[Australia] Centrelink staff claim minute-to-minute monitoring includes toilet breaks

[Australia] Centrelink staff claim minute-to-minute monitoring includes toilet breaks
02 Feb 2024

Centrelink call centre staff in Australia have claimed that they are being monitored minute by minute - down to the length of their toilet breaks - as part of a management-led crackdown to improve doubled call wait times, The Guardian reports.

Affected staff members spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity - in fear of losing their jobs - to claim that management systems, which help team leaders capture call time figures and monitor staff activities, operated more like a surveillance system, describing them as “intrusive and stressful”.

Call time statistics, reportedly revealed in Senate estimates in October, revealed that the average time it took for Centrelink staff to answer calls had jumped to 32 minutes over July and August 2023, compared with 18 minutes for the same period in 2022.

Congestion messages - with calls answered by an automated voice, informing callers about available online services and then hanging up - climbed to 2.8m across July and August 2023, from 1.7m during the same months the previous year.

As a result, staff working in Centrelink smart centres are facing management pressure to push customers to online services, resolve queries fast and strictly adhere to five-minute stretch and toilet breaks, two sources reportedly claimed.

Call centre workers’ daily activities are managed through a system centred on “auxiliary codes”. When staff need to stop taking calls - for a meeting or a break - they manually change their work status by changing the code, which is centrally monitored in real-time by a team leader.

If staff take a five-minute screen break or a 15-minute tea break, for example, they are supposed to switch to the corresponding code and change it back before the allocated break time ends.

Workers failing to change the code within that time limit are reportedly flagged in the system as “non-adherent”. The seconds and minutes while a staff member is flagged as “non-adherent” are referred to internally as customer lost time.

Staff have claimed individuals who accumulate customer lost time minutes - as few as 30 minutes over one month, or an average of 90 seconds per working day - receive warnings and performance management.

The Community and Public Service Union reportedly said it was concerned about reports that leaderboards disclosing the “worst” performers on customer lost time were being internally distributed.

Melissa Donnelly - the union’s national secretary - said Centrelink’s leaders should prioritise staff wellbeing to prevent the “unacceptably high” turnover.

“There is a deeply entrenched cultural problem in Services Australia and this customer lost time issue is just another manifestation of it,” she said.

“Rather than treat staff and clients as human beings with distinct and different needs, senior management’s default setting is to monitor and micromanage. It’s a continuation of the culture that led to the robodebt catastrophe.

“Staff turnover at Services Australia is unacceptably high and, with offensive and counterproductive workplace practices like this, it’s not hard to see why.”

In November, Services Australia revealed that it was losing between 140 and 180 workers every month. Deputy chief executive, Jarrod Howard, reportedly claimed this was “broadly comparable to the rate of attrition across the Australian jobs market at this point in time”.

Services Australia was 96th out of 100 federal public service agencies in the latest Australian Public Service census results. Of the nearly 27,000 workers who participated in the census, 53 per cent believed the agency cared about their health and wellbeing. However, 33 per cent of respondents stated that they wanted to leave their role as soon as possible or within the next 12 months.

In October 2023, Shorten reportedly announced that 3,000 new staff would be hired at the majority of allocated Centrelink call centres to address the sharp rise in call wait times. In mid-January Shorten confirmed that the last of those staff had been hired and were undertaking training.


Source: The Guardian

(Links and quotes via original reporting)

Centrelink call centre staff in Australia have claimed that they are being monitored minute by minute - down to the length of their toilet breaks - as part of a management-led crackdown to improve doubled call wait times, The Guardian reports.

Affected staff members spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity - in fear of losing their jobs - to claim that management systems, which help team leaders capture call time figures and monitor staff activities, operated more like a surveillance system, describing them as “intrusive and stressful”.

Call time statistics, reportedly revealed in Senate estimates in October, revealed that the average time it took for Centrelink staff to answer calls had jumped to 32 minutes over July and August 2023, compared with 18 minutes for the same period in 2022.

Congestion messages - with calls answered by an automated voice, informing callers about available online services and then hanging up - climbed to 2.8m across July and August 2023, from 1.7m during the same months the previous year.

As a result, staff working in Centrelink smart centres are facing management pressure to push customers to online services, resolve queries fast and strictly adhere to five-minute stretch and toilet breaks, two sources reportedly claimed.

Call centre workers’ daily activities are managed through a system centred on “auxiliary codes”. When staff need to stop taking calls - for a meeting or a break - they manually change their work status by changing the code, which is centrally monitored in real-time by a team leader.

If staff take a five-minute screen break or a 15-minute tea break, for example, they are supposed to switch to the corresponding code and change it back before the allocated break time ends.

Workers failing to change the code within that time limit are reportedly flagged in the system as “non-adherent”. The seconds and minutes while a staff member is flagged as “non-adherent” are referred to internally as customer lost time.

Staff have claimed individuals who accumulate customer lost time minutes - as few as 30 minutes over one month, or an average of 90 seconds per working day - receive warnings and performance management.

The Community and Public Service Union reportedly said it was concerned about reports that leaderboards disclosing the “worst” performers on customer lost time were being internally distributed.

Melissa Donnelly - the union’s national secretary - said Centrelink’s leaders should prioritise staff wellbeing to prevent the “unacceptably high” turnover.

“There is a deeply entrenched cultural problem in Services Australia and this customer lost time issue is just another manifestation of it,” she said.

“Rather than treat staff and clients as human beings with distinct and different needs, senior management’s default setting is to monitor and micromanage. It’s a continuation of the culture that led to the robodebt catastrophe.

“Staff turnover at Services Australia is unacceptably high and, with offensive and counterproductive workplace practices like this, it’s not hard to see why.”

In November, Services Australia revealed that it was losing between 140 and 180 workers every month. Deputy chief executive, Jarrod Howard, reportedly claimed this was “broadly comparable to the rate of attrition across the Australian jobs market at this point in time”.

Services Australia was 96th out of 100 federal public service agencies in the latest Australian Public Service census results. Of the nearly 27,000 workers who participated in the census, 53 per cent believed the agency cared about their health and wellbeing. However, 33 per cent of respondents stated that they wanted to leave their role as soon as possible or within the next 12 months.

In October 2023, Shorten reportedly announced that 3,000 new staff would be hired at the majority of allocated Centrelink call centres to address the sharp rise in call wait times. In mid-January Shorten confirmed that the last of those staff had been hired and were undertaking training.


Source: The Guardian

(Links and quotes via original reporting)

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