Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
ISSN 0019-8692
No sector of British industry has attracted more publicity in recent months than
call centre operations. Newspapers and business journals have been awash with
projections of dramatic growth in both the number of call centres and the people
employed in them, up to 2.3 per cent of the total UK workforce by the year 2002
according to one authoritative survey (Datamonitor, 1998, 143). However, the opti-
mism generated by predictions of spectacular expansion has been tempered by more
critical assessments in which call centres have been portrayed, for example, as the
new dark satanic mills by one prominent consultant (IDS, 1997, 13). Indeed, it has
been claimed that Jeremy Benthams nineteenth century Panopticon, designed for
prisoner surveillance, is truly the vision of the future for call centres (Fernie and
Metcalf, 1997, 3).
Academic studies of the call centre phenomenon remain limited in both number
and scope, particularly in the fields of the employment relationship and the labour
process. While this is hardly surprising given the recent, rapid growth of the sector,
we would suggest that academic research has been hampered, additionally, by con-
fusion over what precisely constitutes a call centre. As IDS recognised (1997, 8) not
every worker with a telephone and a computer screen is a call centre operator;
estimates of the numbers employed have been inflated by the inclusion of existing,
often low-tech operations, re-classified as call centres. Conversely, in response to
critical media attention, some organisations, keen to differentiate the nature of their
Phil Taylor is Lecturer in Industrial Relations in the Department of Management and Organisation
at the University of Stirling. Peter Bain is Lecturer in Industrial Relations in the Department of
Human Resource Management at the University of Strathclyde.
Two articles published in 1996 by R. Richardson and J.N. Marshall should be regarded as path-
breaking attempts to analyse developments.
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Theoretical issues
The prison, the workplace and Foucault
Recent descriptions of the call centre labour process have elicited pictures of Orwells
Ministry of Truth, with Big Brother management exercising total control. This
characterisation has received some academic endorsement leading, in one study, to
Later restating this claim, one of the authors expresses her unequivocal conviction
that electronic surveillance creates total managerial control (Fernie, 1998, 8). A
thorough empirical critique of this simplistic and mistaken application of the Panopti-
con metaphor to the call centre labour process will form the latter part of this article.
Recent assessments have criticised the application of Foucauldian perspectives to
the labour process. As several writers have emphasised, the factory and the office
are neither prison nor asylum, their social architectures never those of the total insti-
tution (McKinlay and Taylor, 1998, 175; Thomson and Ackroyd, 1995; Lyon 1993).
The dynamic process of capital accumulation and the contested nature of power,
authority and control in the workplace creates and reflects fundamental differences
between the workplace and institution. Further, to describe the workplace as a car-
ceral regime characterised by all-encompassing surveillance is to erect a model of
complete control which understates both the voluntary dimension of labour and the
managerial need to elicit commitment from workers. Finally, whether from a crude
reading of Foucault or from the danger in a totalizing dynamic which disables
critique and disarms the very possibility of meaningful opposition (McKinlay and
Taylor, 1998, 176) there has been a tendency to accept the most pessimistic interpret-
ation of Foucaults views which, in practice, entails a diminution or dismissal of the
importance of resistance.
In accepting the view that the electronic Panopticon totally dominates the work-
force, Fernie and Metcalf disavow the possibilities for collective organisation and
resistance. This position coincides with a recent tendency in labour process theory
where a preoccupation with individual subjectivity has obscured the importance of
collective, trade union organisation as a more developed form of resistance. For
example, the introductory chapter of a recent collection in the labour process series
entitled Resistance and Power in Organizations contains no reference to trade union
activity or organisation (Jermier, Knights and Nord, 1994, 124). Missing from this
version of labour process theory is a focus on the connections between the labour
process as experienced by workers and the development of collective expressions
of resistance.
Emotional labour
In her examination of the flight attendants labour process, Hochschild posited, In
the course of doing this physical and mental labour, she is doing something more,
something I define as emotional labour (1983, 6). This labour which requires one to
induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces
the proper state of mind in others . . . calls for a coordination of mind and feeling
(1983, 7). If we include the range of appropriate telephone manners and behaviours
particularly the ever-present necessity to smile down the phone within Hochschilds
definition of outward countenance, it is evident that the call centre operator per-
Research methodology
Detailed case studies of the contemporary office (Baldry, Bain and Taylor, 1998) have
highlighted the emergence of call centres as an increasingly important development
in the organisation of white-collar work. These studies stimulated a two-year investi-
gation of the UK call centre industry, including two extensive surveys for Scottish
Enterprise of the call centre sector in Scotland, undertaken between March and Nov-
ember 1997. Survey One was based on a telephone questionnaire with managers to
secure basic data on workforce size, composition, industrial sector and location. This
survey was continuous, extending beyond the closing date for the full questionnaire
(which formed the core of the second survey) and including those centres which did
not complete the more detailed survey. With basic data on 108 of the 119 call centres
operating in Scotland in November 1997, we achieved a near-complete profile of
the sector.
