Having difficulties in a call centre 3.5 years into the job

I would again suggest getting Access to Work involved - they may be able to provide some additional ideas about Reasonable Adjustments to make the situation work. You mention that a GP has made suggestions - is this through OH or is it your own GP?

It seems to me that you are trying perhaps to cram too much into one life! Work-life balance has to be re-examined when kids come along. You are actually describing a work-life-play situation and that your "need" to see friends is actually a "want" to escape from the pressures in the other sections of your life. It all sounds very stressful and perhaps it is time to step back and think afresh about what your priorities are. Lots of people have to give things up when kids arrive until they are grown enough to require less of your time.

I have deliberately left things for a while to see what other thoughts come up and to give me time to properly reflect, so I am grateful to the contributors here.

I'll try to summarise a few things.

First 2 1/2 years in the job I was dealing with personal (non-affluent) customers, dealing with general banking queries, but no complaints. Measured to an AHT of 329 seconds.

This last year I have moved to work with customers who are more affluent. This brings a different set of challenges. Initially the job wasn't targeted on AHT, then AHT was introduced for 600 seconds in July 15, 580 in August 15, 530 September 15 onwards then the role changed where I was dealing with a mix of affluent and non-affluent customers and the target was reduced to 450. I also deal with complaints, credit card queries, ISA's, have to give information on interest rates and product information, responsible for any callbacks, any failed security we have to call the customer back ourselves, we have to leave duplicated notes on different systems where in previous role we never had to leave notes except for certain processes.

So the job itself has changed considerably. The position I'm in now is that our target is still 450 but the call blend has been taken away meaning I am dealing with just affluent customers, but our target of 450 has not been increased back to 530! I have challenged this and been told in no uncertain terms that it is not my place to question the targets and that I am to do whatever I can to deliver them. When I passed my call targets it was where we had the mix of calls and even then I just scraped past the post. Now I am completely lost.

Also having difficulty as the job is meant to be rotating hours betwee 7am and 9pm. I gave this a try and of course still am but I really struggle mentally on the later shifts for a few reasons:-

1) Having Sleep Apnoea as well I am tired and cannot stay awake from 6am all the way to 9pm, I am tired by about 6pm. I fall asleep easily on public transport so I rely on lifts from my wife or mom-in-law, or I have to use taxis.

2) The routine has been completely taken away. There are weeks where I don't get a life-work balance as my friends who are musicians I won't see for that whole week, and it isn't enough for me to just play drums on my own. I need to interact with friends and can't, which leads me to get depressed.

3) Being awake with the kids early and then having to do a long shift causes me a great deal of stress. I have sensory issues and do struggle with the noise and constant running around at times, it is too much to process. My point here is say if I am on a 1pm-9pm shift, I have had 7 hours where my head is just in completely the wrong place and then I am mentally and physically exhausted at work, causing my performance to suffer.

Now since I have returned to business from paternity leave (end of March) work have been good to me in putting a flexible hours request through but this only covers me until August then I will go back to the stressful hours again. A GP has recommended the change be made permanent as my conditions are permanent but they wont do it because of apparent business costs in doing so. I havent decided if I'll appeal yet as I dont want to lose my job if I do.

I'm just struggling mentally so much at the minute and wish I could go back to my old role. :'(

Let's keep strolling :-)

It is Adel's whole team that is subject to the changes that have, perhaps, crept in over this period. Gradually ratcheting up the demands might be a way of avoiding the proper processes of consultation? I wouldn't think that an employer could avoid their responsibilities by drip feeding small changes that culminate in an individual cracking under the strain. An employee can, I think, claim (or propose) that a redundancy situation exists and an employer might chose to accept that that is what has happened.

I agree that the wording of the website was ambiguous but I read it that the problematic clause referred to the previous section rather than the subsequent one.

I have just quit an organisation that was transferring staff from adviser roles to non-advised - I don't work on the call centre floor though so I wasn't directly involved in that but was aware that the distinction existed. Modern call centres do seem to ratchet up the stress until people crack - we were being crammed into smaller and smaller desks with less ability to maintain any personal space. The intangible elements of the working environment are important to people with autism but they are also hard to measure and define what is reasonable and what is unacceptable.

