Introduction

The work of making, recording and actioning conversation is sub-divided into discrete elements
and precise targets are set for each aspect of the job to which workers are held accountable (Bain
et al. 2002). As compared with non-call handling back office work, callcentre agents exert less
control over their jobs and consequently are subject to greater levels of work intensification and job
stress (Taylor et al. 2003). Additionally, although call-centre work is not dependent upon integrated
work teams for the fulfilment of assignments, teams are never the less constructed as a means of
spurring competition on among groups of workers. This leads to what has been referred to as the
presence of ‘teams without teamwork’ (van den Broek 2002; van den Broek et al. 2004) or ‘team
Taylorism’ (Bain and Taylor 2000; Baldry et al. 1998). A focus on mass processing will lead to
shorter job cycles and more intensive work processes; i.e. to greater Taylorization, while greater
attention to quality will promote longer call handling times and enhanced customer care. The
important point here, however, is that very few call centres can choose to ignore the costs
associated with the level of service that is provided (Houlihan 2000). This limits the potential
amount of variation in management control systems and the associated work patterns that are
possible.

Given that skill trends are a major preoccupation in this literature, it is odd that little outright
attention has been paid to this issue, although a valuable exception is provided by Ellis and
Taylor’s (2006) 20-year history of British Gas and its transition from traditional clerical work to a
call-centre operation. Subjecting work to the strictures of scientific management is often equated
with its deskilling, and such tendencies are certainly a sub-text to the Taylor–Bain analysis, inferred
from processes of job standardization and work intensification. Yet, as other research, which is
informed by the same paradigm cautions, the notion of skill takes on new meanings in the call
centre and, for this reason, authors ‘resist the use of the term deskilling in a call centre context’
(Thompson and Callaghan 2002, 148; Thompson et al. 2004). Again, this is an important issue for
defining what a call centre is as well as having important implications for a variety of HR functions,
including recruitment and selection and training and development. Further research that homes in
on the problem of skill would not be out of place. On this point Russell (2006) on the basis of
survey research conducted with customer service workers argues that callcentre work is the
information economy’s equivalent of semi-skilled labour, meaning that employment entails greater
skill than the blue-collar operator positions of the factory era, but cannot meaningfully be
considered knowledge work. Still as call-centre labour processes come to subsume more aspects
of service delivery, including professional services (Collin-Jacques 2004), this finding may be
subject to further revision.
Kinnie et al. (2000a) characterize the call centre as a paradoxical relationship between surveillance
and fun. In this context, deliberate efforts to create idiosyncratic cultures through participation in
managerially constructed games and other planned social activities are portrayed as attempts to
ameliorate the more oppressive aspects of the call-centre labour process. Previous work has
referred to the ‘manufactured sociability’ that characterizes the call centre (Russell 2002a), while
others (Townsend 2004; van den Broek 2002) have highlighted the important role that team
building exercises assume in this construction. Other research draws attention to the contradictions
between the elaborate lengths to which managers push recruitment and selection procedures, and
the nature of the jobs to be filled (Callaghan and Thompson 2002; Thompson et al. 2004).
Predictably, such care in hiring does little to stem dissatisfaction with the work and the higher than
average attrition rates that result, although acknowledgement of this raises the question – as yet
unsatisfactorily answered – as to why management instigates such intricate measures on the
cultural front.

Theories on the selection process

To take some salient points from the preceding research we might state that, in terms of the actual
nature of call centre work the applicants need to be probed to uncover evidence which is related to
the following:

 a competitive mindset would appear, from research to be more valuable than a high-
performing team player
 due to the high automation of call centre work the candidate will need to evidence a great
degree of attention to detail and process orientation
 due to the high level of attrition previously alluded to, a career history of continuous periods
of employment exceeding one year is required.

An initial comparison then, of the skills and abilities required in ABC to those revealed by in-depth
research would suggest that at least the quality of being prepared to “develop and improve your
skills” is not a key measure of potential success at the job in question. Returning to the research, it
can be proven that the kind of individual who would work well in a high-automation, low
responsibility environment is not the type who places significant value in professional development
and career advancement.

