The Employees Who Wanted to Be Taped

Abstract

The rules at Holidayco said that all staff in contact with customers by phone were to be monitored frequently by means of taping calls. By doing this, deficiencies could be corrected and the number of served customers could increase. Every taped call was to be played back to the employee and then discussed with the team leader, which would result in identifying areas needing to be improved. But at this local office, managers and team leaders thought that those were much too time-consuming tasks — arranging the recording, listening to the tape, letting the sales agent listen to it and then discussing what was said. ‘We have more important things to do,’ they felt. Officially, they claimed that the taping of calls was routine at the office; however, if it had been left up to local management, not much would have been taped and monitored.