Big Brother: Emotional Resilience in Contact Centres

Contact Centres or call centres as most of us think of them, have had a bad press over the years. They have been described as modern day sweatshops, where staff are treated like cattle and paid low wages. Some Contact Centres may well have deserved this reputation but there are many organisations who recognise that Contact Centre working can be improved.

Contact centres  are not hazardous in the same way as some working environments e.g. deep-sea fishing.  There are, however, unique factors about these environments that make them challenging for employees. In Contact Centres, stress accounts for half of all absenteeism and 25% of all voluntary turnover. Presenteeism does not appear to get much of a mention in the literature on Contact Centres, which focus heavily on staff turnover. We know from the research into mental health, however, that Presenteeism will also be taking place i.e. where staff remain in work when they are experiencing reduced mental health and should really be taking sickness absence.

Some of the challenges in these roles are around the extensive micro management in the job. How would you feel, if every call you made was recorded and timed and you had a target of ‘x’ minutes per call?  How would you feel about spending your day listening to unhappy customers swearing at your or desperate customers crying down the phone because they cannot pay their fuel bills? The calls are relentless and you have to finish one call as quickly as possible in order to pick up the next one. Equally, career prospects can be limited. So, what does the research say about how staff in these environments can remain emotionally resilient.

 

Emotional Resilience in Big Brother Environments

Four factors have been found to be important in maintaining emotional resilience and performance in Contact Centre environments i.e. Self-Awareness, Emotional Intelligence(Cynicism). The ability to Identify Boundaries of Control and Problem Focused Coping Strategies. (Harry 2015). Read more here: Big Brother

 

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