Working time flexibilities: a paradox in call centres?

• Author: Hannif, Zeenobiyah
• Position: Contributed Article - Report

Abstract

Call centres are a source of job growth in many parts of the world. Jobs in call centres are a manifestation of the opportunities offered by ICT, together with the internal restructuring of organisations, to reduce costs and to achieve efficiencies. Extensive research has been conducted on the labour process in call centres, with findings suggesting that the work is demanding and high-pressured, entailing continuous operations with shift work being the norm, repetition and extensive monitoring and control. Moreover, call centres often have many female operatives, linked to non-standard work arrangements and the provision of emotional skills. Two features of call centres that are generally understated in the literature are their flat organisational structures and the use of team structures as a form of work organisation. There are often formal and informal mechanisms that could support flexible working arrangements, especially in the context of work-life balance issues. In this article we examine the impact of call centre work on work-life balance. Given the evidence of a high pressure work environment, we explore the types of working time arrangements in call centres, how working hours are determined, and the impact of these hours on work-life balance. Findings derived from a survey of 500 call centre operatives across 10 call centre workplaces and focus group interviews suggest that, despite the intensive and regulated work regimes that there is flexibility available in terms of adjusting working time arrangements to support non work responsibilities. A reconciliation of these developments is considered.

Introduction

Call centres represent one of the most important sources of emerging jobs in the service sector in Australia and elsewhere (Batt et al 2009; Russell 2008). Recognised as the fastest growing workplaces in the 1990s, call centres have emerged as organisations of the new economy which have restructured service work as a result of the possibilities provided by emerging information and communication technologies. This restructuring has not only extended to the internal re organisation of service work but has also included very extensive external outsourcing of service work to specialist call centre providers in Australia and overseas (Burgess and Connell 2004). The internationalisation of the call centre industry has been a major development in the offshoring of jobs over the past decade to such countries as India, Mexico and the Philippines (Srivastava and Theodore 2006; Taylor and Bain 2004).

There is an extensive literature on call centre work, in particular on the organisation and regulation of work (Russell 2008). Much of this literature has stressed the tedium and repetition of work, the automated distribution and regulation of the work flow, the forms of monitoring and control, the scripting of customer engagements, the stress and pressure of work and the high employee turnover attached to such work (Barnes 2004; Taylor and Bain 1999). The labour process imposes tight control over employees, exercised through the twin demands of customers and the technology. The technology can rationalise, allocate and control the pace and pattern of work and in turn generate metrics on work performance. Through technology work is not only controlled, it is also standardised. Hence most of the literature on call centres examines the Taylorisation of work within a context of high levels of control and standardisation. Batt et al (2009) suggests that around 80 per cent of employees work in mass market call centres where calls are routine, scripted and monitored and require customer service operatives with limited formal skills.

Complete standardisation and uniformity in tasks and calls is not, however, present at all call centres. For a start, inbound and outbound calls often perform different tasks--reaching new customers as opposed to servicing existing customers. Also, the service being provided may not be uniform or provided by those who have basic customer service skills. Many call centres provide complex services to professionals that require highly trained and qualified operatives who also have customer service skills--for example, health care and emergency services call centres (Russell 2008). Here the customer exchanges are far from routine; they can be complex and take long periods of time. With these types of engagements, it is the quality of the exchanges, not their duration, which is important. The technology itself is not uniform, and not all call centres exclusively operate in telephony. Rather, there can be a variety of service interactions provided, including texting, web, fax and emails and call centres may operate simultaneously across these different forms of ICT. As Russell (2004) reminds us, not all call centres are the same. There is great variety between and within call centres in terms of the nature of the business transacted, the type of technology employed, the way work is organised and the degree of control and autonomy that is present within the workforce.

Apart from the potential for oppressive and routinised production processes, two features are also present in call centre organisation. First, there is a flat organisational structure. Call centres do not require elaborate chains of command and line managers. Typically a call centre will have a number of managers and team leaders who are responsible for a cluster of operatives. Team leaders generally perform a quasi managerial task and are appointed by and responsible to management, which initiates and imposes the team structure (Martin and Healy 2009, p. 403).Secondly, around the team leaders there are constructed teams. Through team organisation the responsibility for organising production and labour is decentralised down to the team leader and ultimately to the team. Teams in call centres have very little control and independent decision making authority (Russell, 2004).

It is these two features, teams and the team leader, that we wish to highlight in assessing the potential to balance work with non work responsibilities in call centres. Since many of the organisational details are left to the team, and specifically the team leader, there is scope for negotiating changes in working arrangements for the purposes of meeting work-life balance obligations. The irony is that while the organisation of production facilitates high pressure and controlled working conditions, this very process in itself can lead to formal and informal flexibility arrangements emerging with respect to work-life balance issues. The following section provides an overview of the working time and work-life balance literature as far as call centres are concerned.

Call Centres, Working Time and Work-life Balance

Call centres epitomise the shift towards technology-based work. The highly competitive nature of the market has placed immense pressure on call centres to maximise their availability and profitability (Paul and Huws 2000). Many call centres have expanded their services around the clock in order to service a wider range of clientele in different time zones. Call centre staff are therefore expected to deal not only with the intensive nature of the work but also with often demanding shift arrangements that may impact on both their work and non-work lives (Union Research Centre for Organisation and Technology [URCOT] 2000]; Paul and Huws 2002). High stress levels, high turnover and employee burn out have been reported as common occurrences within the industry (Healy and Bramble 2003).

The organisation of working hours in call centres depends on a number of factors, including the type of service provided, staffing levels and the location of the customer base. Call volumes and levels of demand are a large determinant and can vary according to the time of the day or the time of the year. Paul and Huws (2002) note that most call centres operate a two-tier system, which is based, first, on the normal operating hours...