Solutions for decreasing personnel fluctuation: the case of OCB Cho Lon Branch

TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------02 1. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION: ---------------------------------------------------------------03 1.1 Company background: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------03 1.2 Problem context:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------06 1.2.1. Symptoms:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06 1.2.2. Symptom Validation and Justification: --------------------------------------------------------------07 1.3 Potential Problems: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------10 1.3.1. Diagram of Symptoms and Potential Problems: -------------------------------------------------12 1.3.2. Problem Validation: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------13 1.3.3. Problem Justification: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------17 2 CAUSE VALIDATION: -------------------------------------------------------------------------20 2.1. Potential Causes: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------20 2.2 Causes Validation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------22 2.3. Causes Justification -----------------------------------------------------------------------------25 3. SOLUTIONS:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------25 3.1. Objectives -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------25 3.2. Potential Solutions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------26 3.3. Evaluation of Solutions -------------------------------------------------------------------------28 3.4. Solutions Justification---------------------------------------------------------------------------31 4. ACTION PLAN IN ORGANIZATION -------------------------------------------------------32 4.1. Contents -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------32 4.2. Implementation Timeline ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------33 5. CONCLUSION------------------------------------------------------------------------------------34 6. SUPPORTING INFORMATION---------------------------------------------------------------35 APPENDIX -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------36 REFERENCES -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------48 1 Executive summary Banking is considered as one of the most intense competitive jobs in Vietnam and on the world. The thesis is going to explicit what has been happening in the bank, particularly in the sales department in the OCB Cho Lon branch. Actually, according to Churchill et al. (1) salesmen’s role is of central importance to the company and major impact on the success or failure of organizations. Thus, salespeople are those who determine revenue-producing efforts of corporations. However, sales job is such a kind of job not easy to work these days. Salesmen have to face with a lot of obstacles in their job including target pressure, workload and customer – cares. These things easily make salesmen get burnout and leading to high level of leaving intention. By conducting examination in the OBC Cho Lon branch with sales department, many troubles are found out such as job stress, work-life imbalance, job dissatisfaction and even co- worker conflicts. With these problems, the finding is investigated through in-depth interviews and real key issues are identified meticulously then. After discovering the source of the root cause – work overload that affects the job stress in the bank, alternative solutions are designed and justified to abolish this hindrance with benefits bringing to the company and estimating how much the firm needs to be suffered. Then, the implementation steps of action plan are also described in details to demonstrate effectiveness of the solution – job redesign that provides salesmen a job satisfaction. 2 1. PROBLEMS IDENTIFICATION: 1.1 Company background: Ocean Commercial Bank (OCB) was established on June 10, 1996; the corporation has nearly 200 trading units in 120 transaction points in all major cities and economic zones in the country. OCB has affirmed its leading position with more than 5,000 staffs with high level of expertise, modern technology foundation and well-loved brands. Over the years, OCB has experienced double the average growth rate of the industry. The bad debt ratio has always been controlled at a low level, ensuring high and stable operating ratios. OCB, the first Vietnamese bank, has completed a risk management project under Basel II (2017); that was rated by Moody's (one of the three most prestigious credit rating agencies in the world) and ranked B2 - the highest level of commercial banks in Vietnam; and OCB is the first bank in Vietnam having integrated channel, with the Omni Channel (2018). OCB always maintains to be among top banks in Vietnam and become a global prestigious bank in the near future. Slogan "Belief and Prosperity" affirms that OCB brings value, prosperity to customers, partners, and shareholders; this will create a firm belief and support from customers, partners and shareholders for the Bank's operations. Vision: Become a Leader of