Employee Engagement and Areas of Worklife of Call Center Agents in the Philippines

This study described the level of work engagement and areas of worklife of 294 call center agents in Ortigas, Pasig City, Philippines. It also investigated the relationship between work engagement and areas of worklife when grouped according to gender, age, tenure at present job and course. In addition, it also explored the differences in the perception of the call center agents when grouped according to the demographic profile. Gamma correlation was carried out to check if correlation exists between the variables of work engagement and variables of areas of worklife. Mood’s median test was conducted to test the differences in the level of engagement and areas of worklife when grouped according to demographic profiles. Results of work engagement showed that those who were aged 31-35 and those who stayed for less than a year in the organization had a high level of dedication. Commerce or Business graduates had a high level of absorption. Results of the areas of worklife showed that majority of the respondents when grouped according to their demographic profile had a match with the variables of fairness, control, values, workload, and community except for the age group of 36 and above who had a mismatch for the variable control. No relationship existed between work engagement and the areas of worklife. Male call center agents are perceived to be more energetic, dedicated and absorbed than female call center agents. Lastly, the areas of control and fairness were reported to differ across all demographic profile of gender, age, tenure at the present job and course.


Introduction
Employee engagement is now an everyday language within organization and interest in this subject is growing year after year [1]. Engagement is a "buzz" word that is popular in the area of Organizational Psychology since engagement correlates with positive outcomes like growth and lower absenteeism [2]. Employee contribution becomes a critical business issue because in trying to produce more output with less employee input, companies have choice but to try to engage not only the body, but the mind and soul of every employee [3]. Research studies in the last decade suggested that 80 percent of workers are not performing their best effort to the job [4]. Companies with high employee engagement beat low engagement companies in many areas of business success [5]. A survey of over 600 CEOs from around the world claimed that engaging employee is one of the top 5 most important challenges facing management [6].
Employee engagement is defined as the harnessing of organizational members selves to their work roles [7]. This simply means that workers have a strong emotional bond to their organization, are actively involved in and committed to their work. Engaged employees has been characterized as having a sense of energy and effective connection with their work activities and they see themselves as able to deal with the demands of their job. Engaged employees felt that their jobs are important and know that their opinion and ideas have value and often go beyond their immediate job responsibilities for the good of the organization [8]. Another concept of engagement focuses on engagement as management practice that interest around involvement and participation. This is distinct from the engagement as a psychological state as defined earlier [9].
The call center industry is one of the best sector in our industry to study employee engagement since stress and burnout is a regular focus of local and foreign researches in call center because of its effect on employee performance and satisfaction ever since business became global [10]. The positive growth of the call center in our country, the Philippines, brings issue like stress, high attrition rate, mismatches in school curricula and industry demand [11]. Due to this issues, businesses and HR practitioners are finding ways to reverse or promote a healthy lifestyle and retain employees. Engagement and turnover are forecasted to be an important metrics for every call center [12].
Several researches have been made to prevent or attempt to solve the problems in the call center workplace [13], [14]. Job satisfaction and stress in call center was the favorite focus of studies in call centers [15], [16]. From the literature, we can say that there is a recurrent study on the stress-level or well-being of call center agents [17], [18].These researches indicate that there is a focus on the negative aspects of working in a call center and there is limited work on the positive side [19], [20]. In the midst of this growth has emerged increasing concern about the human resource practices in these workplaces, and the implications these new forms of work organization have for employees.
Recently, in the field of Psychology, a call for researches that focus on the positive side of work is becoming a trend; work "wellness" instead of the negative one "iillness" can provide insights on the positive side of work. Researches should focus and explore more on the positive side of work to fully understand the meaning and effects of working [21].
The work environment of a call center is subject to a number of factors that create particularly difficult demand, making it one of the most stressful jobs to cope up with [8]. There is close and direct supervision and little freedom of movement [22]. The agents remained seated during their shifts and they are prone to physical discomforts like eyesight problem, hearing problem, voice loss, neck and back stiffness despite the use of ergonomically designed equipment in work. Though it is hard to believe but not everybody is stressed or burned out in a call center, there are engaged, competent, connected and confident call center employees [23].
In studying engagement, researchers cannot help but use literature on burnout, as work engagement is considered as the antipole of burnout. A need for a more cross-cultural research on burnout is recommended [24]. A burnout study using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is usually accompanied with the Areas of Work life Survey to identify the area of match or mismatch in the following factors: Workload, Community, Reward, Fairness, Control and Values.
Since there are limited empirical and academic research in Engagement and the Areas of Worklife most especially in the category of call center, this study can provide new insights in the wellbeing and engagement of call center agents.

