at work, the remaining employees are overloaded due to lack of staffs, employees show signs of burnout

o With a high new personnel situation (3 new employees / total 5 employees) as well as a high turnover rate as mentioned above Mrs My - Deputy manager

of Online Customer Care Division - said that

“This situation is directly affecting the morale of the staff due to work overload”

Through interviewing, Ms Ngôn - Senior – Online Customer Care Division- said that:

“Problems that I am facing including stress, unbalanced life, many health effects, a lot of health reduction due to too much talk, respiratory infections, shortness of breath, high body temperature; Adding work led us burnout and stress.I lost weight from 43 kg to 38 kg”

- Employees expressed dissatisfaction, lack of trust in the new managers This also

creates additional challenges for new managers in running the division's operations

- Indirectly affect service quality to customers Leads to many challenges for the company to implement a new business expansion strategy - digital brokerage

o That also leads to the customer service quality is not as good as before In particular, she said, there have been many unanswered customers calls in recent times

o With that same judgment, Mr Trung - Deputy Managing Director - Since the beginning of 2020, said the Customer Care Division is facing frequent overload and a large number of employees quit their jobs In the context of a booming day in the number of new investors (F0) entering the market in the last 1 year, the Call Center Team cannot keep up to take care of customers Status is unable to assist customers on board, customers waiting for service to increase, the rate of dissatisfaction of customers will be affected in a negative direction The question is how to ensure that the human resources of the Customer Care Division are sufficient in quantity and quality to be able to implement plans and achieve business goals

- Group 1 (resigned employees): to find out the reasons and motives leading to the decision to resign from resigned employees

- Group 2 (current working group): understand the problems that current employees are facing and consider whether they intend to leave or not

- Group 3: (High level managers) getting additional perspectives from Heads and CPO

on issues noted by employees

There were 2 initial problems to be noted include stress at work, and lack of trust to new team leaders:

3.1.1 Stress at work

Ms Hang, resigned Deputy Manager in charge of Call Center Team from when founded until 2018 said that:

“Employees at Team Call Center are often stressed under high work pressure”

According to S Michie, the generally accepted definition today is one of interaction between the situation and the individual It is the psychological and physical state that results when the resources of the individual are not sufficient to cope with the demands and pressures of the situation Stress can undermine the achievement of goals, both for individuals and for organisations (5)

Discuss the causes of “stress at work” of call center staffs, there are 4 issues recorded including the call center role stress, low salary, unclear rotation/ promotion opportunity, and intrinsic problem of job

❖ The first issues “the call center role stress”:

Ms Hang clarified further:

“Call Center staffs are often stressed due to reasons such as being cursed by customers, constantly listening to the phone This leads to fatigue, stress, psychological instability, feeling stressed when hearing the ringing of the phone”

Indeed, cccording Babin & Boles, “Role stress” occurs in employee jobs that involve direct customer contact whether in the context of a face-to-face or a telephone service encounter has

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identified role conflict and role ambiguity as the two key components of role stress (6) In which, Role conflict has been defined as “the simultaneous occurrence of two (or more) sets of pressures such that compliance with one would make more difficult compliance with the other”

(7).For call center personnel, expectations of the company, the team leaders stressing operational efficiency may clash with the demands of customers who want problem resolution or satisfaction

Ms Van also confirmed that:

“The nature of work is always stressful, requiring high quality service”

In addition, Ms Kim Anh, resigned deputy manager in charge of Team Call Center from

2018 to March 2020, shared about why she decided to resign after 10 years of work

“My personality does not match the nature of Team Call Center work I always want

to show myself more while the work requires too high framework”

In this regard, Ms Hang also confirmed that:

“The work environment is stressful due to the nature of the work, employee must respond and immediately handle the requirements of customers, not flexible in handling work The nature of job is boring, tiring, and stressful

With such stress at work, if the employees do not have the suitable qualities, they will not be able to bear it for a long time, leading to the turnover intention”

❖ T he second issue “Low salary”:

Ms Kim Anh, resigned team leader of Team Call Center, said that

“For the other two employees who quit their jobs in 2020, the reason is due to low salary, 2 years without salary increase while job requirements are increasing in quantity and quality”

Ms Tra My, current deputy manager in charge of Customer Care Division from July 2020 with team leader role, shared:

“Current employees are often stressed, do not have time to spend with family, low salary, not enough to cover family expenses Therefore, employees are quite heavy on psychology”