When call centres that use more advanced ICT have higher skill demands, it can be expected that
they will be more selective when hiring new workers, because those organizations that have to
train their agents face a large risk of losing these training investments when agents leave the firm.
The notoriously high turnover rates in this sector underscore the relevance of selective hiring.
Therefore, call centres with heavy training demands are likely to select employees who fit
the organization best, as these employees will stay longer in the firm. Selective hiring strategies
usually focus on workers’ competencies as well as behaviours and attitudes (Becker and Huselid
1999). In particular, systematic selection tests, such as psychometric tests and aptitude tests, may
help centres to hire agents who have the best match with the firm and the contents of their job
(Terpstra and Rozell 1993). Moreover, centres that have to invest in the training of their agents will
select the better-qualified employees from the existing labour pool available, because the
trainability of these employees is usually higher (Thurow 1975).

Traditionally, routine workers are identified through both formal and informal channels, but they are
mainly selected through one recruitment filter - the interview (Wiudolf, 1988). The training that has
then taken place is often perfunctory, focusing on achieving work targets, or learning from other
employees. Yet as we have seen that situation is changing. Il is increasingly recognized that there
has been a shift towards 'extra functional' skills to cope with new organizational requirements
(Flecker and Hofbauer, 1998), or as part of the growth of teamwork (Thompson and Wallace,
1996). Such trends have considerable significance for processes of skill and competence formation
and therefore for selection. As Crouch et al. {1999, p. 222) note, 'These changes lead employers to
seek in new recruits both a continuing ability to learn and what they usually call "social skills",
which might mean anything from ability to co-ordinate and secure co-operation, through ability to
communicate effectively, to simple willingness to obey orders.' Call centres and service work more
generally is at the forefront of such shifts. However, as we have indicated, there are few critical
studies of the role of recruitment and training in identifying and shaping such abilities. The
perceived centrality of social skills and competencies should lead management at ABC to use
rigorous selection and training procedures more usually associated with high discretion jobs. This
trend is confirmed in the call centre case studies of Belt et al. (2000), who also highlight the
gendered basis of some managerial constructions of social skill. Our emphasis is not on the
effectiveness of particular policies and techniques. Rather, that in the absence of traditional
indicators such as labour market institutions, qualifications and formal skill hierarchies, recruitment
and training processes are a useful window into the actual dynamics of work relations in an
industry segment where the formation of competencies takes place 'in-house'. Or as Arzbabacher
et al. (2000, p. 17) put it,

'. . . call centre work requires particular skills and competencies for which the demographic
characteristics of their prospective workforce are not sufficiently predictive. Thus,
sophisticated recruitment procedures have been established”
 Recommendations for ABC's recruitment
ABC's selective hiring should be defined by averaging two measures: the use of systematic
selection tests, such as psychometric tests or aptitude tests, and the percentage of applicants
actually hired. Of course, training and selective hiring are not influenced by ICT only, but also by
many other job, firm, and worker characteristics (Bishop 1997). We should therefore control for a
number of characteristics that prior research has shown to be relevant for explaining training:
ABC's firm size, the age of the establishment, being part of a larger organization, in-house
call centre or subcontractor, dealing with inbound calls or outbound calls, sector of industry, and
primary customer segment.

ABC recruitment processes therefore should involve various stages, incorporating group exercises
and role-plays. The three-stage recruitment process should initially screen via telephone interviews
involving broad questions related to previous work experience. Those who display good telephone
communication skills will then progress to a second interview involving group exercises, role-plays
and simulations. Multi-tasking exercises could, for example, require applicants sitting back to back
to construct “Lego” models relying on verbal communication. Simulations might also require groups
of recruits using limited equipment to find their way out of a plane crash site area with limited aids
and within given time limits (Interview Employees 1995, 1996; Team Leader 1995). During these
exercises, communication skills, skills of persuasion, corporate and team commitment should be
closely observed and assessed by managerial staff. At the conclusion of the exercises, peer
assessments might require each group to identify ten people they would most like to, and ten they
would least like to work with. Candidates who perform well in these activities will then attend a final
interview with more technical exercises.

However the task of “aligning” employee’s personal values with the values of ABC should also be
integral to the recruitment program. Ethical standards, teamwork and customer service espoused
in ABC’s corporate values should reflect heavily in a lengthy recruitment process designed to
identify employees best suited to the organization. The interview process, based on values-based
exercises described above, should be designed to assess whether recruits can demonstrate…that
hey can live the ABC values Both management and customer service representatives need to be
explicit about the role of behavioural assessments. During interviews, management would be
required to emphasise various word cues which might provide a window into the minds of
applicants. Expressions such as “win/win situation,” “team approach,” “loyalty” and “empowerment”
are ways in which ABC could emphasise a unique style of employee relations and their
differentiation from other corporate environments perceived to be rigid.

