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5. Monitoring in call centres and mystery shoppers
[ch 5: pages 44-45]Recording and monitoring of telephone calls made and received is now routine in a range of sectors using call centres, including the finance, retail, utilities, and communication sectors, government agencies and emergency services.
Anyone who has called such a call centre will have heard the message “calls are recorded for training purposes” or something similar. However, call monitoring often goes beyond “training purposes” with call centre workers particularly vulnerable to excessive performance monitoring and very high levels of task control.
It is worth noting here that communications regulator OFCOM has produced guidance confirming that, to comply with the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) Article 8 right to privacy obligations, any employers, such as call centres, which routinely record inward and outbound telephone calls, must provide staff with a means of making calls that are not recorded, such as a separate phone on the premises.
Reps in call centres have reported a number of cases where recordings of calls and other workplace monitoring have been used in disciplinary proceedings.
The ability of supervisors or managers to listen in on calls is viewed as a standard practice in call centres. Call centre staff often have to deal with angry or difficult customers and it is quite easy for some managers “to pick holes” in how staff have dealt with the call. For example, even if a customer is being abusive, staff might be told off for not apologising for whatever issue the customer is calling about. Practices vary from employer to employer, but the extent to which monitoring might lead to staff being performance managed or disciplined often depends on the attitude of the manager.
A Unite national officer told LRD that: “One of the things that we often have to deal with is the issue of consistency. It depends a lot on the line manager, so if they decide they want to really come after one person, they can spend the entire day listening in to their calls waiting for them to make a mistake. Whereas other people, because they’re seen as good people, might not get monitored so often, if at all.”
Timing of calls is also monitored, and among some employers there is a presumption that staff are not working if they are not being recorded as on a call. One issue referred to by the Unite official is that staff when commencing work need to wait for the computers to turn-on and load (this is necessary to start taking calls), but because the computer systems or networks are so poor, they were having to wait 20 minutes or so before they can get going. But the employer only records them as being at work when they start taking calls, rather than when they arrive at work and turn on their computers, so staff are picked up for starting work late, and are not paid for the sometimes considerable time they are waiting for the system to load. The union has been campaigning about these “unpaid” hours, highlighting this issue with members and employers, but has had limited success so far in getting this acknowledged.
In 2011, there was an issue involving Unite members at a particular bank in relation to the so-called “idle” code. This is the code used to indicate that no calls are to be put through to a member of staff. The idle code is intended to enable the operator to carry out necessary activities between calls, such as completing paperwork, but the union reports staff being suspended and disciplined based on allegations that the idle code was being used for “call avoidance”, an activity the bank treats as gross misconduct. Other disciplinary investigations at the bank involve accusations of “call termination” with staff accused of deliberately cutting calls short to meet call-handling targets.
An example of unions organising to protect job quality and conditions at call centres is the series of strikes held by PCS union members at Jobcentre Plus call centres in 2011. The action was to protest against the lack of control over the working day and its negative impact on wellbeing, job satisfaction and customer service. Staff complaints included being monitored throughout the day and having no control over the stream of calls allocated to them, or the length or timing of rest or toilet breaks, as well as oppressive targets. They also include included rigid call length limits, at the end of which the worker was expected to wind up the call. Staff struggled to manage the conflict between wanting to provide good quality customer service to vulnerable benefit claimants and having to meet unrealistically high targets for call numbers and length.
The dispute resulted in an interim agreement containing concrete commitments to improve working conditions, including a written commitment from the DWP that ”staff are fully respected at work and are trusted to do their job without excessive and unnecessary checks and monitoring”.
Monitoring how many “comfort breaks” have been taken and their duration has been an issue at a number of call centres. At the data processing centres of one government department, staff had to request permission to go to the toilet. This was modified after negotiations with PCS to provide for 15 minutes of “unauthorised breaks” per day.