Can someone please help advice for my boyfriend

[Jen151]

Hiya

 

Apologies for the long post! if you know anything about unfair treatment in the workplace and have a minute to read it i'd really appreciate your advice

 

my boyfriend is in a bad situation at work and i've been searching the internet trying to find some information cos we really dont know where he stands in all this. this forum looks like a good place hoping to get a bit of help here

 

basically he is being unfairly treated at work. He works in a call centre for a large company, and his pay and performane reviews are based on targets and stats. He's always claimed he's a good worker but barely scraped through on his targets. He has said for some time now that he gets a lot more calls than his co-workers. Last week it was really getting to him so he asked his line manager to look at stats across the call centre. It turns out that he was being targeted very differently to a lot of people doing the exact same job as him.

 

So say for example, last week he converted 30 calls to direct debit but his target for that week was 300. While his co-worker converted 28 calls but their target was 60. So his co-worker exceeds their target and wins a bonus and praise, while my bf is pulled up for doing less of a percentage, even though he converted more calls than his co-worker!

 

They are in the exact same position, same hours etc. The difference between himself and others was huge. He is expected to work five times as hard as some others in his office just to get the same basic pay as them.

 

He saw the figures in black and white and says he's finding it hard just to go into work knowing he's expected to work so much harder than some others, and he's been thinking of signing off with stress. He feels this has held him back in the 3 years he's been in his job, and he's lost out on better bonuses and pay rises as a result. While some not working as hard as him have excelled and their pay will be higher than him now, even thought they have effectively done less work.

 

The managers are trying to fob him off. He suspects some of them and their staff have been fiddling their figures, while he has been putting in truthful figures. He suspects those managers haven't bothered by this because its painting them in a good light.

 

At first his own line manager was right behind him, but now she's done a u-turn and is trying to fob him off too. He has asked a few times for a copy of the stats across the year but they are not giving them to him

 

We dont know where he legally stands in all this. Is this legal for an employer to ask for such different targets from employees in the exact same job and same pay?

 

Any advice would be really appreciated i'm worried about him and feel a bit powerless against such a big company.

 

xxx

Edited November 6, 2009 by Jen151

[cynic09]

Discrimination and bullying are unlawful, proving it can be quite a different matter however. Your hardly likely to get any of those doing less work to testify at a tribunal.

Get hold of the figs and raise a formal grievance using the company grievance procedure should be his first step

[cazzaswfc]

It can happen that advisors in call centres have different targets however this needs to be clear and transparent ( as well as the reason why)

 

for example ( this is how it was for me at my previous call centre)

 

Different paybands, when you started there you had x target, you continually hit it you got a pay rise but were then expected to hit a higher target - if you were at the top level your target could be twice as high as the person sat next to you however you were already getting a higher basic salary.

 

Different products - it was an insurance company covering a range of products, if you were skilled in all products your target could be very different to someone who was only targetted in one ( if you were multi skilled you were expected to upsell and cross-sell - as this took more time you didn't have to answer as many calls or take as many cash payments etc)

 

has he asked why he's targeted differently - I would advise this to be done via email directly to his line manager ( conversations don't happen in call centres unless they are documented)

 

Is he in a union?

 

Does he have monthly 1-1's or appraisels?

[Jen151]

hiya thanks for the replies

 

yep he's just joined the union so thats good there's someone on his side. thats a great idea about asking exactly why he's targeted like that via email. as far as i know everythings just been conversational so far, and they've not let him keep any figures he's just had to remember them

 

the work has suggested going to see the office stress counsellor... someone who basically tells you to breath deeply and stuff like that! bf has made an appointment to play them at their own game incase they try and say we offered help and you didnt take it up

 

yep he has quarterly appraisals, every three months, how come? x

[teaboy2]

you need to get the employer to clarify in writing why your boyfriends targets are lot higher than others. we can then go from there as to decide weather hes being unfairly treated or not. But from what you have said so far and if everyone else is doing the same job as him, then you could have a case. but we need clarification from the employers first. Also get written confirmation of the targets your boyfriend is expected to reach and that of what others are expected to reach too if possible.

[cazzaswfc]

hiya thanks for the replies

 

 

yep he has quarterly appraisals, every three months, how come? x

 

Does he keep copies of these?

 

On 1-1's and appraisels it should include details of performance, development areas and possibly targets.

 

he needs to clarify the following

 

Targets

Why his target is different ( if it is, is there a reason for this)

Performance against targets

 

 

When you say he;s being offered help but declined - what type of help.

 

has he made his line manager aware that he is suffering from work related stress?

