What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? CA
I have a couple issues I need to seek advice on. They all relate to equal treatment for employees; not necessarily any discrimination due to sex, race, etc.
I work in a call center for a federally regulated business. In our business, one wrong piece of information related to a customer could subject our company to large monetary judgments and actions by the FTC. I understand this, and for this reason, everyone on the phones is monitored.
However, not everyone is monitored as frequently as others, even though we are on the same phone ques. I may be monitored 20 times in a month and my friend next to me may be monitored 35 times or more. Every month the graded calls are averaged out and your quality must be above a certain percentage, or a mark against you is taken, which will eventually cost you your job. In two recent cases, two people lost their jobs because they could not keep above the required quality percentage, but in that month, one of the girls only had 7 calls taken on her. Another employee was not meeting her quality percentage and the manager told her she would take extra calls to see if she could pull her percentage up for her to meet the requirement. She had an additional 25 calls taken and they managed to pull the other girls percentage up enough, but never offered to take an equal number of calls for the other girl and she lost her job. Is this legal to do? A similar fate happened to the other employee as well.
Also, we do have other phone lines people are scheduled on, we all basically deal with the same issues but duties vary. I can understand more or less time per call depending on which line you work on due to the special situations, but some people literally only get 5 calls a month QA'd and on a daily basis they take the same number of calls we do in my department - we again get upwards of 25+ calls per month (average 35-45). Is this something the company can do?
The last issue is with meeting on call handle times, not quality. Some of us are required to man 2 different phone ques a day. In my circumstance, I have to spend 2 hours on one que and 6 hours on the other, but for us in this situation, we have to meet the same monthly call handle times for both ques as those that are on just one of those ques for an 8 hour day. The company takes the stance that regardless if we take 1 we should still be able to meet that required call handle time because that's what we are trained to do. While this technically does make sense, I still feel (like with the quality issue) that people on one que for 8 hours a day have an advantage to take more calls and meet their handle time requirements as to where if they were to only be on their phone for 2 or 6 hours a day, they may very well NOT meet their times.
Anyway, any insight into this would be greatly appreciated. If my complaints carry any merit, what govt agency handles this type of complaint? I cannot figure it out - the California Labor Commissioner or the Federal Labor? One last thing, if I do file complaints and I end up losing for some reason, can the employer fire me? I realize I am protected while I file the complaint, but what about after?
One other note: the people that monitor us are in our sister call center and compete with us for times, quality and sales. They get to monitor us exclusively because they have the best QA percentages of all 3 call centers (the third one is in, of course, India - which surprisingly scores better than we do). I find this suspect too as our sister office also gets to monitor their own calls...?
Help... I am slowly losing ground on my quality and AHT after 5 years due to all this and constant changes in the numbers we have to meet. I lay awake at night worrying about my job, have nightmares about my job and have lost all interest in my hobbies and life away from work and I've become very agitated and downright mean to my family since this started and I need to find a resolution - and of course I need my job
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
I have a couple issues I need to seek advice on. They all relate to equal treatment for employees; not necessarily any discrimination due to sex, race, etc.
I work in a call center for a federally regulated business. In our business, one wrong piece of information related to a customer could subject our company to large monetary judgments and actions by the FTC. I understand this, and for this reason, everyone on the phones is monitored.
However, not everyone is monitored as frequently as others, even though we are on the same phone ques. I may be monitored 20 times in a month and my friend next to me may be monitored 35 times or more. Every month the graded calls are averaged out and your quality must be above a certain percentage, or a mark against you is taken, which will eventually cost you your job. In two recent cases, two people lost their jobs because they could not keep above the required quality percentage, but in that month, one of the girls only had 7 calls taken on her. Another employee was not meeting her quality percentage and the manager told her she would take extra calls to see if she could pull her percentage up for her to meet the requirement. She had an additional 25 calls taken and they managed to pull the other girls percentage up enough, but never offered to take an equal number of calls for the other girl and she lost her job. Is this legal to do? A similar fate happened to the other employee as well.
Also, we do have other phone lines people are scheduled on, we all basically deal with the same issues but duties vary. I can understand more or less time per call depending on which line you work on due to the special situations, but some people literally only get 5 calls a month QA'd and on a daily basis they take the same number of calls we do in my department - we again get upwards of 25+ calls per month (average 35-45). Is this something the company can do?
The last issue is with meeting on call handle times, not quality. Some of us are required to man 2 different phone ques a day. In my circumstance, I have to spend 2 hours on one que and 6 hours on the other, but for us in this situation, we have to meet the same monthly call handle times for both ques as those that are on just one of those ques for an 8 hour day. The company takes the stance that regardless if we take 1 we should still be able to meet that required call handle time because that's what we are trained to do. While this technically does make sense, I still feel (like with the quality issue) that people on one que for 8 hours a day have an advantage to take more calls and meet their handle time requirements as to where if they were to only be on their phone for 2 or 6 hours a day, they may very well NOT meet their times.
Anyway, any insight into this would be greatly appreciated. If my complaints carry any merit, what govt agency handles this type of complaint? I cannot figure it out - the California Labor Commissioner or the Federal Labor? One last thing, if I do file complaints and I end up losing for some reason, can the employer fire me? I realize I am protected while I file the complaint, but what about after?
One other note: the people that monitor us are in our sister call center and compete with us for times, quality and sales. They get to monitor us exclusively because they have the best QA percentages of all 3 call centers (the third one is in, of course, India - which surprisingly scores better than we do). I find this suspect too as our sister office also gets to monitor their own calls...?
Help... I am slowly losing ground on my quality and AHT after 5 years due to all this and constant changes in the numbers we have to meet. I lay awake at night worrying about my job, have nightmares about my job and have lost all interest in my hobbies and life away from work and I've become very agitated and downright mean to my family since this started and I need to find a resolution - and of course I need my job
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?