Are all call centres electronic sweatshops Christer Strandberg, Ph D Olof Wahlberg, Ph D

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Are all call centres electronic
sweatshops?Christer Strandberg, Ph DOlof
Wahlberg, Ph D
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Call centres heaven or hell?

• Heaven
• Growing sector
• Offers employment opportunities in
  post-industrial societies
• Growing number of employees
• Salient vehicle for customer service
• In a globalised economy with tougher competition
• Customer Relationship Management
• Hell
• Ecectronic sweatshops
• Inferior psychosocial work conditions

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Call centres come in many forms

• One major difference
• Outsourced call centres / Subcontractors
• External to mother organisation
• Focused in general debate about Call Centres
• In-house
• Internal to mother organisatin
• Part of the marketing department (?)
• often given little importance in organisation
  strategy
• But timesThey are a-changing (Dylan)
• FOCUSED IN THIS STUDY

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Basic Assumption

• The efficiency of the in-house call centre
  organisations hinges upon the management of the
  psychosocial work conditions in those
  organisations.
• A key to commitment and job satisfaction
• A key to efficiency and quality of the customer
  service

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Purpose

• (a) To compare the psychosocial work conditions
  in in-house call centres with those in
  organisations in general in the Nordic countries
• (b) to discuss the managerial problems that this
  comparison imply,
• with a particular focus on the choice of
  leadership style in an in-house call centre
  organisation.

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Propositions

• In-house call centres are perceived as sweat
  shops to a higher extent than what organisations
  in general are perceived to be.
• Work is to a higher extent perceived to be
  monotonous and stressful in call centre
  organisations.
• Work in in-hose call centres is perceived to be
  more closely supervised and controlled than what
  is the case in organisations in general.
• Work in call centres is more specified in
  quantitative details and constantly followed up
  to a higher extent than in common organisations.
• Employees in call centres perceive that they have
  less possibility to influence their work tasks
  than employees in organisations in general.
• Employees in call centres have lower intrinsic
  job satisfaction than employees in organisations
  in general.

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Method

• The QPS Nordic questionnaire
• Well established
• Validated
• 123 questions and 26 indexes/scales
• Data base with QPS data for more than 2000 Nordic
  organisations
• 9 In-house call centres in Sweden
• 3 industries with most developed call centre
  operations
• Bank/Finance
• Insurance
• Telecom
• 165 respondents
• Comparison with QPS Nordic data base
• Comparing averages
• Looking for differences gt 0.4

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Comparison
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Findings

• The work load was not perceived to be
  exceptionally high in the CCs
• The perceived control over work tasks is less in
  the CCs
• Work is of less importance to CC employees
• The CC employees perceived the social support at
  work to be higher
• The leadership style is perceived to be more
  people oriented in the CCs
• The leadership is perceived to be more empowering
  by the CC employees
• The predictability of work is perceived to be
  better by the CC employees
• The plans and objectives are perceived to be
  clearer in the CCs
• The CC employees perceived the support from
  friends/relatives to be relatively higher

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Conclusions and Discussion

• The control over work tasks is perceived to be
  lower in the in-house call centres than what it
  is in organisations in general in Nordic
  organisations.
• The leadership style in the in-house call centres
  is designed to cope with the stress perceived at
  work
• The support from fellow workers also reduce the
  stress in call centres
• Work does not have the same centrality in work to
  the employees in the in-house call centres it has
  to employees in Nordic organisations in general.
• In-house call centres are no sweat shops

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What is the next step?

• Comparing in-house and outsourced Call Centres!