Statement of the Problem
The study aimed to determine the level of work engagement, and areas of worklife of call center agents in selected call centers in Ortigas/Pasig District, Manila.
Specifically, this study sought to answer the following problems. 1. What is the level of work engagement of the call center agents according to profile? 1.

Research Methodology
The descriptive method of research was used in this study. The goal of descriptive research is to test hypotheses and answer questions like 'what", "who", "when" and "where" questions [25].
The Area of Worklife Survey and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale were used in this study. The Area of Worklife Scale (AWLS) was developed by Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter and it consists of 29 items that focuses on the six qualities namely, Workload, Control, Fairness, Values, Reward and Community to assess organizational environment. Scores of the AWLS is valuable in designing organizational interventions to enhance the quality of work life. Respondents indicate their degree of agreement with these statements on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree), through 3 (hard to decide), to 5 (strongly agree). For each of the six subscales, the scale defines a match or job-person fit as a high score (greater than 3) which indicates a high degree of congruence between the workplace and the respondents preference. A low score (less than 3.00), indicate more incongruence between the worker and the workplace [26].
The Utrecht Work Engagement Survey was developed by Wilmar Schaufeli and Arnold Bakker and it consists of 17 items that measures vigor, dedication and absorption. The mean scale score of the three UWES subscales is computed by adding the scores on the particular scale and dividing the sum by the number of items of the subscale involved. A similar procedure is followed for the total score. Hence, the UWES, yields three subscale scores and/or a total score that range between 0 and 6 [27]. The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale was found to be the most widely adopted measure of employee engagement [9].
The data for this research were obtained from 4 call center companies namely, One World Connections, Transcom, Alorica and Sitel. These companies were operational for 12-17 years and provided customer service, technical support and credit management services to North America, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and local companies in the Philippines.
The purposive sampling technique was utilized since the sampling was based on selecting the individuals as samples according to their location (Ortigas/Pasig District) and shift (night shift). This technique was the most appropriate since there was a difficulty in the random selection of call center organizations. There were 100 questionnaires given to each of the four companies. From the 400 questionnaires only 294 were completed and submitted. The response rate for the sample was 73.75 %. The margin or error was at 5.61% at the 95% confidence level.
The data was subjected to statistical computation and analyses using STATA software using percentage, weighted mean, gamma correlation and Mood's median test.