According to of Saira Yousaf, Madiha Latif, Sumaira Aslam and Madiha Latif on the Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, the authors mentioned that salary, bonuses, and allowances are the significant elements of financial reward Financial rewards play a pivotal role

in boosting the morale of the employees Salary is the most motivating financial reward because money enables the employees to live their lives with dignity and stability (8)

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Research by Eric G Lambert, Nancy Lynne Hogan, Shannon M Barton about “The impact

of job satisfaction on turnover intent” in the Social Science Journal demonstrates that financial rewards have effects on job satisfaction and on turnover intent (9)

To further clarify this issue with stakeholders, the following views were noted:

Ms Tuong Van, Online Trading Manager, in charge of both 2 team E-trading and Call Center until Dec 2020, said that

“I can’t commit to the salary increase for the employees because the company does not have a clear policy on the growth roadmap yet So, I can't make my own decisions, make promises or communicate clearly with staffs Proposed salary increase depends

on the business results of the company and must be reviewed through many levels.”

Through group discussion with Ms Nhung - Chief People Officer - along with Mr Trung - Deputy General Director - about the salary of positions at Online Customer Care Division as well as comparing with the general market level Ms Nhung said:

“In 2020, the HR department has surveyed and updated salary higher than the market benchmark.HR Team will update new range to departments to review for suitable proposals Salary review plan is expected to be implemented in April 2021”

❖ The third issue “unclear rotation/ promotion opportunity”

Ms Hang said that

“Some of employees desired to have the opportunity to switch to another division, but they thought that had no slot to be rotated”

Ms Kim Anh also mentioned

“For the other two employees who quit their jobs in 2020, another reason is due to unclear promotion opportunities”

Ms Tuong Van also said that

“In 2020, there were 2 changes in the management level, but the appointed personnel were transferred from other departments, but did not choose to appoint internal personnel So, employees with many years of experience are not satisfied due to lack

of promotion opportunities and lack of recognition”

Find out the reasons behind the appointment decision with the option of transferring management personnel from another department without internal appointment, Ms Van clarified:

“I have not built a succession roadmap nor a training roadmap for successors internally to react quickly to scenarios When the management personnel left, the

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current personnel were not ready in terms of management capacity to be able to meet the requirements of the position Therefore, we considered to transfer management personnel from other departments to deal with these situations”

Find out more deeply the causes leading to the perception of low salary, there is no clear promotion path for highly qualified employees in the department Comments from stakeholders are as follows:

Ms Hang said that:

“The outside perspective often does not appreciate Call Center staffs They think that there is no need for any superior ability for this job

However, their role is very important to the customer as well as to the company Call Center staffs expect their salaries to be the same as other divisions This is an important issue for them to feel appreciated.”

Ms Tuong Van also said that:

Although the nature of work is always stressful, requiring high-quality service, the team Call Center always feels underrated work simple, low salary, this led them to lack of motivation

❖ Causes relate to the 2 nd issue and 3 rd issue:

▪ Lack of criteria for promotion/ reviewing salary:

Discussing long-term solutions to have a suitable salary increase roadmap, thereby recognizing and retaining employees, Ms Nhung clarified that

“The managers need to communicate clearly and appropriately the roadmap to employees In addition, the managers should also pay attention to building criteria for salary review, years of experience are not the criteria for salary increase adjustment Note that the scope of work, workload and salary will be considered for key positions

to retain”

Through discussion, the issue related to low salary has been fully identified The Head of the Department and the Human Resources Department have agreed on need to build the policy through developing a set of standard criteria From there, it serves as a basis for evaluation, review, and appropriate salary adjustment to retain employees

It can be said that although the management levels have recognized the importance of the call center staff's work and the requirements for professional competence are high However, this view has not been clarified internally as well as with related departments, leading to the problem

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that employees always feel unappreciated in terms of both roles and capabilities Since then, the salary is not considered appropriately and there is no clear promotion opportunity

▪ Lack of commitment from manager

Through discussion with Ms Van - Head of E-Trading Department- to find out more carefully about salary increase roadmap of employees, she explained more clearly the reason for this situation that

“I cannot decide on my own to commit to employees The decision to increase salary depends on the company's business results at times and the proposal must be reviewed

multi-In addition, new employees who are not proficient in the profession So, I have to spend time for training new employees, continuously monitoring to support them.”