multi-functional bank in retail banking and small and medium enterprises in Vietnam. Mission: Create the optimal solutions to bring the highest value to customers and investors, actively contributing to the common development of the community and society by building enthusiasm labor forced, understand the customer needs. OCB Cho Lon branch Established in June of 2006 with only one transaction office and some employees. At the moment, Cho Lon OCB branch has operated with four transaction offices and over 80 employees. The personnel are divided in four departments including transaction department with 50 employees, sales department containing 24 salespersons, and legal department accounting for 6 members and 1 person with a role of cashier. The OCB Cho Lon known as one of three branches having highest target and annual branch performance accounting for 8% of the corporation. The key function of the OCB Cho Lon branch offers loan and capital mobilization that are also the same functions as other branches in the company and other of competitive banks. The organization chart of OCB branch and the numbers of employees are showed up in the Figure 1 as below. 3 (Sources from OCB Cho Lon branch) Figure 1: OCB Cho Lon branch organization chart With right business strategies, OCB Cho Lon in the previous two years successfully achieved the target of the year performance in such a way of over-expectation. However, the fiscal year 2019 of the OCB Cho Lon branch was ended without good index of performance result. Because of no target achievement of the year, this directly contributed to the whole organization in term of revenue decrease. The financial statement of the year 2019 is to be analyzed in the Figure 2 as below for demonstration. Financial Statement (vnd bil) 2500 2000 1500 1000 1480 960 1820,4 1850 1132,8 1200 2072 2310 1464 1500 2032,8 1305 500 0 Target Achievement Target Achievement Target Achievement Fiscal year 2017 Fiscal year 2018 Fiscal year 2019 Loan Capital mobilization Source: Human Resource Department of OCB Cho Lon Figure 2. Turnover rate in Sales Department of OCB Cho Lon From the financial statement above, it is easy to recognize that OCB Cho Lon, in the fiscal year 2017 regarding to loan segment, gained 123% over far from the target, and obtained 4 118% for the capital mobilization factor. In the fiscal year 2018, the branch also achieved 112% over target toward to the loan section and acquired 118% for the capital mobilization element. This is considered as an amazing result for the company in general and for the OCB Cho Lon branch in particular. In the contrast, the fiscal year 2019 was considered as “noticeable year” to be analyzed to explore the reason why OCB could not achieve the expectations and target as expected. The year performance just attained 88% regarding to loan criteria and only 87% for capital mobilization. By further observation, the result in the fiscal year 2019 was even a little bit lower than the year 2018. Through analyses, the fiscal year 2019 of OCB Cho Lon negatively affected the business performance of the whole company. Furthermore, going through the personnel – especially in the sales department - in the OCB Cho Lon, the voluntary turnover rate is notified with 8 people left the company compared to 4 in the previous year at the percentage double higher. Therefore, this is also a point that needs to be concerned in the research. From the literature reviews, according to Ampomah and Cubjor (2), the company may be negatively affected on providing services to customer when losing talent or key employees who have a profound impact on organizations. Similarly, Aguinis (3) postulated that if a key performer leaves the company, it likely happens in such a way that a replacement for this position never obtains the same level. Take a look at reality happening in the OCB Cho Lon branch, the deputy branch director shared: “High turnover rate has recently influenced to branch performance. Take a sales team 3 for example, eight salesmen left the company, especially including an elite employee; and as the consequence the team 3 has been staying in the bottom position in results between 3 sales teams in the branch. Seldom did this happen in some previous years when the team had this person’s service; and he frequency presented in the top 10 bestsellers of the year in the corporation.” In general, employees titled talent are long-term assets of firms, and this was confirmed by Martin and Schmidt (4). Michael et al. (5) published employees are assets of companies, so turnover is a high cost for companies in both tangible and intangible features and affecting to organization’s performance. Additionally, Shaw et al. (6) advocated, high turnover rate negatively effects workforce performance in term of low profitability levels and harmfully influences financial performance in term of hiring and training costs. Thus, there were many findings mentioned in this section, and Solomon as cited by Sturman et al. (7) established costs that organizations have to be suffered are calculated from 1.5 to 2.5 times of annual salary of laborer. Overall, this can affect organizations’ performance and lead the company to another way if these talent people left the company and worked for competitors in the same industry. 