Indieman,

On the central 'fact' that we are arguing about, can you tell me why the second of the following bullet points does not apply in Adel's case?

www.tssa.org.uk/.../redundancy--a-legal-definition.cfm

A redundancy therefore applies where the workforce is reorganised and there is:

• less work, and/or;
• changes in conditions that result in the new job being quite different from the old one, and/or;
• work put out to contract by the employer – in which case there may be a TUPE transfer.

To be clear, I am not stating that she would be guaranteed to successfully claim redundancy but I think that it is still worth considering if the other remedies like getting AtW or OH involved come to nothing.

I am grateful for your clarification on the difference between what has to be shown on references - I was under the impression that performance issues could be recorded in some situations. Also, I was under the impression that customer facing staff could fall under the FCA rules if they were advising customers rather than simply servicing requests.

I think we are adding to Adel's knowledge with this, there is more to this than meets the eye and I think we can nudge the thread into discussion and away from an argument if we put our minds to it.

I don't want to argue and I try and avoid telling people that they are wrong as this is irritating and will just lead to a fight. It is normal, on this forum for people to take categorical black and white stances and also it is also normal for there to be some pedantic nit-picking and perhaps condescending behaviour and less than diplomatic approaches to questions. I'm sorry if my approach is irritating - I'm sure it is! My heart is in the right place and Indieman's heart is also, but we all suffer from autism and that explains a good deal of this bluntness and our tendency to pick a fight!

Indieman, you keep making statements as if

a) we were in possession of all of the facts

b) the law worked neatly in a black and white way

I'm afraid that I am aware that I don't think we know all there is to know about Adel's case, I don't think we know what has really changed in the 3.5 years since she(?) started this job.

The legal system pays people to work out what justice is in individual cases. They will look for anything that makes this case different to cases that you may have come across previously. In this case it is clear that things have changed since the job was taken. Perhaps standards have changed, perhaps Adel's performance has changed, perhaps the manager has been replaced, perhaps there is more pressure on performce from higher up. There are lots of possibilities and there are opportunites to make a case for Adel that uses this information that we don't have.

A union rep should be able to provide safe advice and I think you are absolutely right to urge caution about admitting that Adel is unable to do the job. Any rep should then refer up to the full time officials that are paid to help individuals in their individual circumstances. Unions have a major role in defending individuals like Adel but the system only works if the right people are in possession of all of the facts. It seems to me that there is a danger that your categorical advice might close off avenues that should be left open for experts to explore.

Financial firms have different obligations to most other firms in requiring firms to check their staff in greater detail when taking up references. I'm not an expert in this but a brief search turns up www.handbook.fca.org.uk/.../15.html which lays out particular guidance that might apply to this individual. References have to based on facts - but a manager's opinion about an individual's performance may not be considered a fact, it may just be an opinion, and banks' HR departments are keenly aware of this distinction. One important fact in a case such as this might be whether a competence procedure is actually underway and whether a person has been issued with a personal development plan.

I am aware that neither of us are lawyers and that there are limits to what we know. My experience suggests that there are more options available to management to make a job work or to gracefully allow people to find positions that suit them better without resorting to the procedural competence and behaviour routes that are common in call centres nowadays.

Financial services firms operate under different regulations to other firms and the requirements to provide references that reflect the facts are strict. However, I am confident that even a bank will avoid a dismissal that could be contested at a tribunal unless they are very confident of their case. I am confident that even banks enter into no-fault "Compromise Agreements" as the need arises.

A redundancy situation can arise when the needs of the firm change over time and an employee, who was providing satisfactory service, can argue that it is the company's change in practices and standards that have caused the shortfall in performance.

I don't think Indieman can really make a judgement on the possibility of redundancy. We don't know what has changed over the period of 3.5 years - has the job changed or has his performance declined? If the job has become more complex then this would be redundancy. If Adel's performance has deteriorated then that would be competency. Also, the bank may prefer to call it redundancy rather than risk an argument at a tribunal with someone who has statutory protection under the Equality Act.