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Volume 77 Gamma correlation is a test of relationship for ordinal data and is also used when ties are found in the ranking of the data. In terms of the underlying assumptions, Gamma is equivalent to Spearman's Rho or Kendall's Tau; but in terms of its interpretation and computation, it is more similar to Kendall's Tau than Spearman's Rho. Gamma correlation involves the notion of concordance. In this study for example, if a person is feeling energetic, we would expect that person to report that he has a manageable workload. We call this concordance. If a person feels fatigued, we expect this person to have more workload. That is what we mean to say that vigor and workload are positively related.
The formula for gamma correlation is as follows: = Na -Ni Na + Ni where Na = number of agreements, Ni = number of inversions, G = the difference between the number of agreements and the number of inversions To compute for gamma, begin with the construction of a cross tabulation that represents the observed values for each case under consideration on both of variables. When constructing the cross tabulation, the highest ranking should be at the top among the rows and at the left among the columns or vice versa [28].
The Mood's Median test compares the medians of two or more independent samples. It is an alternative to the parametric test of difference like t-test and ANOVA. The result of the likert scale in this study is on a 1-5 scale and 0-6 scale and these are ordinal scales. This scale results to several ties like 5 or 3, it is skewed to the higher or neutral scores. Hence, we cannot assume a normal distribution that is a requirement in a parametric test. Hence the non-parametric median test is a more appropriate test of significance when comparing the level of engagement and areas of worklife when grouped according to profile.
To use the median test, we first calculate the median per profile, the weighted mean scores per individual was used as scores, a similar computation was compared to test the t-test and median test of difference using mean scores, next we collapse the data in each group into two (dichotomous) categories: 1) the scores that fall above the median 2) the scores that fall below the median Next, we will use the formula for chi-square to test the differences of the level of engagement per profile. The formula for chi-square is as follows: [29] = Σ(O − E) E where O = the observed or obtained frequency of those who are above or below the median when grouped according to profile of gender, age, tenure at the present job and course, E = the expected or theoretical frequency of those who are above or below the median when grouped according to profile of gender, age, tenure at the present job and course [30]. Table 1 showed the level of vigor, dedication and absorption according to demographic profile, when grouped according to gender, the level of vigor, dedication and absorption is in the average with a weighted mean that ranges from 4.02 -4.88. When grouped according to age, the level of dedication for the age group of 31-35 is high. The rest of the age group is on the average level in terms of vigor and absorption with a range of 4.10 -4.55. Respondents who stayed in their job for 0-6 months (4.79) and 7-11 months (4.83) have a high level of dedication. A meta-analysis suggests that dedication was most closely related to job satisfaction and commitment [9]. The 7-11 months also has a high level of absorption (4.50). The rest of the group according to tenure in International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 77 the present job has an average level for vigor, dedication and absorption. Lastly, when group according to their courses, the Commerce graduates got a high level for absorption with a weighted mean of 4.44; all courses has an average level for vigor with a range of 4.12 -4.72; HRM, Associate courses and Commerce also got a high level of dedication with a mean that ranges from 4.9 -5.07. The respondents scored high in dedication means that they find meaning in this type of job. This implies that the group is "average" in their involvement in their work and experience a sense of meaning and pride in what they do. Older employees tend to be more engaged [8]. An important factor in the well-being of call center agents is making sure there is a fit between the person and the job. Result suggests that certain personalities and workers may be better suited for call center work. Call centers have traditionally tapped young workers and new graduates who are generally mobile and restless. The less traditional source of applicant including older workers, parents, career shifters can also be hired. The service to others is valued more by older workers than younger ones [31]. The age group 31-35 may find their task meaningful by providing customer service to clients. The high mean score for dedication and absorption for those who stayed in the organization maybe attributed to a desire to be in a supervisory position or there is a fit in the person and the job in the call center [32].

Summary of Findings
When grouped by tenure in their present job, the respondents' level of vigor is average with mean scores ranging from 3.98 as lowest (3-5 years) to 4.58 (7-11 months) as highest. This suggests that those who are still fresh in the company may report greater satisfaction in their job but as they

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Volume 77 stay long in the company the engagement level has a tendency to regress to average. Generally, in researches, employees feel committed and engrossed in their work in the first year in a new job. Call center agents in general appear ambivalent about committing themselves to careers in call centers, only 1 in 4 agents reported to see themselves staying in the call center industry. Majority hoped to be in the supervisory position after 5 years with a minority seeing themselves in another call center or in the same job. The high mean score for dedication and absorption for those who stayed in the organization may be attributed to a desire to be in a supervisory position or there is a fit in the person and the job in the call center [31].
A result study showed that company employees with 0~5 years of working gain the highest scores on all the three dimensions of work engagement [33]. When grouped according to course, the result implies that graduates of HRM, Associate and Commerce tend to be more involved and find meaning in their job. Commerce graduates also have focused on their job than those who graduated from other courses. The Filipino worker finds meaning in their work. Doing work gives fulfillment beyond routine performance of a job. They also added that when individuals connect what they really like to do and get paid to do it they may become totally absorbed with the task at hand [31].  Table 2 presents the result of the mean scores and their level of match when grouped according to demographic profile. When grouped according to gender, the areas of worklife in terms of workload, reward, community, fairness, values and control is in the direction of a match. The result suggests that the respondents may have enough time to do their work, experiences autonomy and get incentives and recognition for work done. They also enjoy the company of colleagues, is fairly treated by management and the respondent's vales matches that of the organization. Both male and female are in the direction of match for all areas of work life.

