Panoptic surveillance in call centres is a common occurrence as the environment is highly monitored. The employees are often organized into teams representing structural elements of the organization, but they work most of the time independently regardless of the physical closeness of the equally cut off colleagues (Mann, Nolan, & Wellman, 2002, pp.334). The call centre is a reflection of the modern bastion of Taylorism because the highly structured and monitored work environment induces high levels of stress for the workers. The workplace conditions in call centres are always checked strictly, which puts pressure on the employees to deliver (Frenkel, Tam, Korczynski, & Shire, 1998, pp.4). Although different authors have refuted these perceptions, call centres have often earned unenviable reputation in the context of industrial relations.
Forms of Monitoring
Different types of employee surveillance are used in call centre environment. These include computer examination, spying, video surveillance, undercover operatives, telephone taps, and active badges among others (Mishra & Crampton, 1998, pp. 4). Wallace and Eagleson (2004, pp.145) postulate that computer monitoring helps in keeping records and providing information needed to set routine standards, which are used in a performance review. Video surveillance is often used to monitor the behaviour of individuals. Some cameras are placed in open spaces while others installed in secret so that workers do not know that they are being watched. Additionally, the employer frequently uses co-workers as undercover operatives because they understand the other people's lifestyles (Mishra & Crampton, 1998, pp.4). Active badges are also crucial in monitoring movement of employees, as the sensors are distributed throughout the workplace to pick up signals from the badges.
Striping Employees of Their Rights
Call centres are regarded as ‘electronic panopticons' where the employees are regularly watched while stress is utilised as a management strategy (Desai, 2010, pp.793). Employees in call centres often handle sensitive matters, which have a direct influence on the performance of the organization. Therefore, employers prefer to institute strict guidelines to regulate the behaviour of their workers. Electronic surveillance becomes the most suitable system that can help them monitor internal operations (Wallace & Eagleson, 2004, pp.143). However, the workers readily become stressed due to increased controls put in place at their workplace. The modern call centres can be considered as an electronic panopticon since they are designed in a manner that strips employees of their rights.
Employees in call centres experience emotional breakdown that may lead to poor performance. Ball and Margulis (2011, pp.114) indicate that several workers from call centers often seek social support. Besides, the errors made due to the harsh working conditions could be used to discipline and dismiss employees on the spot (Morrison, 2016, pp.12). These workers are often given gruelling targets that are reviewed from time to time. The environment is psychologically draining for most of the workers in addition to creating a feeling of unevenness (Callaghan, 2002, pp.7). However, the managers tend to use the precariousness as a strategy to punish and motivate the workers, which creates a stressful, oppressive, and abusive workplace. Therefore, workers are forced to control their conduct, understanding that they can lose their job at any moment. Panoptic surveillance in workplaces such as call centres has a significant influence on workers and their families (Basturk, 2017, pp. 12). Employees who have worked in call centres tend to be demanding and may be strict on their children or family members.
Power through Panopticon
Aiello (1993, pp.502) indicated that approximately 20 million American employees are monitored by electronic means on the job. Their movements and location are checked continuously while computers are employed to set targets as well as performances for all the employees. Even though there are limits by the government agencies like Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the use of surveillance techniques, the private employers are free from significant constraints (Mulholland, 2002, pp.285). The arguments surrounding the use of panoptic surveillance in call centres have been based on the business interests. De Ruyter, Wetzels, and Feinberg (2001, pp. 24) state that the opponents believe that call centre workers face significant stress due to constant surveillance, as results obtained from monitoring are considered while determining pay as well as promotion.
Proponents of electronic surveillance claim that it is an effective means to manage the enterprise by ensuring increased productivity and quality customer service. Moreover, they suggest that regular feedback that has objective results to the workers can help them improve performance. Sarpong and Rees (2014, pp.218) posit that many call centre workers consider electronic monitoring as an essential system for their safety and protection at work. Besides, the monitoring devices are useful in obtaining effective control over different tasks, and it permits for guidance from the supervisors to ensure successful completion of the assigned jobs (De Ruyter, Wetzels, & Feinberg, 2001, pp. 27). Improvements in employee-management relations always help to avoid worker displeasure with the use of electronic surveillance at workplaces.
Research indicates that the use of panoptic power prompts employers to embrace electronic monitoring as a means to assert their authority in the call centres, but still permit a measure of employee input and participation (Basi, 2009, pp.21). The means of implementation of electronic surveillance is always controversial. Employers tend to introduce the system in call centres with minimal or no participation of its employees, which leads to resentment, little or no increase in productivity, and increased stress levels. Hingst (2006, pp. 3) states that some researchers believe that these effects can be prevented if the workers are engaged in the design as well as the implementation of the surveillance system.
Researchers note that once the system is instituted, the attitudes of the call centre workers toward electronic monitoring depend on its fairness, which includes the performance standards in addition to the use of collected data (Houlihan, 2001, pp.210). They suggest that the gathered statistics should be used to train and give feedback. Nonetheless, the issues surrounding implementation does not take into consideration the integrity of power relations at the call centres. In most cases, the demands for employee participation do not extend further than building a working agreement around the subject of surveillance. Questions about the control of call centre work environment and whether surveillance should even be commenced are by no means open for discussion (Peaucelle, 2000, pp.455). Therefore, it limits the issues to what is the main efficient ways of execution from the employer’s perspective, but not fundamental questions of call centre control.
