Call Centre Employees' Responses to Electronic Monitoring: Some Research Findings

Abstract

There is a growing literature on employment in call centres, much of which suggests that they are characterised by high levels of work intensification and surveillance. Recently, a debate has emerged about the nature of surveillance in such workplaces and the level and character of employee resistance (Bain and Taylor 2000; Fernie and Metcalf 1998; Mulholland 1999) with some, such as Bain and Taylor, claiming that the argument is characterised by a paucity of empirical evidence. Against this background, this paper reports on the results of an observational study of call centre work. In what follows we describe the ways in which managers, supervisors and call centre operatives oriented to the monitoring and surveillance capabilities of call centre technology, to the complex social context in which it was embedded and to a range of negotiated definitions of the nature and purposes of the centre's operations. We make no claims here that the call centre reported on is typical of all such centres. Nor do we seek directly to enter the debate about whether call centre surveillance is panoptic in character or about the extent and character of resistance. Nevertheless, it will become apparent that our findings do have relevance for these debates.