▪ Work conditions:

Ms Ngon also comment about work conditions that:

“Closed environment, desks are arranged opposite and close to each other, without partitions while all employees have to talk continuously Such conditions are easy for employees to spread disease to each other Sometimes we have to wear masks to prevent the risk of infection from colleagues

Sharing about the problems that call center staff are currently facing, Ms Ngon said:

“Problems that I am facing including stress, unbalanced life, many health effects, a lot of health reduction due to too much talk, respiratory infections, shortness of breath, high body temperature, lost weight from 43 kg to 38 kg”

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According to empirical review of Michie and Williams (10), a systematic review of the evidence for work factors associated with psychological ill health, stress found the key factors to be: long hours worked, work overload and pressure, unclear management and work role and poor management style

A model of stress at work of S Michie also show that the workplace is an important source

of both demands and pressures causing stress Those that are intrinsic to the job include long hours, work overload, time pressure, difficult or complex tasks, lack of breaks, lack of variety, and poor physical work conditions (for example, space, temperature, light)

In summary, there are 4 issues lead to “stress at work” recorded from both resigned employees and current employees: call center role stress, low salary, unclear rotation/ promotion opportunity, and intrinsic problem of job Through the theory as well as the practical consequences of stress at work through interviews, it can be determined that stress affects both the individual employees as well as the overall performance of the organization Specifically for individuals, stress threats to health, well-being, quality of life, goal achievement, confidence, and personal development For the workplace and organization, stress threat to increase turnover, reduced quantity and quality of work, reduce job satisfaction and morale, poor communication and increased conflict

❖ Causes of intrinsic to job problem :

▪ Lack of deep attention from leader

▪ Inappropriate work assignment

Comments on this issue about stress at work, Mr Trung – Deputy managing director – said that:

“The first thing when I received to manage this division, I noticed that the work assignment was not reasonable, an employee could not listen to so many calls in a day That will greatly affect the health and psychology of employees In my opinion, it

is partly due to the lack of attention and understanding from the management in allocating work”

Accordingly, inappropriate work assignment and lack of deep attention from leader to propose solution timely to support employee is considered as one of the causes leading to the situation of employees being intrinsic problem to the job (overloaded, poor working condition, high pressure) as well as stress situation in the recent period

According to the model of stress at work of S Michie related to Causes And Management Of Stress At Work (11) showed that the possibilities for job development are important buffers

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against current stress, with under promotion, lack of training, and job insecurity being stressful Stress is likely to lead to Increased absenteeism and high staff turnover

3.1.2 Lack of trust to new team leader:

Through interviews with managers, besides issues related to "stress at work", another important issue that was assessed to greatly contribute to the decision to quit the job of 2 employees in 2020 is: they did not trust to the new team leader

“Trust to leader” is defined that employees and leader had a good communication, shared similar values, and had a common understanding on job processes(12); According to the research of Lisa H Nishii and David M Mayer about relationship between role of leader and turnover, “Trust to leader” is accepted by the most of the academicians leadership is the most important factor in management; The research also show that the “trust to leader” has positive

and significant effect on turnover intentions

Taking a closer look at the potential causes for the lack of trust to the new team leader, Ms Kim Anh said that:

“Due to the nature of work is easy to stress, it is very necessary for understanding and sharing from management When I was managing the team, I was very close, supported the staff continuously, creating a gentle atmosphere for employees to reduce stress The employees shared that with the new team leader, the atmosphere was not as good as before, they did not receive enough support from leader, so they were dissatisfied ”

Besides, through interviews, with Ms Tra My - new team leader - shared more clearly the challenges and problems in the past period:

“ I have just been transferred from the Operations Control Division to the Online Customer Care Department with Team leader role At the end of the year 2020 performance evaluating, I did not have enough prior information to properly evaluate

Accordingly, there are two causes were recorded from the perspective of the stakeholders is: employees did not receive enough supporting as before and employees feel unrecognized from mew leader Ms Van also clarified the causes behind the above issues:

“The unplanned replacement manager has some limitations, such as either insufficient expertise or limited management experience

New team leader has just been transferred from another department So, she was not equipped with the expertise to best support their employees On the other hand, the new manager does not have much management experience, especially the specific requirements of the Call Center”

Increasing skills and competencies is necessary for leaders to build harmony and trust among stakeholders (14)

Through literature review and depth interviews with stakeholders, the author has sketched the initial causes- effects map as below:

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Figure 4: The initial cause - effect map

Source: Synthesized and drafted by the author

3.2 Potential problems:

3.2.1 Lack of organizational career growth

Through research theory and literature related symptom, above issues, potential causes as the following:

According to Arthur, Career is understood as the succession of work experiences in an

individual’s lifetime (15)

Career growth is defined as one’ s perceptions of the chances of development and advancement within an organization (16) Likewise, Organizational Career Growth is the

opportunity of career growth within present working organization

According to Weng, four main construct of Organizational Career growth proposed:

professional ability development, promotion speed, career goal progress and remuneration growth (advancement and salary growth) (17) While organizational commitment is formed using the model Meyer and Allen's three-component figure suggesting that career growth factors affect organizational commitment (18)

