ENGAGEMENT WATER-LOO

Reportedly workers at an Australian call centre have been asked to time their toilet breaks and are reprimanded if they take more than five minutes. The employees have to punch an individual identify code into their phone every time they went to the loo and have to give an explanation to the management if they exceeded the time limit. At the Centrelink call Centre which has been dubbed as “battery hen-type workplace” even managers follow the employee to the bathrooms to hurry them along. The call centre is also known for being cringe-worthy and stuffing too may people in too little space. No wonder the call centre has a high turnover. Incidents of people standing-up and just walking-out of their jobs have been reported. Can anything be worse than this?


This reminds me of something I wrote in my book ‘Employee Engagement’ recently. In Japanese Production Management (JPM) waste was defined as anything that was absolutely unessential to production. All costs associated with non-value added functions are considered a form of waste that should be eliminated, whether it involves buffer between operations, slack time, waiting time, walking time, holiday and vacations, resting time, walking space at workstations, or more generally indirect labour such as skilled trades and maintenance workers. Rest time breaks, bathroom breaks, or time to wipe away sweat are regarded as waste. Obviously it had huge fallouts – one of them being Karoshi or sudden death of employees due to overwork. The Call centre in Australia and similar organizations should draw a lesson from the same.

Obsession for efficiency is always devoid of effectiveness of a system. And I define effectiveness of a system as the degree of acceptance among its various stakeholders, especially those directly affected by the same. Efficiency without effectiveness is a waste in itself. Such policies shall disengage employees on both rationale and emotional plane in a form similar to erosion of sand ridges by sea waves. Short-term profitability dreams shall ruin long-term sustainability chances of the organizations.