how does restructuring of public information influence the psychosocial working environment?...

How does restructuring of public information influence the psychosocial working environment?

Pernille Hohnen, Ph.D. (social Anthropology) Senior Researcher

Introduction and presentation of WORKS

• About WORKS = The Work Organisation Restructuring in the Knowledge Society

• The impact of the re-organisation of work on ’work’ and ’employment’

• Quantitiative studies and Qualitative case studies in 14 countries

• Impact on Health and safety and the Psychosocial working environment

Public administration – customer service

• Qualitative case studies• Customer service (and IT)• Examples: Housing,Transport (driver and vehicle

licensing Agency), IT services, General information

• Semi-skilled front office employees (and back stage IT experts with higher education)

Restructuring of the value chain in public administration

• ‘Value chain practically means information chain, i.e. from designing, formatting information to citizens, making it affordable and usable, organising feed back or dialogue, integrating information flows from front office to back office and vice versa’ (Devos & Valenduc, 2007: 6).

Characteristics of restructuring: public administration customer service

• Customer orientation – customer oriented bureaucracy

• Accessibility as a key ’driver’ (one-stop principle)– ’Walk inn offices’ – ’allround call centres’, – ’one entrance web pages’

Forms of restructuring information services

Technological development

Forms of restructuring:• Private outsourcing• Public/private partnerships• Public internal ’externalisation’/’mergers’

Impact on working conditions

• Difference between front office and back office• More problematic outcomes for front office

workers• Call centre work (private)

Conceptualizing impact on psychosocial working environment

• Demands in work• Influence upon work• Social Support• Recognition and Reward• Predictability• Meaning

Kristensen (1999 & 2000)

Tabel 1. Psychosocial working environment for low-skilled front office employees in (private) call centres

Dimension New problems New possibilities

Demands in work Increased number of calls, time limits for each call. Increased work intensity

Influence over work Standardised procedures governing all work activity

Social Support Each employee work alone with limited breaks and limited contact to colleagues

Recognitions and reward

Low wages – lack of acknowledgement

Predictability Precarious employment – atypical contracts

Meaning Standardisation of contact with customers delimits involvement

Increased contact with customers and solving customers’ problems

Private call centres (Italian case)

• ’The work of operators at the call centre is very stressful. Between one phone call and the next there are on an average five seconds…and this rhytm is kept up for eight straight hours. This same operation is repeated hundreds of times a day’.

• ‘The stress is mostly due to the monotony and repetitiveness and the intensity of work rhythm, to time saturation (i.e. the relationship between waiting time and pauses and the time to actually execute the task given) and to the degree of self-control that is demanded when dealing with the public’.

Table 2. Psychosocial working environment for low-skilled front office employees in walk-in-centres/‘one-stop-shops’

Dimension New problems New possibilities

Demands in work Increased demands for ICT skills and documentation. Longer working hours.

Increased variety of work tasks, Increased competency. Realistic performance targets

Influence over work Increased standardisation in some cases

High degree of autonomy

Social Support Contact with customers and co-workers

Recognitions and reward

New career opportunitiesHigher or similar wages

Predictability Standard employment contracts (high degree of job security)

Meaning Increased contact with customers and ability to solve customers’ problems

Example: Walk-inn and service centres

’…We can give them more information now which is something we couldn’t do before. It was always oh I’m sorry, you’ve got to go here, or you’ve got to go there. Wheras now you can actually answer 99,9% of the questions they have, because you’ve got the tools to do it.’ (UK joint venture)

Example: Organising calls in walk-inn and service centres

• ’Agents also felt that they have freedom with each individual call to follow it though because there is no real pressure ’to get rid of the customer and get on to the next one. Telephone work in this respect seems to be regarded as similar to face-to-face customer service, where it is common to have to comfort people who are upset. (UK joint venture)

Example: Management in Walk-inn and service centres

I don’t stress about it (achieving targets), I think that is something for the senior management. Yeah, I think it’s the levels above us who have to worry. We do what we can to answer calls when we have them. (UK joint venture)

Psychosocial ‘risks areas’

• Standardisation, formalisation and centralisation• Increase in surveillance• Intensification of work and performance• Forced flexibility and longer working hours

(customer orientation)• Change in employment conditions (fixed

contracts)• High frequency of organisational change• Unclear division of health and safety

responsibilities

Management and organisation in focus

• Performance management: Realistic targets• ICT development creates new options for control –

management decides how to use them• Increased demand for management responsibility

and the establishment of role clarity• Focus on customer service • Managements support• Emphasis on creating learning and career options