‘Bear With Me ... .’ —The Problems of Health and Well-being in Call Center Work

Abstract The call or contact center is now the accepted organizational vehicle for the delivery of virtually all personal services from airline ticketing, through theater or holiday booking to insurance and banking and the public sector. The high level of integration of information and communications technologies has made the customer contact center a ‘unique working environment’ (HELA 1999) which in the UK by the end of 2003 had become the workplace of 790,000 employees, according to the DTI (Incomes Data Services 2005). Envisaging further growth, the call/contact sector is expected to grow to over 1 million employees by 2007. Walk around a call center and at flrst glance it would seem to the casual observer to be the epitome of the modern workplace: no dangerous machinery, few overtly toxic materials, carpets on the floor, maybe potted plants. Yet absence and turnover flgures for call centers in the UK remain at signiflcantly high levels and by 1999 the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had commissioned a research program speciflcally to look at ‘the potential physical and psychological health risks associated with the working practices employed’ in call centers, subsequently issuing a set of guidelines for employers in the public sector (HSE/HELA 2001).