[Jen151]

hiya, yes he does keep copies of his 1-2-1's... and the type of help that he declined was the office stress councillor. though he now has an appt for that

 

ok i just went over it all with my bf... and its complicated! seems i explained it a bit wrong. the problem is not that his target is higher. it is that to achieve his target he has to work five times as hard as some other agents - because of the amount of calls he is allocated. so really the problem is that he gets given much more calls than some other agents. he's given me some figures as examples, i am a bit of a figures dunce but this may make sense to you

 

so, everybody's target is to convert 15% of possible DD calls to DD

 

example... bf gets 1077 calls in a month

colleague gets 641 calls that same month

 

this leads to bf having far more 'opportunities' to convert

381 of bf's are potential DD conversions

47 of colleagues are potential DD conversions

 

this means to make target bf has to do 58 conversions in a month

colleague only has to do 7 conversions

 

so for 40% more calls, he has to do 800% more DD conversions

 

he says that his phone never stops ringing, as soon as he hangs up on one call there is another. while his colleagues sit sometimes waiting on the next call, that never happens to him, its one after the other bang bang bang

 

dont know if this changes things with regards to unfair treatment?

 

also, the bosses seem to be taking a new attitude atm... telling him to keep his chin up, they're investigating the system etc. being more positive towards him. we're not sure if this is just talk as nothing in writing

 

anyway hope that made sense! thanks again for your time in this - its much appreciated

[cynic09]

Sounds more like a hardware problem than an employment issue??????

[minmac]

Just reading your post I was in a similar situation once when I worked in a call centre of a global 'giant'.

 

I was taking far more calls than anyone else, as soon as I noticed how bad it was I complained to my team manager. She told me I was imaging it. This went on for days and days. My team were taking 100 odd calls a day each person and I was taking 300 a day roughly. My line manager refused to believe me and I complained to her everyday.

 

Eventually I had enough, switched my phone off marched to the call centres manager (which was quite intimidating , I had never spoke to him before) burst in his office and told him what was going on. He called my team manager in who told him I was imaginging it and then had the cheek to say I am finding the job difficult!! i begged him to check the call data while we were all there and he caved and checked it

 

 

And there it was right there on the screen for us all to see - I was down as 1st operator, which meant everysingle time someone phoned up it came straight to me before going to anyone else. Now on a small scale this wouldnt have mattered but like I said it is a global giant, there was over 600 people that worked in just my dept and calls were sitill queued cuz all ops were on the phone.

 

So it turned out to be a computer error the 1st operator thing is only used on christmas day and they had no idea how it got onto my phone system. They were so apologetic I got 3 days off work fully paid a bunch of flowers and I got £100 of high street vouchers .

 

Erm, I know my post doesnt help you much but my point is, they MAY not be doing this to your bf intentionally, it may be a glitch in the system.

[cazzaswfc]

he says that his phone never stops ringing, as soon as he hangs up on one call there is another. while his colleagues sit sometimes waiting on the next call, that never happens to him, its one after the other bang bang bang

 

dont know if this changes things with regards to unfair treatment?

 

also, the bosses seem to be taking a new attitude atm... telling him to keep his chin up, they're investigating the system etc. being more positive towards him. we're not sure if this is just talk as nothing in writing

 

anyway hope that made sense! thanks again for your time in this - its much appreciated

 

The wait thing, is this at the same time? will he continually be taking calls whilst others are waiting around for call?

 

Are they on the same "queue" i.e this could happen all the time at my previous place however this was because we were trained in different products ( and were therefore targetted differently)

 

i.e - "motor" calls would divert to motor only advisors and the calls would overspill into our queue once every advisor was dealing with a call - this never really mattered as we'd still get calls - home. travel etc, this did used to affect us in the same manner at times, when really quiet we could sit there twiddling our thumbs whilst "motor only" people took a steady stream of calls.

 

because we were aware that this could happen we'd put things into place anc change the call flows etc to make it fair to all.

 

Does your partner work on exactly the same products? could the above be a factor?

 

Good to see that they are finally looking into it for him, to be fair I think call centres are so rigid in operations small technical things can be overlooked ( Mistakes can't happen!! ) that sometimes you have to really kick up a stink to get heard!

 

Another thing he could do ( really cheeky) but take less calls! percentage targets are really unfair at times IMHO, it does mean that someone who never moves and works really hard can get penilised whilst the "office darling" can do almost nowt but shine due to the "stats" they produce. he could make use of every bit of "off phone activety" he is entilted too, whether this is coaching& development/not ready/breaks/wrap up (only what he's entitled too ) this may then mean he take less calls and his percentage target would increase possibly!

[rebel11]

I was once left to man incoming calls on my own whilst the 11+ employees in the department went for a meeting. The whole idea was to put me off working there. I coped to their disappoint. Other things happened, but it was basically from one individual.