Labour Control Models In Call Centres

Labour control is a managerial issue directly affecting the organisation. To achieve a common goal greater than what an individual can achieve alone, requires the participating group to relinquish their autonomy. Tensions between those in control and those without will inevitably arise, highlighting the importance of managerial control for the survival of the organisation. Throughout, I will focus on call centres and different labour control models, exploring the notion of “electronic panopticon” raised in the focal article and some of its shared similarities, before demonstrating fallacies to such notion, drawing evidence from the Telcorp case study. I will briefly consider Edward’s three forms of labour control to the structure of call centres before coming to a conclusion. Call centres are centralised telecommunication workplaces which incorporates software technologies to deliver real-time customer services. Recently, call centres have been negatively viewed, with newspaper articles calling such workplaces resembling prison-like system or under Foucauldian framework, as “electronic panopticon”. Panopticon, a prison design developed by Bentham, is based on systems of control maintained by a single supervisor to monitor the prisoners. Prisoners cannot tell whether or not they are being observed. He theorised this would motivate the prisoners to modify their behaviour, self-regulate themselves in-tune to supervisor’s objectives. This internalisation of their behaviour is the basis of the supervisor’s control. Driven by cost-effectiveness as the central motivator for profits, call centres are likely to adopt scientific labour management approach, or Taylorism. Taylorism is characterised by standardisation of work practices, to eliminate inefficiencies and increase productivity, through clear and specific methodology on achieving desired performance levels, leading to fewer workers or working hours as requirement. It is said labour relations are often suffer, with high worker resistance at odds with managerial control.

A typical outcome under Taylorism may be organisations seek to enlarge their workforce with lower-skilled, but cheaper, workers, however may have the consequence of high staff turnover and highly organised labourers. Under panopticon framework, the focus shift to enhancement of managerial control over workers. “Electronic panopticon” is characterised where its control powers are (1) invisible and “rendered perfect”, (2) workers resistance is completely eliminated, (3) as they have internalised and are complicit to their manager’s objective to control them. Using the Telcorp case study, some similarities are discussed. a. Every call is recorded, assessed and benchmarked into performance level data. Recordings, assessment and benchmarking takes place remotely and invisibly by the manager, as workers cannot know when they are monitored. Only at disciplinary is the worker aware of the surveillance, by then opportunity to resist, negotiate or refute is likely to have passed and managerial control “rendered perfect”. b. Workers are spontaneously assessed on their level of “helpfulness”, “tone”, and “enthusiasm” by mystery shoppers. The use of mystery shoppers eliminates workers’ resistance, as they are essentially untraceable to refute their assessment. Additionally, a standardisation on emotional labour can work to dis-empower the worker as unwanted subjective behaviour can be set against as part of the standardisation, leaving no room for worker discretion or resistance. c. A league ranking of team performance levels are published for all workers’ perusal. Internalising manager’s objectives for control is reflected by “team Taylorism”. Teams, instead of increasing group identity, act to group-regulate to improve team scores, aligning to the manager’s objectives and “render perfect” managerial control. It is therefore fair to consider call centres as “electronic panopticon”. That said, it is easy to over-estimate the supervisory control within call centres under Foucaludian context. The Telcorp research, Bain and Taylor (2000), highlights several fallacies to the assertion. High staff turnover is a sign of power struggle between managerial control and workers resistance. Resources and energy used to train staff, only to lose them, did not align with managerial objectives. Remote surveillance is not as invisible as believed.

Over reliance on the invisibility of surveillance does not account for predictable behavioural patterns errors managers displayed whilst monitoring a worker. Workers aware of this pattern changes may choose to regulate own actions selectively. It is easy to assume all-powerful surveillance constantly motivating workers to self-discipline, which is not so in reality. Workers will always find gaps within the system’s functionality and monitoring inconsistency to exploit. For example, call has concluded, the worker does not end the call at their end and take the opportunity to relax and gossip with colleagues. It is also true through increased oppressive control, it is more likely that discontent workers will seek to unite and organise, as was the case in February 1999 at Telcorp. Dissatisfactions with pay and working conditions pushed over 100 from 350 workers to join the “Teleworkers Union”. As demonstrated, assessing call centres as “electronic panopticon” is overly deterministic to the realities of managerial control over the workers. Call centres are highly technical place, evidenced by the use of specific technology to distribute work and maintain surveillance control. However, maintenance of control, its structure and implementation, is very hierarchical. The constant assessments, benchmarking all indicate bureaucratic form. Callaghan and Thompson (2001) claims call centres are combination of both Edward’s technical and bureaucratic forms of control model. They reason, despite the socio-technical development of call centres, the managerial structure is bureaucratic; ensuring the organisation’s core profit drivers for cost-cutting and cost-controlling is maintained. The fact that technology is highly integrated is simply complimentary to the otherwise highly bureaucratic and Tayloristic structure of the organisation. From panopticon to the three models of management control, call centres do not fall easily into a single management control category. Given its highly technical structure, while maintaining its bureaucratic form, the best explanation would be a combined hybrid of the two models.