Call North West and South West Contact Centre Forum are joining forces with Liverpool John Moores University and Lancaster University on a new 3-year research project.

The project

The project explores how contact centres can improve the health and work conditions of their advisors.

“We will work with the sector to explore what centres currently do and find out why some centres are more proactive at helping their advisors than others, and look at the most effective policies and interventions,” explained Dr Lee Graves, a Senior Lecturer in Physical Activity and Health at Liverpool John Moores University’s Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences.

The project will create resources and guidance that contact centres can use to implement policies and interventions to improve the health and work conditions of their advisors.

Why we need this project?

Contact centre advisors typically live on low incomes and those in the North West are typically from deprived areas. They experience high levels of stress due to conditions at work, such as continuous performance monitoring and sitting for long periods¹.

This financial and work-related stress increases their chances of smoking, drinking, having a poor diet and taking part in little physical activity and exercise. These unhealthy behaviours can lead to a decline in health, poor work performance, and promote absence and attrition. Overtime, they also increase the chance of advisors getting heart disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and dying young.

“Many employees do not have the money, time or support outside of work to improve their health, so we are looking to the contact centres themselves to encourage healthy behaviours and create health-enhancing work conditions,” added Dr Graves.

“Call North West are delighted to support this research initiative, where the health of advisors is paramount and at the core of every contact centre in the North West. Such insight gained will ensure that contact centres are rightly employers of choice for both incumbent staff and future talent attraction. We encourage all contact centres in the North West to participate, the results will offer much insight to improve the health and working environments for our advisors – promoting and encouraging healthy behaviours is key to all businesses.”

Jane Thomas MD Call North West

Interested or have a question?

If you would like to be involved in this research or have a question, please complete this 1-minute survey and a member of the research team will be in touch within one week.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast (ARC NWC) fund this project.

¹ Morris et al. (2018). International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15, 1484; doi:10.3390/ijerph15071484