5 Therefore, high voluntary turnover rate could be a symptom that needs to be validated, and then the problems need to be identified. Analyzing and diagnosing the problems is essential to be taken place to discover potential causes. Once root cause is identified, the thesis will provide the solutions and implementation plans to improve the company situation. 1.2 Problems context: 1.2.1 Symptoms: The finding is conducted with three groups: Group one consisting of deputy branch director, sales manager and salesmen who are still working for the OCB Cho Lon branch, the second group with salesmen who left the Cho Lon branch already, and the last group including three sales managers in HCM, Ben Thanh and Phu Nhuan branch. Based on the data from Human Resource Department of OCB Cho Lon provided by the deputy branch director, the voluntary turnover rate of salesmen in the fiscal year 2019 is higher than two previous fiscal years. To clearly demonstrate about this, the table 1 as below shows the result of turnover rate of the OCB Cho Lon branch. Turnover Rate in Sales Department Fiscal year 2017 Fiscal year 2018 Fiscal year 2019 Fiscal year 2020 Average Number of Sales Managers 3 3 3 3 Quit 0 0 0 Turnover Rate 0% 0% 0% Average Number of Salesmen 14 18 21 24 Quit 2 4 8 Turnover Rate 14.3% 22.2% 38.1% Source: Human Resource Department of OCB Cho Lon Table 1. Turnover rate in Sales Department of OCB Cho Lon 2019 From the table above, it showed that the turnover rate of Salesmen in the fiscal year (FY) 2019 at 38.1 percent, which significantly higher than the FY 2018 and far over double higher than FY 2017. This means that the voluntary turnover rate is straight upward and no signal of stopping. In this case, the number of turn overate 38.1 percent seems to illuminate that working in the banking industry is not easy at all. As the matter of the fact, banking is known as a difficult industry for employees to work in, and this can be more demonstrated through the post survey from seminar report of Talentnet-Mercer in October 2018 (8) (Table 2) - the voluntary turnover rate of Banking with 19.6 percent was in the top 2 industries in Vietnam market. Compared to turnover rate in Sales Department of OCB Cho Lon branch in the previous year 6 2018, the data reveals that turnover rate of salesmen in the FY18 is higher than the market’s as well. Table 2. Post Survey Seminar Report of Talentnet - Mercer shared to participants 1.2.2 Symptom Validation and Justification: To understand clearly about this, through the interview, deputy branch director in OCB Cho Lon shared: “Salesmen left the job because they could not achieve the target offered by the company that made these employees received unexpected incomes. Furthermore, with the company’s policy, those who cannot achieve the target offered in three straight months will receive only 80 percent of basic salary. This is also a key factor that laborers quit the job.” He added “In the year 2019, the salespeople quit the job higher than last one; therefore, the company had to recruit others to replace these positions. The human resource department might not be good in selection of salesmen, and the evidences showed that the business operation of the branch in this year is so much lower than previous year.” Similarly, from the theoretical aspect, Carraher (9) indicated salary and benefits are important factors to attract and lure employees. Additionally, Matz et al. as cited by Schuck et al. (10) asserted that salary is an important factor in understanding job satisfaction and the commitment of the company. Therefore, uncompetitive salary and unattractive incentive policy which can be called incomes dissatisfaction is one of reasons for employees leaving the company. As a consequence, unexpected income is one of the elements in the OCB Cho Lon branch leading to high level of turnover rate. Besides income dissatisfaction, there are some factors 7 collected through interviews that have been affecting to voluntary turnover rate in the branch. Take an interview with existing salesman for demonstrating: “In some new first months I worked for the company, it seemed to finish tasks easily, but when I received the target from sales manager, it drove me crazy. I usually went home late because I tried to finish the target of the day. This is one of reasons why some of salesmen quit the job.” Besides situations occurring in the OCB bank, many findings have been conducting to illustrate this issue. According to Frone et al. (11), long work hours is an element that causes work-life conflict. This obviously presents to the fact that employees want to leave the job and find another one to have much more time for their own family. In general, high competition in the bank market requires salesmen have to maintain energy in seeking customers and bringing these clients to the company. These directly take a lot of time of salespeople and additionally these employees have to take care from the beginning of loan or capital mobilization procedures such as checking eligible documents and liability capability to disbursement. With the workload like that these people must spend extra time to finish these