Is Stress in Contact Centers Inevitable?

Diogo Gonçalves-Candeias, Maria José Chambel and Vânia Sofia Carvalho
Additional contact information
Diogo Gonçalves-Candeias: CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, 1649-013 Lisboa, Portugal
Maria José Chambel: CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, 1649-013 Lisboa, Portugal
Vânia Sofia Carvalho: CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, 1649-013 Lisboa, Portugal

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 6, 1-17

Abstract: It is broadly acknowledged that contact center employees are subject to high levels of stress. In this profession, there is a distinction between back-office and front-office employees. In addition, employees may perform duties in various companies with different characteristics (i.e., human resources practices, job characteristics, social support, work–personal life relationship, among others). Thus, this study focuses on the analysis of the contact centers’ (CC) psychosocial work environment and employees’ levels of stress and well-being, seeking to understand whether they change due to the specific nature of the duties they perform and the characteristics of the company. This study involved 1440 participants from 15 companies. The results indicate that front-office and back-office duties influence the perception of some job characteristics and their environment and, consequently, the stress and well-being of these employees. Furthermore, the exhaustion and general well-being of employees are seemingly independent of the duties performed and common to all companies. However, the job characteristics, psychosocial environment and employees’ levels of cynicism, work engagement and general stress were found to change according to the company in which they worked, thus highlighting the need for action in the psychosocial environment of these work duties.

Keywords: contact centers; stress; human resources practices; work characteristics; social support; work–personal life relationship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/6/2999/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/6/2999/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:6:p:2999-:d:516999

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().