ABC's selection process needs to be thorough: a job and person specification should be designed;
appropriate recruitment channels selected; application forms collected and analysed; telephone
interviews given; role plays assessed; two person structured interviews undertaken; references
and credit checks collected and, finally, job offers made. ABC's management require a particular
mix of skills. This is less based on technical abilities (such as keyboard skills), but also social
competencies that are more difficult to identify, yet crucial to ABC's labour process. This section
investigates how the recruitment process is used to assess such social and technical
characteristics and competencies.
As mentioned ABC's recruitment process should be designed to assess applicants in three areas:
personality traits; communication (especially verbal) skills; and, with less emphasis, technical skills.
There is some overlap between personality and communication skills, most obviously between
energy and enthusiasm, but it was the differences, which exist, make separate clusters
conceptually useful. The following section identifies what management should be looking for in
more detail and describes the mechanisms for operationalizing their objectives.

On technical skill, ABC managers should look for keyboard skills, basic numeracy and the ability to
move around a system. The application form will assess the first two through questions on
previous experience and education while the third, is measured through role playing. In these the
candidate could be a call centre agent who has to navigate through a paper system containing
information on, for example, holiday destinations, flight times and prices in order to answer a call
and complete enquiry and booking forms. Testing for such technical skills, however, forms only a
small part of the selection process. More time and thought should put into assessing social
characteristics and competencies.

Conclusion

Personality needs to be given priority in ABC's recruitment process. To manage good customer
service requires a positive attitude and, importantly, this cannot be taught, it is part of someone's
personality. Product and systems knowledge are pre-requisites for the job; personality and
communication skills the crucial differentiating qualities. But it is not enough to simply possess
'personality', agents must know how to communicate this personality. Communication
competencies include verbal tone, pitch, fluency and energy and enthusiasm. ABC recruiters
should assess how the vocal qualities of tone, pitch and warmth combine with energy and
enthusiasm to produce fluency and rapport.

What managers need to do is evaluate candidates on the extent to which they have internalized
managerial service norms, who have the potential to consciously manipulate their individual
characteristics and competencies in order to produce convincing customer service. Candidates
need to be able to 'make' conversations and 'build' rapport, to adapt and change depending on the
type of conversation. agents must be able to act, to manage and regulate their feelings. In
comparing managerial and employee perceptions, we might want to ask ABC managers the
question, 'what kind of skills do you think are necessary to do this job?' We would likely find
patience, tolerance, level-headedness, sense of humour, listening, flexibility and emotional self-
management. We would hope that Interviews with potential agents therefore reveal some
continuity with management on perceptions of skill requirements. In particular, there should be
common ground that social rather than technical competencies and knowledge are primary.

Finally, the training in products and systems should be complemented by training in

communication. Indeed, given the limited role of technical expertise and procedural knowledge, the
emphasis is firmly on training in social competencies. could split this into two parts: managing a
conversation (techniques of conversational control) and managing yourself (control over one's
energy and enthusiasm). Together these will begin to give trainees an awareness and influence
over the regulation and management of feelings categorized as acting. They should be taught two
techniques to control conversation: the conversation cycle and the eight elements of conversation.
These are exchanging ideas, using the first person, stating intention, giving attention, duplication,
understanding, acknowledgement and providing conversational space. The agents will then be
trained to use one or both of these to guide the conversation. The need for conscious awareness is
also apparent here - to use these conversational control tools successfully agents need continual
concentration. The relevance of emotional labour and managing feelings in service sector work has
been confirmed by other researchers, including work into hospice nurses (James, 1989), the role of
sexuality in off-course betting shops (Filby, 1992) and Ogbonna and Wilkinson's (1990) work on
customer service in supermarkets. It has also surfaced in passing in some of the better known
studies of call centres (Taylor and Bain, 1998), and in more detail in Steve Taylor's research into a
telephone sales operation of a British airline. He comments that, '. . . service sector employers are
increasingly demanding that employees deep act actively work on and change their feeling to
match the display required by the labour process . . .' (Taylor, 1998, p. 98).
One problem of much of the adaptation of Hoehsehild is that her somewhat one-dimensional
concept has not been significantly extended. That task has been undertaken by Bolton (2000) who
has categorized emotions in work in a manner that distinguishes different ways in which they are
managed. The most important distinction for our purposes is between a pecuniary category (the
sole focus of Hochschild), whereby emotions are managed for commercial gain; and a
philanthropic dimension in which emotions are managed as a 'gift'. The tensions between them (as
well as between other categories that are not relevant here) makes emotions as well as the
conventional 'effort bargain' (where labour power is transformed into profitable labour), a contested
terrain between workers and managers. It also means that far from being passive providers of
emotional labour, employees are skilled emotion managers in their own right. The use of a
qualitative case of the approach could allowed ABC to take these insights and add their
understanding of both call centre work and emotional labour. This could be done by tracking the
tensions emerging from recruitment, selection and training, and analysing the 'negotiation' between
workers and managers over the utilization of emotions in service delivery.
 References