procedures after meeting customers in the day time. Frequently working in night time leads to a consequence that employees cannot keep their work and personal life in balance. Work overload and no time for family make salesmen burnout and stress; therefore, a prediction of voluntary turnover intention can be imagined in the near future. Looking to further other branches in the OCB branch system, the data collected in the Table 3 has demonstrated that OCB Cho Lon branch has maintained the highest turnover- related index through three straight years. Turnover Rate in Sales Department HCM Branch Cho Lon Branch Ben Thanh Branch Phu Nhuan Branch Average Number of Salesmen 18 14 14 12 Quit 2 2 1 1 Turnover Rate of FY 17 11.1% 14.3% 7.1% 8.3% Average Number of Salesmen 25 18 19 17 Quit 4 4 3 3 Turnover Rate of FY 18 16.0% 22.2% 15.8% 17.6% Average Number of Salesmen 28 21 21 20 Quit 5 8 5 4 Turnover Rate of FY 19 17.9% 38.1% 23.8% 20.0% Source: Human Resource Department of OCB Cho Lon Table 3. Turnover rate in sales Department of OCB branches From the Table 3, it is easy to realize that turnover rate in these four branches is annually higher and higher. Therefore, this must be a symptom that needs to go further to explore what 8 have been happening in the OCB Corporation. However, with time limited, the finding just focuses on the OCB Cho Lon because, taking a careful notice, there must be an issue to this branch with the numbers of employees left the company were double higher its previous year, and was always in the highest position of turnover rate in every single year of whole corporation. Through interviews in these branches above, the turnover rate not only affected business performance but also contributed to reduce business efficiency of the corporation. To illustrate about this, the sales manager in HCM branch stated: “I do not remember exactly how the turnover rate was in 3 previous years, but as far as I know is that there were 5 employees who quit the company in 2019 and the level of turnover rate was higher and higher. After doing analysis from board of directors, the branch business performance is a bit negatively influent comparing to previous years. Fortunately, the branch finally finished the year 2019 with just enough to achieve the target.” Regarding to OCB Ben Thanh branch: “In two previous years, there were some cases of quitting the job from sales department. This also contributed to make the business performance of the branch go in such a way of no expectation. Particularly, the Ben Thanh branch could not gain the target offered by corporation” shared by Mrs. L – sales manager. Another information from Phu Nhuan branch revealed by Mr. A: “The turnover rate in the branch has a tendency to increase. The replacement of employees left the company is necessary but new comers needed a lot of time to adapt to new environment and requirement of the banking sector. Therefore, if having many cases of replacement like this, it will negatively effects to the branch business performance. Take a last year for example, the final result of the branch was just near to the target.” Take a glance at the data shown in the Table 3, although the number of salesmen was higher comparing to its previous year; Nevertheless, the number of employees quit the bank was also increased, and this eventually caused high voluntary turnover rate in every single branch. Many researchers found that there is a relationship between turnover and costs, and high level of turnover rate is contributing to decrease the business outcomes. Through the research of Tracey and Hinkin (12), the authors published involvement in recruitment, training, development is presenting to a direct cost that corporations have to be suffered. In addition, Abbasi et al. (13) indicated that beside involvement of visible costs of turnover such as costs of termination, advertising, recruitment, selection, hiring, training, and assigning, there are many hidden costs such as disruption of customer relations, the erosion of morale and stability of those who remain, the loss of valuable time which the new employees acquire their tasks 9 and achieve efficiency. This can be a part of troubles that the OCB Cho Lon has faced to via the interview from the deputy of branch director in OCB Cho Lon branch: “With many new salesmen in the year, board of branch directors took a lot of time to train them, and the targets for these people were not applied in probation. After the probation the target for these new ones also in an acceptable target and the branch cannot expect too much on them” In summary, the turnover rate in the internal OCB Cho Lon branch is more and more without signal of stopping and even higher than other branches in the HCM area. In addition, problems occurring in the OCB Cho Lon are also the same with other branches; therefore, an investigation in this branch is a-must to be conducted in order to understand where the root cause comes from. 1.3 Potential problems According to Delfgaauw (14), there are a lot of motives for employees to quit their job such as threats of restructuring, duration of contract, financial prospects, work pressure, job duties, work-life balance, commuting time, style of leadership