Me and my data shadow:

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Me and my (data) shadow
Imposed digital personae and performance
evaluation in call centres Brenda
McPhail Faculty of Information Studies University
of Toronto Ontario, Canada Presentation to the
Oxford Internet Institute/Information,
Communication and Society Conference, September
2003
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Picture from Dawson, 1988
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• The numbers are the most important thing, they
  care about them more than service or anything
  else (CSR, site one)
• every single thing you do is measured, its
  good, yes and nohow your manager handles it
  makes the difference (CSR, site two)

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Why call centres?

• technology-intensive workplace
• extensively networked
• at the forefront of the trend towards electronic
  monitoring in white-collar workplaces
• rapidly-expanding industry employing large
  numbers of workers

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The sites

• A call centre of a major Canadian bank
• large (500 staff)
• A call centre in an Ontario Credit Union
• small (9 staff)

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EPM

• Electronic performance monitoring (EPM)
• the use of computer technology to collect,
  store, analyse and report information about a
  workers activities
• At my sites, EPM includes
• telephone call recording and intermittent
  monitoring
• collecting productivity statistics via ACD
• work status tracking

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Digital persona

• Definition of digital persona
• a model of an individuals public personality
  based on data and maintained by transactions, and
  intended for use as a proxy for the individual.
  (Clarke, 1994)

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Imposed Digital persona

• Assigned to an individual by another individual
  or organisation
• The person represented has little or no control
  over
• the types of data composing the persona
• when data is collected
• the way data is used

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Persona effects

• Quality vs. quantity
• Privacy
• Changing supervisory relationships

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Quality vs. Quantity

• an issue in most call centre research and in much
  of EPM research
• professional banker vs cog in a bank machine?
• separation between what work entails (talking to
  people, doing transactions and solving problems)
  and what counts in evaluations (speed, volume)

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Quality
Can do great calls and get slammed for saying
bye instead of goodbye (CSR, site one) I
saw one group giving the high 5 to the person
with the lowest score--they dont take it
seriously. (CSR, site one)
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Quantity
Were getting hammered on the numbers today,
theres a lot of people away but it doesnt
matter (CSR, site 1) I write an explanation
to go with the stats report when it goes up, tell
them reasons if the numbers vary a bit from month
to month (supervisor, site 2)
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Privacy

• supervisors can examine processes, not just
  products, on a daily basis
• workers lose control over self-presentation as
  public and private boundaries shift
• people accept work monitoring but want to
  maintain privacy in down-time and have varing
  degrees of confidence that employers will respect
  this need

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• There is a persistent rumour that personal calls
  are monitored, although theyre not supposed to
  be. One person phrased her suspicions bluntly
  they dont tell you the truth (CSR, site one)

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• When looking at implementing or customising
  technology, the company would err on the side of
  not invading privacyits an obvious, open policy
  issue. (CSR, site two)

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Supervisory relationships

• Reliance on a digital persona for performance
  evaluation causes shifting supervisory
  relationships
• subjective vs. objective
• human judgement vs. system programming
• Changes are between front-line workers and
  immediate supervisors, but also between
  supervisors and their direct reports

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• whos done what, were, when, how and how long it
  took, it comes back to you in a report. Thats
  what you use... (supervisor, site 1)

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• We have a process to give ideas to upper
  management. Some of the other women and I, were
  thinking right now of security changes (CSR
  site 2)

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Conclusions

• Imposed digital personae may be accepted when
• information is appropriate accurate
• uses are fair and necessary
• employer is trusted
• It is the surrounding practice, not the program,
  that determines the result

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The End
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