The more detailed Survey Two involved comprehensive analysis of a 12-page ques-
tionnaire distributed, following telephone contact, to managers of all call centres
known to the researchers in May/June 1997. Questions on key employee relations
issues were formulated following consultation with leading HR and Call Centre
Association personnel. Questionnaires were sent to the 85 centres identified and 55
were returned; a response rate of 64.7 per cent from the targeted list. Set against the
final known total of 119 call centres we have a 46.2 per cent sample, covering 52.5
per cent of Scottish employees. Given the number and complexity of the questions,
this can be regarded as a very high return rate.
Key issues, identified through provisional analysis of completed questionnaires,
were then explored in interviews with centre managers, representative of the indus-
try in terms of size and function. To enable an even fuller examination of these issues,
the authors facilitated focus group discussions involving a similarly representative
sample of managers and supervisors from eleven different centres. The statistical
analysis of Surveys 1 and 2 and insight from these qualitative sources formed the
bulk of the Scottish Enterprise report (Taylor and Bain, 1997).
This article draws on both the Scottish Enterprise report and additional sources.
Attendance at Call Centre Association and Glasgow Development Agency confer-
ences yielded valuable insights into the industrys current preoccupations. Several
visits in a three month period to a financial services call centre provided a more
rounded picture of operations. Work on outbound and inbound tasks was observed,
and free access was granted to interview employees, supervisors and managers. As
an important corrective to managerial perceptions, interviews were recorded with
21 agents/operators from twelve different call centres, providing indispensable infor-
mation on the subjective experiences of work. These were particularly useful where
we succeeded in gaining interviews with managers and workers within the same
centre. The strength of both quantitative and qualitative evidence accumulated pro-
vides a solid basis for our interpretation of the nature of call centre work and organis-
ation. Evidence on trade union developments comes principally from interviews with
national and regional officials of the six main unions active in the sector. Attendance
at the Financial Services Direct Staff Forum, comprising most trade unions and staff
associations in the financial sector, yielded rich data.
Table 1: Numbers of call centres and numbers/percentages of employees by call centre size
Full-time % Part-time %
(Sources: Survey 1 for 1997 figures (n=108), Survey 2 for 2000 figures (n=33).
below 25 years of age. With 32.6 per cent male employees and 67.4 per cent female,
the call centre is a major locus of womens employment, with part-time working
more pronounced among women (36.4 per cent) than men (25 per cent). Nevertheless,
almost two thirds of Scottish employees were full-time (Table 2), a proportion which
concurs with a UK-wide survey (Mitial 1996). However, when asked to estimate the
contractual composition of their workforces in January 2000, organisations predicted
a significant increase in part-time employment, anticipating near equivalent pro-
portions of full-time and part-time staff. These figures are the aggregate expression
of a series of decisions by management to significantly increase recruitment of part-
time permanent staff. Finally, the vast majority of staff (86.4 per cent) were directly
employed by a call centre with just over one in eight (13.6 per cent) supplied by
agencies.
Survey 2 reveals substantial evidence of flat organisational structures in call
centres. Operators/agents made up 71.3 per cent of staff, other clerical workers 11.6
per cent and professional/technical grades 4 per cent of the Scottish workforce.
Supervisory grades accounted for only 8.8 per cent of staff and managers 4.3 per
cent. These high ratios of operators/agents to supervisors/managers statistically
demonstrate the constraints on career advancement and promotion opportunities,
which, as we discuss later, are widely-recognised concerns within the sector.
The utilisation of monitoring and surveillance measures can be seen in Table 3
where the nine most common quantitative measurement and qualitative assessment
techniques are listed. The measurement of wrap-up times and a range of methods
for appraising customer satisfaction are also employed. These statistics are remark-
able testimony to the degree of electronic and human monitoring prevalent across
the sector. The intensity of surveillance efforts in certain locations is even more strik-
ing when one considers that all nine of the listed measures operate in almost a quarter
(23.1 per cent) of centres. A positive correlation between call centre size and intensity
of monitoring seems to be confirmed by our data. Whereas the mean size of the call
centre workforce in Scotland is 138, in centres where all nine measures operate it
is 248.
