Cause Of High Turnover Among Tellers example essay topic

There are multiple causes behind the problem the bank is experiencing with a high turnover rate among tellers. One primary cause is an inadequate hiring process. The current hiring process is focused on filling open positions and not on hiring qualified individuals who represent the aspects necessary to succeed as a teller. While the bank has standards for hiring tellers, the standards are not high enough to insure only qualified candidates obtain the open positions. Further, the hiring process overlooks the necessity of defining and analyzing candidates' personalities during the hiring process.

A teller position is a position that interacts with the banks most valuable asset, customers, on a daily basis. A teller represents the bank to its customers and has opportunities to sell the customers on additional bank services. A good candidate should be very people friendly and have basic sales skills. Not all applicants will have these characteristics but by analyzing applicants' personalities during the hiring process, the bank can improve the odds of successfully filling the open teller positions and retaining more tellers. The bank cannot control the factors that make up individuals' personalities such as hereditary forces, family relationship forces, social class and other group membership forces and cultural forces (126 Text) but it can find candidates whose personalities will better mesh with the teller position. The bank needs a specific individual who represents a specific mix of the Big Five Personality model.

The ideal candidate will be very extroverted and like situations with a good deal of social interaction. They will also have high emotional stability that will help them deal reduce the stress levels associated with the teller position. They will be very agreeable so they can develop and maintain good interpersonal relationships. They must be rather conscientious because of the level of organization required with the positions and finally they do not need to be highly open to experience in the stringent well-defined position of a teller (127 text). Currently the bank is not analyzing any of these factors and hiring candidates who vary significantly from this ideal personality mix which causes the poor retention and high job turnover among tellers.

Another cause of high turnover among tellers is the teller supervisor methodology. The teller supervisors do not properly evaluate their employees. There is no level of employee participation in the evaluation process as the supervisors go through set evaluation materials on defined schedules. Evaluation must be an ongoing process to be successful (189 text). The supervisors do not receive any formal training on how to administer and evaluate their employees, which compounds the problem. The employees are left feeling unchallenged and unmotivated and this is reflected in the high turnover rate among tellers.

The supervisors also do not set good examples for their employees. The employees see the supervisors fail to meet their goals and using the attribution process make choices regarding their future behavior that it is not necessary to meet your performance goals. Building on this, the punishment aspect of the reinforcement theory is not present in the bank. Regardless of how poorly an employee performs there is no uncomfortable or unwanted consequence that results from the behavior (193 text). Likewise there are not significant positive reinforcers for good behavior and employees are left feeling unmotivated so they leave the job because of job dissatisfaction. The levels of stress also contribute to the bank's turnover problem with tellers.

The teller position is a high profile position that includes high stress during peak busy times, Fridays and the end of the month. The teller job can also be very low stress during times of low activity, during the middle of the week and the middle of the month. Factoring in the Underload Overload Continuum, the tellers have a very difficult position. They migrate from times of underload where they are bored, have decreased motivation, absenteeism and apathy to times of overload where they may experience insomnia, irritability, increased errors and indecisiveness from one day to the next. The teller turnover and inadequate staffing of the banks results in more overload stressors on a regular basis.

The bank does not have a wellness program to assist the tellers with their physical and mental health, which will help them more adequately deal with the job's stress. Although the bank provides good task content for the tellers with good work areas, nice environments, temperatures, and light, the bank still experiences a high teller turnover because of the high stress level associated with the teller position and lack of assistance from the bank in dealing with the stress from the job. The final cause of high turnover among tellers is the inability for tellers to form or associate with informal groups. The tellers are confined to stringent work areas that discourage interaction between tellers.

The tellers must take lunch breaks on schedules separate from any of their co-workers. The bank does not encourage interaction outside of the workplace and discourages socializing during work hours. Groups are necessary for people because it allows people to fill their social needs, security needs and esteem needs (305 text). If these needs are not filled through interest groups or friendship groups the person's behavior and performance will not be maximized, as both individual and psychological forces are not whole.

Without groups to provide fulfillment of the employees needs, the employees will lack two of the major forces influencing behavior and performance and the end result for the bank is higher turnover in the teller position.