ARZBABACHER, S., HOLTRGEWE, U and KERST, C. (2000). 'Call Centres: Constructing

Flexibility'. Paper for the Workshop 'Are Regimented Forms of Work Organization Inevitable? Call
Centres and the Change of Innovative Work Organization of Service Work in Europe'. University of
Duisberg, December.

BATT, R. (1999). 'Work organization, technology and performance in customer service and sales'.
Industrial and Labour Relations Review, 52, 4, 539 64.

BECKER, M. C. (2000). 'The Constitution of Competence-e in a Call Centre: An Empirical

Contribution of a Theory of Competences'. Unpublished Paper, Judge Institute of Management,
Cambridge University.

DACHLER, H. P (1989). 'Selection and the organizational context'. In Herriot, P (Ed.), Selection
and the Organizational (Context. Handbook of Assessment in Organizations. Chichester:

DACHLER, H. P. (1994). 'A Social-relational Perspective on Selection'. Paper presented at

the 23rd International Congress of Applied Psychology, Madrid.
© Blackwell Publishers Lid

FERNIK, S. and METCALK, D. (1997). (vol.) Hanging on the Telephone: Payment Systems in the
New Sweatshop.^. London: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics.

FILBY, M. (1992). 'The figures, the personality and the bums: service work and sexuality\ IVhrk,
Employ men I and Society, 6, I, 23-42.

FiNEMAN, S. (1993). Emotion in Organizations. London: Sage.

FLECKER, J. and HOFBAUER, J. (1998). 'Capitalising on subjectivity: the "new model worker" and
the importance of being useful'. In Thompson, F and Waihurst, C. (Eds). Workplaces of the Future.
London: Macmillan.

FREMKEL, S., KORCZYNSKI, M . , SHIRE, K. and TAM, M. (1998). 'Beyond bureaucracy? Work
organization in call centres". The International I Journal of Human Resource Management 9 6 957
79.

FULLER, L . a n d SMITH, V (1991). 'Consumers' reports: management by customers in a

changing economy'. Work,
Employment and Society, 5, 1, 1-16,

HALES, C . (1999). 'Embellishing Empowerment: Ideologies of Management, Managerial

Ideologies and the Rhetoric and Reality of Empowerment Programmes'. Paper for the 18th
International I^labour Process Conference, Royal Holloway, March.

HOCHSCHILD, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: The Commercialisation of Human Feeling.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

HocHSCHiLD, A. R. (1993). 'Preface'. In Fineman, S. (Ed.), Emotion in Organizations. Iondon:

Sage, ix-xiii.

LEIDNER, R . (1993). Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
MACDONALD, C . L. and SIRIANNI, C . (Eds) (1996). Working in the Service Society.
Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.

MORRIS, J. A. and FELDMAN, D C . (1997). 'Managing emotions in the workplace'. Journal of

Managerial Science, 9, 3, 257-74.

REDMAN, T. and MATHF.WS, B. P (1998), 'Service quality and human resource management: a
review and research agenda'. Personnel Review, 27, 1, bl-11.

RICHARDSON, R. and MARSHALL, J. N. (1996). 'The growth of telephone call centres in

peripheral areas of Britain: evidence from Tyne and Wear'. Area, 28, 3, 308-17.

SCHNEIDER, B. (1980). 'The service organization: climate is crucial'. Organizational Dynamics, 7,

52-65.

TAYLOR, S, (1998). 'Emotional labour and the new workplace'. In Thompson, P and Warhurst, C.
(Eds), Workplaces of the Future. London: Macmillan, 84 103.

TAYLOR, P and BAIN, P (1998). 'An assembly line in the head: the call centre labour process'.
Industrial Relations Journal, 30, 2, 101-17.

THOMPSON, P. (1989), The Mature of Work: An Introduction to Debates on the labour h- London:
Macmillan.

IHOMPSON, P and WALI-ACE, T. (1996). 'Redesigning production through teamworking'.

International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Special Issue on Lean
Production and Work Organization, 16, 2, 103 18.