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A new UNI report, “Making the Right Call - Redesigning Call Centres from the Bottom Up”, illustrates the negative psychological and physical impacts on the world’s call centre workers by poor management practices. The report also points out that the call centre operators would also be more profitable if they took more account and care of workers.

• Report exposes how poor management practices are harming call centre workers and the economic bottom line
• Case studies from Deutsche Telekom T-Mobile USA show that workers suffer from stress, anxiety and burnout because management refuses to listen to them when planning and designing the work.
• UNI joins with unions in USA and Germany (Communication Workers of America (CWA) and ver.di) to demand immediate reforms.

These practices include forcing employees to strictly follow scripts, that involve intensive monitoring of the calls, and that link failure to meet performance targets to punishment and dismissal. As a result of these management techniques, workers suffer from repetitive strain injuries, musculoskeletal disorders, stress, anxiety and burnout.

“Call centre workers are part of the new communications workforce that represents millions of jobs in every region of the globe. This reports illustrates why we need to change the rules of the game by giving call centre workers a voice on the job so they can not only improve their physical and mental health, but also deliver improved customer service that is good for a company’s bottom line” says Marcus Courtney, who is the head of UNI ICTS Global Union that coordinates the CCAM.

“Making the right call - Redesigning call centres from the bottom up” is released by UNI Global Union as part of its global Call Centre Action Month (CCAM) that starts today October 1. During CCAM, UNI and its affiliates spotlight the working conditions and problems faced by call centre workers around the world and offer solutions.

The call centre industry has exploded worldwide over the past two decades, as advances in information and communication technologies have reduced the costs of providing service and sales from remote locations. Over the same period, call centres have acquired a bad reputation both as a channel for customer contact and as places to work.

T-Mobile USA, which is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom of Germany, is an example that highlights the management issues that produce poor outcomes for workers and needless loss in profitability.

The Communication Workers of America (CWA) has been actively trying to organize T-Mobile USA but has faced intense management opposition to allowing workers the right to form and join a union. CWA, together with the German union ver.di that organizes workers in Deutsche Telekom, use the publishing of the report to call for reforms inside T-Mobile USA call centres.

According to Ado Wilhelm, Head of Central Functions, ver.di, “It is imperative that Deutsche Telekom follow the same best practices we have negotiated in Germany throughout its global footprint. T-Mobile USA should implement in its U.S. call centres the same standards on monitoring, performance evaluation, and discipline that its corporate parent practices. The managerial abuse in the United States is disturbing.”



Denise Anderson, T-Mobile employee at the Wichita, Kansas, call centre, supports the finding of the report and wishes her management would adopt the recommendations presented by the authors: “I see everyday co-workers who are out on Family Medical leave due to the stress of constant monitoring, unrealistic performance targets and poor scheduling. We want to deliver high quality customer service by working with management but the company does not want to listen to us. That is why I want to be represented by a union so we will have a voice to improve not only the quality of our jobs but customer service too.”

The report provides six recommendations for improved management practices that should be implemented jointly between workers and management.

• Cross training employees to answer a broad range of call types
• Reducing the use of scripts
• Giving employees more choice over scheduled and break times
• Limiting monitoring frequency and intensity
• Use monitoring information to develop skills rather than to discipline or sanction employees
• Involving employees in the design and review of performance targets.

Despite evidence that call centres perform better and can lead to increased profitability when workers have a voice in how they deliver customer service over the phone, management in most of the world’s call centres appear to turn a blind eye to these facts.The report reviewed extensive academic research that analyzed empirically how different approaches to call centre management are related to measures of employee well-being and performance. The research included findings from a wide range of survey-and case-based studies. The study was conducted by Virginia Doellgast and Lisa Sezer. Dr. Doellgast is a lecturer in comparative employment relations at the London School of Economics. She holds a PhD from Cornell University. Miss Sezer is a PhD student in Employment relations at the London School of Economics.

Click on Related Files tab at top of the page to read full report.

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