and etc. In order to find out the problems causing to high turnover rate in OCB Cho Lon, some of in-depth interviews were conducted. According to deputy branch director: “Salesmen left the company because there could be some of reasons such as low incomes when they cannot reach the target. This is obviously true in the branch because I am the person approving salesmen salary monthly.” Take another sharing from a salesman left the company to dig deeper in this circumstance: “Laborers almost work for two main reasons: one for earning money and the other for passion. To me, both of them need balancing because nobody can work in a long time without passion and unexpected salary. Therefore, the company’s policy related to salary is one of reason I left the company”. Looking up to the literature review, O'Neill (15) figured out that voluntary turnover occurring in employees with low income is much more than others. Additionally, Pullins (16) indicated salary and commission are components of compensation that attract employees contributing to increase level of performance. Take another sharing, a sales manager stated that “The target is higher and higher year after year so that salesmen have to work so hard in order to complete their tasks from every single day. That is a reason why some of salesmen 10 getting married with children cannot keep their own life in balance; they need more time to take care their family that is a sharing from one of left persons.” This is also admitted by deputy branch director: “In banking segment, the job requires employees – especially salesmen – have to make appointments with customers, and the meetings happen after working time is understanding and unavoidable. Therefore, this is a particular criteria for this position and salesmen must accept this.” Furthermore, this is more emphasized by agreement of the existing salesman: “The phrase - go home late - is considered as a “specialty” in the company because it is not strange with sales people in general and especially salesmen working in bank industry.” In addition to this, the left salesman announced that: “Annually, the target offered by sales manager is more and more, salespeople like me have to chase the target unceasing to meet clients in or even out of working time, and after coming back to the office, we continue with our paper work such as daily report and checking whether clients’ documents is eligible or not. Honestly, we are usually finishing the day quite late rather than others working in the office only.” From the theoretical literature, Pradana A, Salehudin (17) pointed out that work overload is a factor that significantly contribute to increase turnover intension. In the other side, Suifan et al. (18) asserted the more conflicts employees have in work and their personal life, the more these laborers struggle keeping a balance; and therefore, leaving the job is inevitable. Likewise, an existing salesman stated: “High competition in the bank market that make salesmen like me sacrifice a lot of things such as no time for personal issues and have to try best to achieve target. Some of my colleagues left the company because, in the branch, there have been conflicts between employees together in term of fight-over-customers. Thus, to be presented in high competitive industry, salesmen have to bring as many contracts to the company as they can in any circumstances. Looking back to theory aspects, Gazioglu and Tansel (19) argued job characteristics including income, hours of work, industrial section and occupation lead to employees’ dissatisfaction when these people receive under their expectation. It is not the whole things occurring in the OCB Cho Lon, another matter has been happening in the branch and being shared via interview by the deputy branch director: “Some of salesmen are not suitable for this bank because their customers are different from our segment. Actually when someone left the company, the human resource department always asked for the specific reason, and as the result the reason focused on the personal 11 issues in terms of finding another workplace to promote their career or something like the work here is not suitable for them.” From the sharing of the left salesman, the personal issues are exposed that “In case of salesmen could not reach the target, the received salary would be cut down and salesmen like me just want to find another place to work for rather than spending a lot of time for this company with the career insecurity.” Additionally, finding other challenges is happening in the branch via the interview: “When collecting enough experiences, some of employees want to find challenges in higher position with another workplace. Take a salesman in the team 3 for example”, shared by existing salesman. From the finding conducted in banking industry, Shukla and Sinha (20) asserted work environment, job stress, salary, employee relationship and career development are elements that lead employees to high turnover intention levels. Combining the literature review and arguments exposed above, the study can summarize four main factors that made the headcounts decrease in the OCB Cho Lon through a diagram as following. 