Even as young graduates line up to join the industry in hordes, stress and work related ailments are taking their toll. Thirty-eight per cent of all call center employees surveyed said work timings were a major cause for stress; 40% said they suffered from sleep disorders while 34% had digestive system disorders; what’s more—35% said they would leave their current jobs because they didn’t like their work shifts. In the first ever survey on call center stress and illnesses in India, Dataquest looks at what contributes most to employee stress, what kind of ailments are peculiar to this industry and how employees are likely to behave in the face of both.
The kind of data mankind chooses to record at any point is in some ways the sign of its times. Its perception of what is important to the present. Of what tomorrow’s historians must understand.
And perhaps the sign of our times is that along with daily stock market reports and quarterly company results, we have in recent years begun to keep job stress and illness statistics. Frank Kenna III, president of the Marlin Company, called job stress “the emotional toothache of the workplace”. This is not a new understanding. In 1992, a UN report called job stress “the 20th century disease”. One that the World Health Organization was later to say had become a worldwide epidemic.
Among all job stress statistics though, the one that has received the maximum attention over the last few years is call center stress. Even without the up-ended timings that Indian call center employees keep, it is a unique workplace. More than any other, it roots people to a chair nine hours a day, reading pre-scripted conversations on the phone endlessly—often to irate customers from across the globe. Where every single second of an employee’s time is recorded, measured and automatically logged onto a computer for praise or censure on a weekly basis. Where walking down to the water cooler for a drink and a chat with a friend messes up performance metrics, salaries and hikes. Where the three acts of listening, watching and talking—all at the same time—never get a break.
In countries like the UK and Australia, where the call center industry is a lot older, there is a great deal of understanding on what this unique workplace entails and what needs to be done about it. In the UK, the government intervened a while ago with a local authority circular called “Advice Regarding Call Center Working Practices”. The circular not only lists in detail the stress factors and ailments peculiar to this industry, but also has various benchmarks and measures on how to deal with them.
In Australia, some call center companies have signed onto a call center charter that includes, among other things, a minimum standards code for the workplace.
As of now, no understanding of the problem exists in India, leave alone a minimum standards code. Some call center and BPO companies in the country have got together under the aegis of Nasscom to address common areas of concern—but so far these have largely centered on deciding how not to poach on each other’s employees and what to do with the Shops and Establishments Act. Employee stress—and its impact on the bottomline through high attrition rates—is not even on the horizon of concerns.
At this year’s Nasscom ITES summit, Martin Conboy, CEO of Callcentres.net that does extensive research on call centers in the APAC region, had complained: “The operators that I spoke to in India to have little or no understanding of the cost of agent attrition due to stress. This is a common occurrence in developing call center markets where there is an abundance of willing and cheap labor.”
Which is a shame really. For employee stress and work related ailments are not just “employee welfare” issues. Stress, ailments and related attrition have a real cost to companies. No proper studies are available in India, but if this is any indication—the American Institute of Stress recently estimated that job stress cost American businesses $300 billion annually in lost productivity, absenteeism, accidents, employee turnover and medical, legal and insurance fees. And that “these costs are more than 15 times those of all strikes combined”. An International Labor Organization study a little earlier estimated that its total cost to society would be about 1% to 3.5% of the GDP. Even if that’s overestimated three times over—it’s a startling number.
Bottomline: it’s not merely in the interests of employees that these issues have to be carefully examined and dealt with. It is in the interests of the industry to do so.
Which is why in the first exercise of its kind, Dataquest looks at these issues closely. At the various stress issues related to this unique and growing industry. At the illnesses that are peculiar to it. At how employees react to them. And more
importantly—how this will dictate their behavior in the future.
A word of caution though. We asked 544 call center employees what where the main factors contributing to stress on the job.
And what, if any, work-related ailments they suffered from. This is not a measure of either how much stress they actually feel (for that, tools like the Marlin Company’s Workplace Stress Scale are better indicators), or exactly what proportion of their ailments may not be work related. What the numbers indicate in the accompanying tables and graphics are the prevalence of stress-causing factors and how stress and workplace conditions seem to manifest themselves as ailments. These numbers are taken from voluntary statements and are not absolute medical/psychiatric opinions. Their sheer scale, however, tells an interesting and somewhat disturbing story, indicating that it is time for experts to take over from where we left off.
SARITA RANI in Bangalore
| 
Special Issues 
