" O T Y"

There are currently over 200,000 call-center agents in the country today, and according to the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), the umbrella organization of the call-center industry, the number of agents is expected to increase to 940,000 by 2012. CCAP also predicts that the industry’s current yearly revenue of US $2.2 billion will rise to US $13 billion in 2012, or a whopping 490% increase within 5 years.
The industry usually offers monthly salaries double or more than those of other entry-level jobs in the country. For a lot of people, this is a financially rewarding line of work, but it is not as easy as most people seem to think.
First of all, call-center agents typically start work at 8:00 in the evening and get-off between 5:00 to 7:00 in the morning. This requires a huge adjustment in one’s lifestyle, aside from learning to eat lunch at around 12 midnight; most agents get off work when most places to unwind or socialize, such as bars or restaurants are still closed, and when most of their friends and members of their families are hurrying off to start their day.
They also have to learn a lot of technical data required by the account they are currently handling, all this after having undergone extensive training seminars on the English language.
Most agents see these sacrifices as bearable, because they are adequately compensated for the work they render.
But what if they are in fact no longer financially compensated for the amount of work they do? What if the amount of work they are required to do, daily, cannot be done within their work day? What if this is a daily occurrence, and yet their company only authorizes a very limited amount of paid overtime?
If reaching their quota is a major factor in their performance evaluations, which determines how long they stay employed in the company, then these call-center agents will be forced to render overtime work, without pay, in order to reach their daily quota. What if, because of loopholes in our labor laws, the company can simply justify this practice by pointing to the quota requirement?
Wouldn’t life be a little better for call-center agents if these were just hypothetical, what-if situations? By adopting adequate amendments to current labor legislation or by crafting new labor laws that squarely address these issues, it can be.

SOURCE: "Agents on the Prowl" an article by Jesse Edep in the December 2007 issue of Entrepreneur magazine (p. 58)