International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 77
When grouped according to age, the areas of worklife namely, workload, reward, fairness and values is in the direction of a match with a weighted mean that ranges from 3.19 -3.99. In terms of community those who belong to the age group of 26-30 years old has a match, there is a mismatch in the age group 36 and above for the area control. This implies that among the age group, those who are older tend to experience less autonomy and independence than the younger respondents in this study. They may not have the opportunity to make choices and decisions or to contribute to the fulfillment of responsibilities. In a study on 487 Filipino workers on motivation showed that Filipino workers tend to work more for internal rewards such as enjoyment, self-satisfaction, selffulfillment and value things such as choice and autonomy in their work [34].
When grouped according to their present job, the areas of worklife in terms of workload, fairness, control, value and reward is in the direction of a match. Those who work for 1-2 years has a match in community and the rest of the grouping according to their present job has a direction of match in community that ranges from 3.00 -3.91.This result suggests that agents were able to develop friendship in their 1-2 years of stay in the organization. They work well with their colleagues and receive support from them. Social support has been found to be associated with greater engagement [35]. "Bonding activities" has been an integral aspect of work organization in call centers in Australia, this is also a common practice in the Philippine call centers [36]. Studies reported a connection between aspects of team-level engagement and support, e.g. climate and communication, and individual-level engagement, suggesting that there may be a spillover of engagement among team members [9].
When grouped according to course, the education graduates matches with the area of reward with a mean of 4.01; the HRM (4.00), Associate (4.17), Education (4.14) and engineering (4.01) matches with the area of community. The rest of the area for workload, fairness, control and values is in the direction of match with a weighted mean that ranges from 3.05 -3.79. This suggests that Education graduates reported to value the incentives like recognition given by the company as this could give them a sense of pride in achieving something and being rewarded for doing it. They also enjoy the lively and friendly atmosphere in a call center as indicated by the match in their community score. A sense of community have been found to buffer the impacts of feeling inequality at work [37]. It has been reported that factors like the working-environment and team and co-worker relationship have shown significantly higher impact on employee engagement and hence employee performance. Therefore organisations shall focus on presenting a great environment for employees to work and promote programmes that would enhance peer relationships [38].  Table 3 shows the relationship between the dimensions of Work Engagement against the dimension of Areas of Worklife. The range of correlation coefficient falls between 0.003-0.13 which is interpreted as having a weak or no correlation. This suggests that participants' score on work engagement does not influence the score on any of the areas of worklife. We cannot assume that a high or low score in any area of worklife will increase or decrease the level of engagement of the call center agents.
In a study on engagement and burnout it was reported that there are aspects of engagement with work that lie beyond the realm of immediate work environment like intrinsic motivation. It was also added that in her study that there are a portion of respondents who reported that they were not engaged in their work but they were not burned out" [39]. The call center agents in this study