In any case, a call to Access to Work and/or Occupational health should be the next move in my opinion.

Hello there, going to reply as best as I can but thank you for your response 'recombinantsocks'.

I will get advice from a union, I have always been anti-unionist but I think they are the only ones who can really bat my side, and I doubt bankers are going to strike any time soon...

The standard target for people is 450. They said I can have an extra 50 seconds on top of that for call handling/after call work. I was sat in a certain spot dealing with a certain call stream and I was meeting my objectives just about. However the call streams have been more complex over tax year, but the target has not increased. Not many people are meeting the targets at all, but I am a lot further away than anybody else.

My argument with regards to AHT is quite simple. We are measured on a number of things, such as Risk/Ownership/Customer Service/Process failures/Request capture/Request Accuracy/Complaints/Notes left on accounts/Contact details checked & updated each call/Referrals/Adherence to schedule. Most of the time I have hit all of these objectives without difficulty. I had a few changes which have made work harder and I am finding it difficult to eperate home/personal life from work, it does sometimes cause a distraction but I am coping better with that, but if I am hitting every other target why can't they leave me alone regarding AHT?

I give good service, do things right first time, I save the company money by being perfect in my quality and never has a customer had fraud on their account due to my negligence. We have tons of processes we are checked against, we have certain scripts to read and if my routine is interrupted or the customer starts being funny in their tone it puts me off a little bit. Sometimes I do over explain things and I can go around the houses when saying things. I dont think it is fair for a manager to say to me 'you need to find a way to stop doing this, your call times need to come down'. I also dont think its fair every time my head gets a little bit cloudy and I dont understand why I just feel nothing, that I should be phoning a counselling service. If I dont know whats wrong and I am not upset, but just dont feel 100% concentrated it is very hard to perform the job at the same capacity as a neuro-typical type who just doesnt have that issue affect them as severely because it balances out other days where they can work much faster than me.

From a sensory point of view I cope okay on the phone now that I am not located in the middle of the office. I am 5 metres away from the nearest person as I sit in a bay of desks reserved for the night team. My problem before was that I could hear specific conversations and that impacted my own conversations, but now I just hear general background noise which isn't an issue for me.

Firstly, I am not a lawyer so you may want to seek formal advice from CAB or a union in addition to the opinions I and others will give here.

Change is difficult for someone with autism and it is reasonable to ask for special consideration when changes are being made by management.

How have they changed the targets? Were you meeting the targets before the changes were made?

As a next step I think you could call Access to Work www.gov.uk/.../overview This is a scheme that tries to keep people in jobs or get people into work. They should arrange a formal workplace assessment by someone with experience of all of the reasonable adjustments that could be made for you in your situation. I have found them very helpful and easy to deal with on the phone and they have sent out workplace assessors who seem to know what they are doing. Explain you situation - your diagnosis and the problems you are having and they may well come to your aid. Your employer needs to agree to this but a bank will know that they have no choice and they aren't likely to argue.

Have you tried noise cancelling headphones or headphones with extra noise isolation? This is an example of a reasonable adjustment because the cost of these is relatively small.

If your job can be adjusted in some way then this would be good. I would however point out that reasonable adjustments are not unlimited and if your productivity is not satisfactory then you may possibly be in an unsuitable job. What call handling time do your non-disabled colleagues manage? My understanding (you may want to check this) is that it is not discrimination if all possible reasonable adjustments have been made and they are only expecting the same minimum performance standards as everyone else.

If the job requirements have changed (and everyone else is meeting those new standards) and you were meeting standards previously but the new standards are not achievable for you then you would be eligible for redundancy in my opinion.

Your stress levels are determined by a number of things. The job may or may not be suitable (it is not clear that this is a great job for someone with communication problems). your boss may or may not be a great leader - I have found very few of these in my career! Most managers are very average and very human. Your family life is your business and it is not your employers problem if your decision to have three children has impacted other areas of your life.

I'm sorry if this is not all completely supportive but sometimes a reality check and a cold hard look at the situation is called for. I've just done this for my last job and decided that I was a square peg in a round hole and I am moving on as a result.