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Spector defined career growth or the so-called career ladder as an improvement in the

positions of employees who put in an effort to gain necessary skills and upgrade their performance (19)

Through interviews and relevant theoretical research, relevant issues, including potential causes and consequences were explored including low salary, unclear rotation, promotion opportunity, lack of commitment from manager The 1st potential problems are identified as

“Lack of organizational career growth” at Online Customer Care Division

The relationships between Organizational Career Growth and employees’ turnover intention was mentioned by Weng & McElroy (20) that: Organizational career growth shows potential for managing turnover, its biggest impact is on those who desire a career Remuneration growth and promotion speed and is the most important factors that have direct high impact on employee’s turnover intentions

Ms Kim Anh – who has worked for more than 10 years at Call Center Team – shared that:

“I wish the job more challenging, have the opportunity to express my capacity and perspective at work I and 2 other employees quit each with their own reasons but in general we are not satisfied with our work at Team Call Center regarding the nature

of their work, the roadmap for salary increases and promotions”

From the above analysis, it can be concluded that the effects as well as consequences of

“Lack of organizational career growth” problem are uncommitted employees and high intention

to quit

According to the statistics of the employee list, the number of years of experience and the job title shows that employees working with 2-3 years of experience are still officers Higher positions like Senior Associate have 4-5 years of experience Although in 2020 there were 2 changes of managers due to resignation and rotation However, 2 Senior Associate positions still did not receive promotion opportunities because there was no clear promotion path and no training plan in management skills so that Senior Associates can be ready to take on management positions

Employee

Code

Date of Entering the Company

Day off

Number of years of experience Job Title

000274 16/11/2009 20/02/2020 11 years Deputty Manager

001283 02/01/2018 20/06/2020 2 years Officer

001389 23/04/2018 13/06/2020 2 years Associate

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000974 01/12/2016 N/A 5 years Senior Associate

001112 12/06/2017 N/A 4 years Senior Associate

Table 5: The statistics of the number of experience year and the job title

Source: Provided by company

3.2.2 Ineffective leadership

Through research theory and literature review related to symptom, above issues, potential causes and consequences:

Hughes, Ginnett and Curphy (1999) say that “leadership is the process” of influencing an

organized group towards accomplishing its goals (21)

Through theories and research of specific leadership behaviors to identify issues related to leadership effectiveness Here are some related comments:

The findings in the research of Gary Yukl related to "effective Leadership Behavior"

provided evidence that each of the 15 following specific behaviors is relevant for effective

leadership: planning, clarifying, monitoring, problem solving, supporting, recognizing, developing, empowering, advocating change, envisioning change, encouraging innovation,

facilitating collective learning, networking, external monitoring, representing

Other side, Schilling demonstrated that the “ineffective leadership” is the leader with

inappropriate behavior in order to achieve satisfaction and performance efficiency of followers (22) Illustrates most frequently assigned to quotes related to ineffective behavior of superiors and describes common patterns of behavior perceived as ineffective leadership (23) : missing leadership competence, characteristics of superior, weak communication capabilities of superior, lack of appraisal by superior, missing professional competence, spineless behavior of superior, lack of planning, lack of reflective power of superior, lack of trust of superior, lack

of mutual trust between superior and subordinate, technical incorrect decision, arrogance of superior, lack of direct communication, superior feels deflated in his/her role as a leader

Through interviews, some findings about ineffective leadership are reflected in Ms Van's opinion:

When changing manager, there are many problems arising in leadership style, staffs were not adaptable; New managers are not equipped with the expertise to best support their employees; The new manager does not have much management

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experience, especially the specific requirements of the Call Center, Subordinate employees have feelings of lack of attention, lack of timely support, and lack of trust in new direct team leader

Beside that, Mr Trung also said that:

It is partly due to the lack of attention and understanding from the management in allocating work

Through interviews and above relevant theoretical research, issues, including potential causes and consequences were explored including lack of deep attention from leader, inappropriate work assignment, new leader lack management skill and expertise, employees not appreciated, lack of commitment from manager, lack of planning for replacing the 2nd potential

problem is identified as “ineffective leadership” at Online Customer Care Division

Through literature review and interviewing potential causes from above stakeholers, the author has updated The causes- effects map as below:

Figure 5: The update preliminary cause - effect map

Source: Consolidated by the author

3.3 Validation the selected central problem

The author decided to choose ineffective leadership as the central problem for the following reasons:

First, Call Center/ Online customer care has become an important customer access channel

as well as an important customer care channel in medium and long-term customer-related business strategies Call center employees frequently experience role stress due to the difficult

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requirements of the company, supervisor, and client Accordingly, leadership capacity and style play a role in reducing employee stress, improving job satisfaction, organizational commitment, increasing performance and reducing employee's intention turnover Therefore, ineffective leadership is considered as the central problem to be addressed in this thesis

In addition, the important task set during the company's transition to a digital service model

is to find managers with a vision to build, maintain and motivate the strong enough team to execute the trend-following this strategy direction In which the manager plays an important role

in communicating organizational goals to employees and implementing them in the most effective way Criteria for selecting managers as well as choosing an effective leadership model

is a task as well as a challenge in the current period Mr Trung – Deputy managing director also emphasized this problem

Second, through interviews, the ineffective leadership was confirmed from stakeholders:

Mr Trung – Deputy General Director – confirmed that the proposed problem is also the problem that the Online Customer Care division is facing He said:

“I agree with the 2 potential problems identified and proposed above I am also taking

steps to improve these issues”

Related to the criteria to select the central problem to focus on solving Mr Trung said that:

“The criteria for problem selection: the problem has to relate to the most important task of the department in this period related to team building, development and stabilization Accordingly, based on the above criteria I think leadership-related issues should be prioritized to be solved.”

Mr Trung also agreed on the relationship between these two potential problems and commented:

“I agree with your arguments “solving the central problem of ineffective leadership through improving the capacity of managers, including team developing capacity, will

be the premise to solve the first potential problem - lack of organizational career growth.”

Ms Van also confirmed that :

“This is the reasons why employees are difficult to adapt, dissatisfied and decided to quit their jobs “

Ms Kim Anh said that: The new managers is difficult for employees to adapt

Compared to the Standard of company (the requirements of the manager position), Ms Vân said:

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“New managers are not equipped with the expertise to best support their employees (Ms Van); New manager does not have much management experience, especially the specific requirements of the Call Center”

Finally, based on informed- theory:

The findings in the research of Gary Yukl related to “Effective Leadership Behavior"

mentioned aboved related 15 following specific effective leadership behaviors Through interviews It can be seen that the new leaders lack a few factors as follows: supporting,

recognizing, developing

Schilling demonstrated that the “ineffective leadership” is the leader with inappropriate

behaviors Through interviews, it can be seen that the new leaders had inappropriate behavior: missing leadership competence, missing professional competence, lack of planning, lack of trust

of managers, including team developing capacity, will be the premise to solve the problem of lack of organizational career growth

With the above arguments, the author identifies ineffective leadership as the central problem

to focus on solving Accordingly, the last cause - effect map is updated as follows

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Figure 6: The last update preliminary cause - effect map

Source: Consolidated by the author

4 CAUSE VALIDATION

4.1 Exploration of potential cause:

Through interviews with stakeholders related to the ineffective leadership problem From the above cause & effect map, potential related causes were noted include lack of management skill and expertise of new team leaders, conflicts between new leaders and employees, deficient succession planning, inadequate training for new managers/ leaders

Through the study of related theories to discover additional potential causes:

- The concept of negative leadership is comprised of both ineffective and destructive leadership According to Konst, Vonk, and Van der Vlist (24), the antecedents and consequences of negative leadership can be related to the leader himself, his environment (e.g followers) and a combination of both aspects (interaction: e.g bad climate between leader and followers)

- According to Research of Jan Schilling related to “a qualitative study on the meaning of negative leadership” Results showed that: Negative leadership is said to

be caused by the leader's environment, especially followers, direct work field, as well as organizational processes, organizational structure, and organizational resources are considered potential sources of negative leadership (25) Concept map

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of the antecedents of negative leadership shows the three potential causes: person, environment, interaction:

Figure 7: The concept map of the antecedents of negative leadership

Source: Article of Jan Schilling, RWTH Aachen University, Germany (26)

4.1.2 The person (the leader him/herself), including:

- Traits: issues of lacking leader abilities and personality, specific personal flaws

- States: concerning potential material loss in case of failure as a leader (fear)

- Knowledge and learning: lacking a leader’s necessary competencies such as work-related

knowledge (knowledge concerning the tasks of the employees), lack of experience as a leader, lack of knowledge concerning goals and procedures of the company, leader focus

so much on daily business and losing sight of the leadership task

- Goals and needs: bias for operational work, high power distance, a lack of

entrepreneurship