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Volume 77 reported to have a "being in in the direction of a match" in the areas of worklife (not a match nor mismatch) and only average on work engagement (not highly engaged).  Table 4 presents the median test of difference of vigor, dedication and absorption when grouped according to demographic profile. When grouped according to gender, the p-value of 0.00, 0.012 and 0.002 for vigor, dedication and absorption respectively, shows that the female and male group differs significantly. The male respondents obtained higher scores on vigor, dedication and absorption than the female respondents.
The result suggests that male agents experience significantly higher levels of engagement than female agents which imply that the male agents seem to be more satisfied in their job, more committed and seem to experience more fulfillment than their female counterparts. Male agents are more energetic, inspired, challenged by their work and seem to derive a higher sense of meaning from their work than the female agents. The result is consistent with previous studies on engagement [8].
Though the majority of the samples are female the male respondents shows higher engagement level which could be explained in terms of the kind of campaign or task they do like customer service or technical support. Women are placed more in customer service task like handling customer complaints, handling orders, payment or even sales while the male agents are assigned to technical support like online troubleshooting.
The p-value for age group; 0.952 for vigor, 0.687 for dedication and 0.342 for absorption is not significant at the 0.05 alpha level. The level of engagement according to age group does not differ from one another. This implies that age do not necessarily and sufficiently affect the energy level, meaningfulness of work and the experience of fully concentrated in their work.
Results of a study on Filipino work values revealed that Filipino workers in their mid-twenties and those in mid-fifties are more alike than different [40]. There is no difference in how much young and more senior workers value learning and challenges on the job.
When grouped according to the tenure at the present job, the p-value of vigor (0.012), dedication (0.022) and absorption (0.00) is significant at 0.01 alpha level. Therefore we have sufficient evidence to say that the vigor, dedication and absorption levels of employees according to job tenure are significantly different. The level of vigor of those employees who have tenure of 0-6 or 7-11 months is higher than those employees having longer job tenure. This result is contradictory to the previous researches on engagement which states that older employees feel more engaged [8].
This implies that those who are new in an organization have a tendency to be more engaged. Groups belonging to 0-6 and 7-11 months are more energetic, inspired and challenged at their job than those who stayed longer in an organization.
The differences in courses, the computed p-value for vigor (0.379) and absorption (0.217) are not significant at 0.05 level. The vigor and absorption level of courses do not significantly differ from one another. This implies that Course does not necessarily and sufficiently affect the experience of being energetic and being fully concentrated with one's work.
The computed p-value of dedication (0.020) is significant at 0.05 alpha level. This implies that courses necessarily and sufficiently affects the level of dedication. Employees who took up courses related to commerce are more involved in their work and experience a sense of significance, challenge and pride in their work, while those who came from engineering are less enthusiastic and challenged. Majority of the respondent's work is on credit management like billing, customer service, sales can be a fit to the undergraduate course of the Commerce graduates therefore they can easily adjust to the context of the task. It would be a misfit if these engineering graduates are doing the same task of customer service and credit management because they should be in the technical support area therefore the task is not a challenge to the engineering graduates.  Table 5 presents the differences in the areas of worklife in terms of their demographic profile. The obtained computed p-value of 0.05 is significant which shows that the female and male group differs significantly in terms of the area of workload. The male respondents reported to experience a balance in the amount of work that they have to perform than the female agents. In terms of reward, (0.541), community (0.476), control (0.216) and value (0.262) which is greater than the specified level of significance of 0.05 is not significant. This implies that reward, community, control and value of males are not significantly different than that of females. In terms of fairness, (0.020), the fairness scores of male are higher than that of females because it is significant at 0.05 alpha level. Gender equality in the workplace is a very old issue and should be resolved in the level of education and at home [26]. The impact of program and policy of a company on gender should be investigated as male and female have different perceptions. Although there are female team leaders and supervisors, most management positions remain masculine and women are paid less than men in these jobs [41].
When grouped according to age, the computed p-value for workload (0.435), reward (0.714), community (0.494) and values (0.262) do not significantly differ at 0.05 alpha level. This implies that age does not affect workload, reward, community and values. This implies that having too much work, getting incentives like salary, benefits or recognition, the kind of social relationship and the congruence of personal values with that of the organization does not differ among the age group. The fairness area of age group differ from one another. Those employees who belong to the 26-30 age group have the highest fairness score, while those employees belonging to the 36-up age group have the lowest fairness score.
Control scores of age groups differ from one another. Those employees who belong to the 31-35 age groups have the highest control score, while those employees belonging to the 36-up age group have the lowest control score.
Younger workers are more individualist than older workers. Younger workers tend to favor greater participation and decision-making in the work place. They view authority less formally. The call center work is generally known as a work for the young ones; one factor that attracts this age group is the individualist culture of the Americans where they can exercise freedom of expression and is not the same the Filipino work culture as being hierarchical or authority-based.
When grouped according to tenure at the present job. Fairness scores of employees according to job tenure are significantly different. Fairness scores tend to be higher for those with longer job tenure.
There were no significant difference found in the area of workload, reward, community, control and values when grouped according to course. However fairness was found to have a significant difference in course. Employees who took up courses related to engineering have the highest fairness scores, while those who came from HRM have the lowest fairness scores. This implies that engineering graduates reported to experience more equal treatment than the other courses. The HRM graduates experience less equality in work than other courses.

