The role of job stress at emotional labor's effect on intention to leave: Evidence from call center employees

Call centers are contact centers that act as communication facilities between customers and businesses with the help of customer representatives. The call center sector where transactions are carried out largely without face to face communication is known as a sector with the most stressful and is also known with having the highest employee turnover rate. Customer representatives are not able to use any initiative and they have too many workloads; for this reason, they are frazzled. In addition, customer representatives need to play role despite of their natural emotions. This affects the emotional labor behavior of sector employees. 

In this study, the job stress’ mediating role at emotional labor’s effect on intention to leave is investigated. Data was collected from two call centers operating in Bitlis province in Turkey by using survey method. Analyzes were made with the SPSS 23 and AMOS 22 programs through 207 valid questionnaires. In the analyzes made, job stress has full mediating effect at emotional labor variable’s surface acting dimension’s effect on intention to leave. Due to the correlation analyzes performed, there was a significant relationship between surface acting and natural emotions (expression of naturally felt emotions) dimension of emotional labor variable with job stress and intention to leave.