Work and Employee Relations in the call centre Essay

Work and Employee Relations in the call centre - Essay Example Employees working in call centres have to get used to the system which is highly monitored and constantly under surveillance by supervisors because of the computer technology integrated into telephone use. Notably, call centres exhibit certain characteristics of Fordist organization/ Taylorist organization. The article addresses the different theoretical perspectives governing call centres and goes further to describe a study carried out in a bid to establish the opinions of call centre employees regarding the type of organization and work related tasks. It emerges that, the employees face the pressure of conforming to the highly computerized inbound and outbound telephone services while bearing with the constant surveillance by the management. This is the reason why employees have been described as participating in emotional labour (Taylor and Bain 1999, p. 101). A Fordist system of organization denotes an organizational structure that relies on technology for increased productivity as well as ensuring the availability of a great market for the standardized products produced by the system. This means that employees rely on the use of technology to perform one task perfectly. Employees in a Fordist organization usually perform one task all year round and there is increased labour division within the organization. A superior level of hierarchical control does exist in Fordist organizations, ensuring that each worker in the production line focuses on an individual task. A clear example of a Fordist organization is the call centre described in the article. As the authors describe, a high level of productivity is evident because of the integration of VDU technologies and telephone services. Moreover, employees stick to production lines performing a single task while utilizing all the available technology to register specialized performance (Taylo r and Bain 1999, p. 102). The fact that a Fordist organization registers a high level of productivity and yields quality