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Volume 77 These include job designs that allow for autonomy and feedback on performance, and that ensure workers have sufficient and appropriate resources, alongside positive, authentic leadership styles. Given that we found a range of positive psychological states are associated with engagement, employers might also want to consider in particular strategies aimed at enhancing individual resilience and personal resources alongside reducing instances of harmful behaviours, such as bullying and harassment. (Bailey, C., Madden, A., Alfes, K. and Fletcher, L. (2017)

Conclusions
Based on the finding of the study the following conclusions are arrived at: Contrary to what most people believe that the call center job is a dead end job, the findings in this study showed that call center agents are capable of finding meaning, dedication and involvement in their job. This is especially true for the Commerce (or sometimes referred to as Business) graduates who showed a high level of absorption and dedication. Those who worked for less than a year, HRM and Associate graduates and older agents also showed high level of dedication. These call center agents like what they do and get paid to do it that they become absorbed in their job. There is a match in community for the graduates of HRM, Education and Engineering; those who worked for 1-2 years and age group of 26-30. These agents enjoy the benefits of working in a call center especially the lively and friendly atmosphere and the bonding activities that is commonly observed in this organization. A sense of community and the kind of social relationship contributes to the well-being of the call center agents. There is a weak or no correlation exists between the three levels of engagement namely: Vigor, Dedication and Absorption with that of the level of the areas of worklife namely: Workload, Reward, Community, Fairness, Control and Values. The male agents experience engagement more than female agents. This could be explained in the kind of task assigned to them like customer service or technical support. Male agents are assigned to technical support and women are placed in customer service like handling customer complaints, orders and payment which can be a very routine task. Age does not affect the level of engagement. Those who are new in the organization are more energetic and Commerce graduates are more involved in their work. Engineering graduates are less dedicated than the rest of the group according to course though they reported to experience more equal treatment than the other courses.
As a recommendation, there is a need to maintain the advantage of community feeling through activities that promote cooperation, teamwork and good competition. Bonding through group activities like teambuilding, parties, celebrations, outings and contest would highly enhance the communication and relationship of the agents. The identification of competencies and areas for improvement of the agent can help the employee improve or develop new skills that can help them be promoted through programs like Career Planning, Succession Planning and Goal Setting. The selection for this program should not be gender bias towards the male agents. A Gender Inequality or Sensitivity Awareness can be implemented to make the agents aware of the conditions where inequality happens. This could address the call center scores on fairness. The MBO (Management by Objectives) style of evaluation is recommended to align the organization's goal with the goal of the agent. A measurable and realistic objective can provide directions to agents in their day to day task. This method can hopefully diminish the feeling of inequality in the workplace as reported by the agents. Lastly, several variables can be checked if they correlate significantly with variables on the areas of worklife and work engagement. Demographic variables like marital status, management level, employment status, number of previous call center jobs, location of the call center etc. Variables related to an agent's work like job resource, job complexity, type of campaign (credit card, billing), type of interface (voice to voice, email, chat), type of call (inbound or outbound) etc. can also be checked.