Taylorism in Call Centres
Call centres have increasingly become distressing workplaces for the employees due to the insidious role played by the computer technology. The workers use computers, which ironically act as the monitoring tools. Callaghan (2002, pp.11) argues that Taylorism has found a place in the contemporary organization represented by the call centres. Fernie and Metcalf (1998, pp.15) indicate that call centres depict the most tremendous and cynical features of the modern workplaces. They give acerbic criticism concerning management power, which involves omniscient and incarceration scrutiny. The authors indict the work environment in call centres in that the management has put in place a false and simplistic model that ignores the sophistication of the labour process and employment relationship (Fernie & Metcalf 1998, pp. 17). Besides, managers have committed severe errors in underestimating as well as assuming the potential for and reality of worker resistance in call centres.
Bain and Taylor criticise the positions taken by Fernie and Metcalf, as inept support for work environment within the call centres (Taylor & Bain, 1999, pp. 102). Bain and Taylor are among the authors who adopted apparently pluralist industrial relations viewpoint in analyzing the internal dynamics in call centres, actions of trade unions, as well as the emotional assurance employees, make to their contacts with the callers (Bain & Taylor, 2000, pp. 7). They connect the difficulties that the UK trade union movement has witnessed in employing from within the call centre industry to the belief that the employees have more control over the workplace conditions, but Metcalf and Fernie believe otherwise.
In the late 20th
century, the panopticon was increasingly conceived as a workplace electronic application and a control gadget used by management as a crucial component of monitoring production systems (Foucault, 1979, pp. 32). Moreover, the system has been organized in such a way that the call centre workers' consent to be subjected to the scrutiny, which they understand will automatically recognize their departure from the norms thereby, triggering approval or sanctions. In the absence of employee resistance, what emerges is the organisational acceptance of managers' prerogatives (Frenkel et al., 1998, pp. 6). Additionally, a situation arises where the changes to work organisation are considered by workers as a foreseeable extension of the administratively imposed regulation system to be accepted together with other terms and conditions.
Emotional Labour
Call centre workers often find it crucial to show empathy with the clients experiencing tricky situations. However, there is the concomitant obligation to put aside their rejoinders to the caller during the exchange (Desai, 2010, pp.795). Employees in call centres face an extra stressor in the manner of contact with other people through the anonymous telephone medium. They have to carry the burden of emotional labour and communicate with no access to the different cues that inform the face-to-face discussion. Hingst (2006, pp. 6) established that tension is also created for the outbound call centre employees, as the same tools used to make calls are utilised in monitoring their performance. They are constrained in the period of the call through administration scrutiny and the variety of topics curtailed through a structured script. Therefore, the customer and the attendant both feel cut off from the usual communication cue, which may make both parties feel dissatisfied (Hingst, 2006, pp.7). While the situation can be frustrating to the client, the call centre employee has to endure the same sensation repeatedly each time s/he makes a call during the shift.
Mulholland (2002, pp.288) focuses on the issues of gender in evaluating how emotional labour influences the aptitude of agents to determine and develop encouraging team relationships in the call centre environment. However, the leading cause of dissatisfaction among call centre workers is the exceedingly structured form of the fostered work plans, which are sequentially examined through surveillance facility of the employees' tools (Bal, 2017, pp.26). The work itself puts a lot of pressure on the employee’s ability to subdue and control their emotions while contacting the customers.
Objections to Surveillance
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) object electronic surveillance because it invades the privacy of workers, eliminates their sense of self-esteem, and aggravates their efforts to carry out an excellent job (DeTienne & Abbott, 1993, pp. 12). Monitoring is intrusive and cannot permit personal differences in the work style. Furthermore, it is not possible to confirm if the system is fair regarding the set standards and whether the data collected is examined for the content or solely for the quantitative purpose. There is also the excellence of job concerns such as stress-related illness and incidence of stress (Smith, 2013, pp. 31). Electronic surveillance in call centres induces pressure to perform. Different stressful working conditions in relation to surveillance include social isolation, repetitive tasks, heavy workload, in addition to the concern of job loss (Morrison, 2016, pp.15). These are worsened by inadequate participation, job involvement, as well as organizational support.
Surveillance is often used in call centres in that they have standardised and rationalised methods of operation, which contribute to stress due to its continual nature. Aiello (1993, pp.505) posits that intellectual challenges, work variety, and development potential are significantly reduced when the responsibility of decision-making regarding performance is based on the information system. In research about employee stress for the American communication employees, the results showed that monitored workers reported less workload disparity, higher workload, and superior workload discontent than the workers not being monitored (Callaghan & Thompson, 2001, pp.19). Besides, employees under surveillance showed less control over their work, increased interactions with demanding clients, and less fairness of their work standards. Overall, monitored workers often report more physical health issues such as psychological, musculoskeletal, and psychosomatic problems.
Research on different employees indicates that workers who perceive themselves as elevated on social class scale put up with reduced monitoring compared to those who consider themselves as of low social class (Morrison, 2016, pp.18). Therefore, system programmers in call centres may accept less surveillance because it degrades them while clerks in charge of entering data may endure a higher level of surveillance. Most call centre workers always put up with less scrutiny since it is an unacceptable incursion of their private work control (Morrison, 2016, pp.24). Therefore, they strive to undertake various activities in an attempt to restore a sense of power over their workplace conditions.
Summary and Literature Gap
Call centres have not only been considered as stressful workplaces, but the task itself often put substantial stress on the employee's ability to overcome and regulate individual emotional reactions. The perceptions of call centre employees' work-life vary significantly, as various views exist, but one uniting factor is that the work environment has a reputation for being habitual and vastly monitored. Different techniques can be used to monitor call centre employees. Computer and telephone technologies along with managerial intervention create a wide array of regulation and surveillance methods. The existing literature looks at how computer monitoring affects employee performance as well as satisfaction in the call centres. However, little has been done to establish how panoptic surveillance affects the social welfare of these workers. Most of the research works tend to focus on improving employee productivity and business profitability of call centres through electronic monitoring, but do not look at the stress and other adverse effects associated with it.
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