Rose - Inspired Contact Centre worker

Working in a Contact Centre "JUST a voice at the end of the phone.”

Rose rated this job as 10/10 (10 being the best job you can imagine).

by Giverny de Boeck

As we enter the call center, we are welcomed by Christine, the manager, in a bright, new building. The building centers around two spacious areas for relaxing, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto a patio housing lush green plants. It appears to be a tranquil working atmosphere.

Around the corner, however, the workplace is buzzing with activity. A large open office space reveals a diverse group of employees who, equipped with headsets, are busy answering customer calls, whilst nimbly navigating amongst different information sheets on their double computer screens. One might expect this work environment to be noisy and distracting. Surprisingly, however, the volume in the call center is kept at a pleasant level, thanks to the sound-absorbing materials incorporated in the walls of the building.

At one of the various office ‘islands’ in which teams of employees sit, we find Rose, colourfully dressed in blue and purple. Rose has been working for the call centre for seven years already and she has no intention to leave any time soon. This fact is remarkable given that attrition rates in call centres are notoriously high, rising up to 40% in Australia [1]. High attrition is typically attributed to the low quality of call centre jobs, which often consist of repetitive, scripted interactions that are automatically distributed to workers via technology, with close monitoring by management.

The level of stress in call centre jobs is usually also higher than other sectors, another driver of turnover, in part because workers have to manage the conflicting role expectations of delivering high quality customer service, at the same time as having to handle customer calls in a minimal amount of time to reach imposed efficiency targets [2, 3, 4]. 

So, again, we are surprised to find that Rose absolutely loves working at the call centre, scoring her job as 10/10. One element that can explain Rose’s love for her job is the way she infuses her work activities with personal meaning—also called cognitive job crafting, a practice often witnessed in workers with unanswered occupational callings [5, 6]. When we ask Rose what it is that she does at the call center, she says that she is paid to do what she loves best: “talking”. She notes the importance of one’s tone of voice, listening in an active way, good timing of questions, and coming across positively, while showing genuine interest. In this way, Rose actively reframes her role at the call center such that it aligns with the skills and knowledge she has gained during her past work experience as a sales person in retail.

Rose also sees her work at the call center as helping others by, for example, educating people on the various possibilities that exist to better manage their day-to-day living costs. Instead of viewing her work as a collection of separate tasks, she sees it as an integrated whole in which she makes a difference to the lives of others, similar to a therapist improving the well-being of her clientele. By linking her work to valued personal skills that she has acquired in the past, while simultaneously transcending the self by viewing her job as a contribution to others, Rose successfully applies two meaning-making mechanisms that help her craft her job at the call center into something personally meaningful [7].  

At the same time, however, Rose’s interactions with customers—one of the greatest sources of pleasure at work—also represents her biggest challenge. Customers who do not seem to want to listen to her, or who get angry with her over things that she cannot control, are worst. In these instances, Rose is confronted with the limits of her autonomy, and the fact that she is constrained as a result of being “at the end of a telephone line” , as well as by the need to follow government-imposed rules over certain matters.

Interestingly, in these instances of challenging customers, Rose actively distances herself from work both mentally and physically. Mentally she convinces herself that it is “not personal” as she is “just a voice at the other end of the phone”. Physically she tries to keep a monotone tone of voice.

It seems that striking the right balance between wanting to help – yet being able to step back and keep a distance when help is not possible - is the key to Rose’s success in her call centre job. 

References

[1] Union Research Centre for Organisation and Technology [URCOT] (2000) Call Centres: What Kind of Future Workplaces?, RMIT School of Social Sciences and Planning, Victorian Trades Hall Council.

[2] Siong, Z., Mellor, D., Moore, K., & Firth, L. (2006). Predicting intention to quit in the call centre industry: Does the retail model fit?, Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(3), 231-243.

[3] Valverde, M., Ryan, G., & Gorjup, M. T. (2007). An examination of the quality of jobs in the call center industry. International Advances in Economic Research, 13(2), 146-156.

[4] Hannif, Z., Burgess, J., & Connell, J. (2008). Call centres and the quality of work life: Towards a research agenda. Journal of Industrial Telations, 50(2), 271-284.

[5] Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of management review, 26(2), 179-201.

