Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

In all the recent talk about call centers, most of our focus has been on turnover within the industry, software applications that can improve productivity, self-service channels that help drive customer satisfaction while lightening the load on customer service agents, proper change management, and so on.

 

Considerable space and attention has been given to agents and their ability to experience frustration in their positions and how to ease or eliminate that frustration and encourage job satisfaction. It is not often, however, the focus turns to the physical health of the call center employee.

 

As the call center industry continues to grow in the Philippines, BAGUIO CITYRESEARCHERS of a Baguio hospital have begun investigations into medical problems that appear to be caused by call centers and other business process outsourcing (BPO) facilities operating at the Baguio City Economic Zone.  

 

According to Dr. Leopoldo Calimlim, chief of an industrial medicine facility at the Notre Dame Hospital, doctors have been treating 10 to 14 call center employees at the zone every day for various medical complaints. As a result, Danilo Reyes, president of the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) has commissioned a comprehensive medical investigation.

 

Reyes highlighted that these medical studies were essential as they would help the country’s business process outsourcing industry get information about potential health hazards at BPO work places. Reyes acknowledged that without people, there are no companies.

Several studies were conducted in the United States and several of these revealed and documented the illnesses affecting workers at Silicon Valley. As a result, local doctors examined call center employees for such ailments as gastroenteritis, insomnia, and peptic ulcers, which are prevalent among workers abroad, according to Calimlim.

Such studies have rarely been done on Filipino call centers, and even fewer are completed on workers assigned to work on different time zones. Most centers assign workers to the night shift when the majority of the work traffic occurs as most call centers have American clients. The US time zone is 12 hours behind Philippine time.

Calimlim acknowledged that Baguio doctors have been seeing more employees with weakened immune systems, which often led to serious ailments. Doctors need to be able to determine if the weakened immunity is caused by sleep deprivation, diet, or the conditions of the BPO facilities.

The initial probe into workers health is the result of former employees of a leading semiconductor firm at the Baguio City Economic Zone who have pointed to work conditions as the cause of their illnesses, including cancer. Researchers, however, have been unable to find any conclusive evident to link the workers suffering terminal illnesses to the firm’s equipment.

While not every ailment will be able to be connected to call center work, it is likely, based on similar studies in other countries, that certain conditions will be the result of call center work. After all, the work can be stressful and American customers can be hard to deal with, especially is they resent having to talk with a foreign agent.

 

Other research done on call centers in the Philippines, however has shown that working the night shift does not contribute to health problems. It could be a simple matter of whether or not a person is cut out for the stress associated with the position, no matter what time of day.

 

 

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.