Operating alongside these control measures are techniques aimed at eliciting
However, in the drive to reduce costs and secure competitive advantage it is imposs-
ible to disentangle the objective of speed-up from the widespread implementation
of surveillance and monitoring measures. One widely-used package boasts the fol-
lowing potentialities:
The Real-Time Adherence module . . . continuously monitors ACD real-time messages associated
with each ACD position. These messages indicate when an agent signs in and out, initiates an
incoming or outgoing call, and enters after-call wrap-up. . . the software constantly tracks each
agents actual work state and compares it to the schedule. The moment a discrepancy arises. . .
the agents name and the amount of time involved [is noted and] each notification or alarm is
color-coded to show the nature of the problem . . . Supervisors can create detailed alarm summary
reports on the agents they have been monitoring. Supervisors can see an agents status at any
given moment and take appropriate action to meet the centers performance objectives. (TCS
Management Group publicity)
While software technology such as this permits extensive monitoring it does not spell
the end of human supervision. Employee performance data, electronically displayed
or in hard copy print-outs, still requires interpretation. If improvements are deemed
necessary the team leader or manager, in person, will coach, cajole or discipline the
under-performing operator. Active supervisory intervention is equally central to the
assessment of taped conversations. No electronic system can summon an agent to a
coaching session, nor highlight the deficiencies of their dialogue with the customer.
Call centres rely on a combination of technologically driven measurements and
human supervisors whose job it is to interpret and act on those figures.
Because many employees find it difficult to cope with rejection and hostility from
potential customers, sales jobs are perceived as more emotionally draining. The brief
respite between calls which operators were able to exploit when using manual
phones is being rapidly eroded with the introduction of predictive dialling. Nuisance
and abusive calls and, worse, sexual harassment, are widely experienced by both
inbound and outbound operators and are a source of incalculable stress.
Just as call centres differ in the degree to which surveillance and monitoring meas-
ures operate, so too is there variation between centres in the intensity with which
operators experience these pressures. One important variable is the relative impor-
tance the employer places on the quantity of output as opposed to the quality of
service they are seeking to provide. However, even in the most quality driven call
centre it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the labour process is intrinsically
demanding, repetitive and, frequently, stressful.
Managerial dilemmas
The staff element has to be absolutely right. You get a golden two minutes when the customer
decides whether to take out a mortgage. If the rapport isnt established in that two minutes, then
it costs your organisation. I believe that we are getting it badly wrong at the moment because
we are abusing the people who are entrusted to our care. Days are boring, repetitive and mindless
and staff are having a mind-numbing experience with no chance of promotion because of the flat
structure. There is a call centre in the UK that knows when their staff have diarrhoea, because
they monitor toilet visits. We know staff have a mind of their own and because of all these things,
they are uncomfortable and sometimes unhappy. (Speech by mortgage company manager to the
CCA Conference, 2/7/97)
This passage highlights concerns which are widely-held by management. The conse-
quences of a fiercely competitive environment and a demanding labour process, com-
bined with labour market pressures, are generating a series of profound problems
for employers. Firstly, as the role of call centres has shifted from simple inquiry
handling to customer relationship management (Frenkel and Donoghue, 1996, 2)
and organisations prioritise value-adding business, the importance attached to the
quality of operator contact in that golden two minutes has grown. Demotivated,
stressed-out staff are less capable of sensitive and responsive interaction with the
customer. Surveillance and compulsion alone cannot guarantee productive perform-
ance.
Secondly, many centres experience high levels of labour turnover, which
employers attribute in large part to the intrinsic pressures of the job, and to flat
structures which curtail promotion opportunities. Annual turnover rates in excess of
30 per cent are far from uncommon and cause deep concern. A majority of organis-
ations surveyed anticipate an increase in employee movement between centres, as
the continued growth in the sector generates shortages in skilled and trained staff.
