- Poorly trained supervisors
-- I have had supervisors breaking labor law, or threatening to break labor law, multiple times, and having no recourse as the hotline to report these infractions requires a physical address that I work at, and they don't mean one's home.
-- Most supervisors ignore their team for most the day, most the week, no matter what, and then get aggressive when their team doesn't want to perform well.
-- Some supervisors go so far as to attempt to emotionally blackmail their at-home employees into behaving how they would like. An example would be, "My boss has been on me about ___ for hours, and it's because you all aren't doing ___. You need to start doing ___ right now, so I don't have to be in trouble with my boss anymore."
- Poor handling of employee attendance.
-- Their "call-out line" is an absolute mess, and employees are blamed even though 9 times out of 10 they are doing exactly what the company has expected of them.
- No understanding of customer habits.
-- They will forcibly and fully staff on holidays, and end up with far too many people sitting and being paid to do nothing, which will come back on the employees when the company goes into the red for any reason.
- Management doesn't understand that there are people behind all those numbers.
-- Dovetailing from the above point, but with an example rather than a general elaboration: This year, after weeks upon weeks of being told our schedules were in stone for the holidays, allowing employees to make substantial plans with family flying in or them flying to family, they dropped it at far too short of notice that many employees would be working, and they would have no choice even though they planned dutifully around the scheduling the company promised. Many employees have been left absolutely devastated, and management has failed show any of the EMPATHY they demand of their employees.
- Management fails to adhere to Medical Laws.
-- Employees are pressured into revealing their illnesses even when protected behind FMLA (or ADAAA), as though to continue to qualify their protected absences.
-- Employees are punished for these legally protected absences.
-- Managers and supervisors who obtain new employees fail to research them before scolding them over these absences, when they are legally protected.
-- Employees are punished in terms of advancement, without discussion. Some employee disabilities would allow other positions to work more to their favor than others, but since no one wants to speak (in generalities unless by employee permission to disclose) about it, extremely beneficial personnel are overlooked.
- Supervisors do not allow their employees all the resources they need to work.
-- From personal experience, when I have been specifically selected to handle multiple queues, I have been prevented from seeing the learning tools I was promised beforehand, being forced to handle a skilling that I was not ready for.
- Conduent over-promises in their contracts, and penalizes employees.
-- Contractors make contracts with companies, and win those by making promises. In the contract to which I belong, Conduent promised far too much and can't maintain it. As a result, the employees are punished via forced overtime and cancelled holidays.
-- We also hear on the regular how we are the reason the company is fined by the company to which they supply services. This is not our fault. We did not promise a level of manpower that has the company now scraping the bottom of the barrel to accommodate when they're not forcing the existing employees to work more and when they were promised they wouldn't be.
- Employees feel the impact with attrition, and are scolded when the company doesn't achieve the certifications they're looking for.
-- If you want to lower attrition rates and actually get and maintain quality employees, you need to match call centers that are direct with companies in the things you offer.
-- Most direct-company call centers offer insurance from Day 1, PTO from Day 1, paid holidays from Day 1. Instead, we have to wait two months for insurance, six months for PTO, and one year for paid holidays. We don't even get time and a half for working holidays until after a year, which is obscene and hardly competitive. Make lesser and more solid promises in your contracts and you can offer more employee-satisfying incentives.
- Supervisors and above are taught to distrust their employees at all times.
-- We have so many issues with our equipment due to the lack of experience and abundance of poor handling by the IT department. We are constantly having issues, and calling to IT can sometimes take a whole day, only for IT to not listen to us and only fix half the problems (if that) before pushing us off the phone with them.
-- Despite this well-known fact, supervisors and managers blame the employees for issues, calling us everything they can before they hit the word 'liar'. Even when evidence is provided in the form of screenshots, screencaptured videos, and IT tickets, we are accused of fabrication, and threatened as a result.
-- Don't get me started on the protected medical leaves again. The amount of supervisors who don't grasp that they cannot ask nor can they prevent, or ask for recovery hours, is astonishing. Employees with legally protected medical absences are near-constantly stalked by supervisors demanding recovery time, demanding that the absences cease being used because it's 'hurting team stats', and even demanding to know the details of the illnesses that cause the need for protected absences.