1.3.1 Diagram of Symptoms and Potential Problems: Figure 3: Diagram of symptoms and potential problems 12 1.3.2 Problems Validation Based on the Figure 3, it is not difficult to recognize that there are four potential problems identified from the interviews that are job dissatisfaction, job stress, work incompetency and personal issues. With these problems, it demonstrated that the level of turnover rate in the OCB Cho Lon branch is higher and higher. As the consequence, the year performance of the branch could not be as expected when the company had a high personnel fluctuation of salesmen. Therefore, the cost spending on recruitment and training is also increased, and that is such a way to waste money of the company. Through the interviews and searching from literatures, the findings of these single factors are going to be discovered in turns in order to figure out the main problem causing to the high turnover rate in the sales team of OCB Cho Lon. + Job dissatisfaction: According to Mangel and Useem (21), compensation and employees’ benefits play a key role for profitability and increasing organizations’ performance. In addition to this, Carraher (9) insisted employees without pay satisfaction is likely to seek employment elsewhere. Thus, employees without salary satisfaction will produce negative behaviors to organizations such as strikes, turnover intention or poor performance, Hung et al. (22), published. From interviews, the salesman who has left the company revealed that “Everybody earns money to take care their family’s life and spending money on personal cares for themselves. However, with the policy of the company, the salary will be low down and even be terminated labor contract if you could not meet company requirement and this criteria is just shown up on the single personal result.” He added “I used to raise idea in the meeting that the company should take a look back of the policy related to pay for performance because nobody do not want complete the target. If not, the target should reasonable to achieve.” However, in the different thinking, sales manager explained that “I think the company is on the way to do well in the term of paying for performance for salesmen. I know this is challenging them so much but the incentive and commission are much higher if they complete the target. So, if you want to improve your life, just do your best and do in such an intelligent way.” As the same opinion, deputy branch director shared: “With the new strategy I knew, the OCB Corporation just wants to retain and keeps the talent people. This required salesmen have to work one hundred per cent of their abilities to survive 13 in this recently intense competition of bank industry in Vietnam. This was also one of the key factors why the company fired nearly one thousand employees in this year.” Thus, go deeply single statement above, some researchers discovered that self- determination theory is considered as an autonomous motivation when understanding human requirement, Deci et al. (23) postulated. Many researchers asserted that with autonomous motivation, it is better to acquire purpose than motivations which can be used by award or punishment avoidance. + Job stress: Stress is a common issue in any kind of work and people have to scope with it in almost day of life, asserted by Shahid et al. (24). According to Sager (25), job stress is defined as the psychological state facing to demands, tensions, or opportunities which are important but not certainty. DeFrank et al. (26) published that stress is a concept of an adaptive response from consequences of actions, events or circumstances putting on human demands. There are a lot of sources causing to stress today, especially in the workplace, such as work overload, lack of experiences in a job, lack of clear job description, uncertainty, co-worker conflict, or no career development, the author added. Additionally, Moncrief et al. (27) stated that job stress can be occurred and pressured on salesmen when requiring productivity, company restructuring, increasing high competitive industry, and especially changing in sales strategies. Besides exposing from researchers above, take a look back to the interviews that are revealing as following: “The time I worked for OCB seemed from nine to ten hours per day. In the day time, after seeing customers to introduce and sell of OCB products, I had to do a check whether these customers meet our requirement related to financial security and eligible status or not. Furthermore, the setting actions plan and updating report through online system daily made me burnout. The thing also needs mentioning here is that I have no time for family and even for my leisure,” the left salesman exposed. With a similar opinion, the existing salesman provided: “Although working as a team but there are multi-tasks need to be done per day, I have to deal with all of them by myself. It is difficult to have a help from another one because salespeople have a bunch of work and they also need to obtain the target; therefore, we have no time for supporting others.” Combining to evidences shown up above – salesmen frequently go home late, this means the workload for employees seems to be over so that these salesmen have no time 14