Operators, and here the youth of the workforce appears to be an important factor,
are constantly comparing alternative employment possibilities, drawing on a fertile
body of collective informal knowledge which permits comparison of the salaries,
bonuses and conditions on offer in centres close to their current employment. Stories
There are growing signs of resistance. The more management monitor, the more resistance there
is. You can see this pattern developing where the more management takes time off the workers,
the more workers try to take time back from management. (Interview, BIFU official, 30.6.98)
The final, and most important, problem with the electronic Panopticon perspective
is that it neglects both the actuality of, and potential for, employee resistance.
Although Fernie states case study visits have provided the opportunity to talk at
length with call centre workers providing some very positive feedback, no reference
is made to any form of employee resistance (1998, 11). Fernie and Metcalf only men-
tion resistance when citing two examples quoted elsewhere (Arkin, 1997) but this
leads them to concede that disaffected agents still find ways of avoiding work (1997,
10). However, the possibility that these individual expressions of worker resistance
are, or may become, widespread or, more importantly, that they can take a collec-
tive form is not considered. Our research has revealed evidence of both individual
and collective forms of employee resistance.
Furthermore, in both union and non-union environments, the frequency with which
operators described the limitations of the monitoring equipment was clearly related
not only to the widespread resentment at its utilisation, but also to a collective desire
to defeat its purpose. The following comments from employees reveal a spirit of
opposition, and confirm Tyler and Taylors observation that, with experience
[agents] learn to ascertain when their conversation is being directly supervised
(1997, 17).
With the new system you know when they are listening in. (Interview, 12.2.97)
They could tape calls . . . but you could always tell when the calls were being taped.
(Interview, 17.12.97)
The actual performance of the technology seems to fall some way short of rendering
perfect the monitoring of the electronic Panopticon.
Some of the more outrageous team-building exercises are treated with considerable
cynicism and in this television subscriber centre were defeated through collective
ridicule.
If you can imagine a supermarket-sized building, we would be sitting in rows, one after the other
. . . if you sold something the whole row had to do a Mexican wave and at the end of the shift
the whole office would do a Mexican wave. If the marketing people sold something the team
leaders would stand up and shout sausages! But they dont do any of that now because people
took the piss. (Interview, 24.3.98)
Conclusion
In developing an analysis of the labour process and the employment relationship
our aim is to make a useful contribution to the fledgling literature on call centres.
Publicists for the sector seek to present the image of call centres as staffed by relaxed
and co-operative employees, smiling down the phone as they communicate with
customers in reassuring regional accents. Descriptions such as these resonate with
Handys optimistic anticipation of the benefits which information technology would
bestow upon office workers, who would be transformed into empowered IT pro-
fessionals.
Mass production is disappearing in factories and offices . . . the days of the large employment
organisation are over . . . the assembly lines of the office (the typing pool, the ledger department)
are disappearing . . . [replaced by] gangs, grouped around sophisticated electronic equipment . . .
(Handy, 1985, 256,72)
Our research points to a very different reality. The typical call centre operator is
young, female and works in a large, open plan office or fabricated building, which
may well justify the white-collar factory description. Although probably full-time,
she is increasingly likely to be a part-time permanent employee, working complex
shift patterns which correspond to the peaks of customer demand. Promotion pros-
pects and career advancement are limited so that the attraction of better pay and
conditions in another call centre may prove irresistible. In all probability, work con-
sists of an uninterrupted and endless sequence of similar conversations with cus-
tomers she never meets. She has to concentrate hard on what is being said, jump
from page to page on a screen, making sure that the details entered are accurate and
that she has said the right things in a pleasant manner. The conversation ends and
as she tidies up the loose ends there is another voice in her headset. The pressure is
intense because she knows her work is being measured, her speech monitored, and
it often leaves her mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted.
There is no question that the integration of telephone and computer technologies,
which defines the call centre, has produced new developments in the Taylorisation of
white-collar work. That the labour process is inherently demanding, and frequently
stressful is incontestable, as the volume of evidence from a variety of sources amply
testifies. However, recognition of the existence of extensive mechanisms of surveil-
lance, unprecedented in white-collar work, should not mean acceptance of the elec-
tronic Panopticon perspective. The assertion that the supervisors power has been
rendered perfect via the computer monitoring screen is demonstrably false on
both theoretical and empirical grounds. Managers of call centres would certainly be
surprised to discover that they exercised total control over the workforce.
The terms of the employment relationship are, and will remain, contested terrain.
In the drive to maximise profits and minimise costs, call centre employers are under
constant competitive pressure to extract more value from their employees. From the
point of view of capital, this is a far from straightforward project. For while call
centre management may increasingly acknowledge the range of problems which
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