The Effect of Family–Work and Work–Family Conflict on Call Center Workers’ Emotional Exhaustion With Person–Job Fit as Antecedent

Abstract

In accordance with the government’s regulations in Indonesia, all financial services institutions are obliged to implement a customer complaint handling mechanism, which has contributed to the rapid growth of the call center industry. As a benchmark for managing service quality, call center workers are required to always keep their emotions stable despite the continuous pressures and unpleasant responses from customers. For this reason, working at call centers is now considered a job with a high emotional burden. Few studies have specifically examined the level of emotional exhaustion among call center workers in Indonesia. Therefore, this work aims to investigate the effect of family–work and work–family conflict on such workers’ emotional exhaustion, with person–job fit as antecedent. For this purpose, we collected data from 154 questionnaires completed by call center workers at financial services institutions in Indonesia. We analyze the relationship among the variables under study using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results show that the level of compatibility between employees’ and their job reduces both family–work and work–family conflict. In terms of work–family conflict, call center workers will feel emotionally exhausted only when faced with a dilemma between work and family responsibilities. The call centers’ management should thus create a family-friendly work environment to ensure excellent care for employees.