[6] Berg, J. M., Grant, A. M., & Johnson, V. (2010). When callings are calling: Crafting work and leisure in pursuit of unanswered occupational callings. Organization Science, 21(5), 973-994.

[7] Rosso, B. D., Dekas, K. H., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2010). On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review. Research in organizational behavior, 30, 91-127.

Astrida - The Dump Truck Operator on a Minesite

Astrida scored her job 10/10 (ten being the most enjoyable job you can imagine).

by Daniela Andrei

We interviewed Astrida on a minesite, during her afternoon tea break. Astrida is working as a dump truck operator for a mining construction company operating in South Australia. Her main job is to drive the immense trucks that move products to and from the fixed plant that is operating at the mine site, but she also helps the supervisors and leading hands to enter data related to daily operations in a database, responsibility that is shared with another colleague. Astrida works on a 1 on – 1 off roster, which means that she works 12 hours shifts for a week, followed by a week off work.    

Job Rotation

Astrida’s job provides us with a good example of job rotation, a practice that has been proved successful in providing better, enlarged, work designs to employees working in monotonous, routinised jobs. Moreover, in her interview she acknowledges the importance of having a higher level of task variety in her job, even as a dump truck operator: different from her colleagues in production, her role associated to the fixed plant means that she might operate on different types of trucks and also different types of circuits across the site, which helps bring some versatility to the job and reduce boredom. Astrida is also reporting a very good team atmosphere, that provides her with support from co-workers and supervisor. These types of job resources like task variety, and co-worker support are essential given the high level of demands experienced by Astrida in her job: working on a residential mine site means 14 hours working days (including commuting time) and regular nightshifts that can take a toll on fatigue and overall health, as well as work-family balance if not adequately managed during rest periods and counterbalanced with relevant job resources.

"Having two sets of very different responsibilities is good, it’s actually very good, because obviously, just being in a truck can be very monotonous sometimes, and obviously just doing the data can be as well, so it’s good to alternate.

Like I said, I do really like being in the truck, I sort of like that it’s your own time. It might be a bit lonely at times, but I really enjoy being in the truck! Just being able to sit in my own thoughts, read my book while I am getting loaded…

Obviously, because we are at work for 14 hours, sometimes we leave early in the morning and get back home at 9, so it’s a 14-hour day. To be able to get the recommended and healthy amount of sleep is quite (difficult). The amount of hours that we actually spend at work can obviously affect that because if you’re going home at the end of the day and if you wanted to spend time with your family, it’s always very short..

What I enjoy most … definitely the work! And the crew that you work with it’s definitely one of the most important aspects. We all get along really well, we enjoy ourselves, have fun at work together, we definitely stand by the “enjoyable workplace” that is part of our charter!"

Munya - The Senior Project Manager on a Minesite

Senior project Manager on a mintesite:

A job about creating a culture, influencing people to take a direction

Munya scored his job 10/10 (ten being the most enjoyable job you can imagine).

by Daniela Andrei

Munya has a career spanning over 17 years in mining engineering and project management. He has held several roles across different levels within the mining and contracting industry in Australia and overseas. At the time of the interview, Munya was the Senior Project Manager overseeing two large mining construction projects in South Australia, but since then, he was appointed General Manager for Operations for all the company’s operations in South Australia.

The Social Aspects of Work

A great deal of our discussion with Munya during our time at the mine site revolved around the social aspects of work, because T.R. sees that one of his main responsibilities from a leadership position is to create a particular type of culture in which employees can thrive. He notes that, even though the actual jobs across the mine-site might look isolated at first sight, when you take in consideration how each piece of work feeds into and needs to be coordinated with others, it becomes teamwork – in work design terms interdependent. Interacting with people all the time can become challenging, especially when the cultural background is different, and T.R. talks about the efforts he is making to ensure that he maintains an open mind while interacting with his subordinates and trying to take their perspective. These efforts might signal increased levels of emotional labour in this job.

“Dealing with people is hard. It is such a diverse workforce. I want people to do things because they want to, not because they have to… It is a team-based environment – it’s lonely, but once you look at how all of this is coordinated, it becomes teamwork.”

“I need to be open and honest, I don’t get to lie to them. If you allow people to have an input, and if you’re genuine about everything as well, that will allow you to gain commitment from the team.”