HR301: After more than seven years working in the field, Aoife accepted a new job within an emergency call center as a quality improvement coordinator: Organizational Psychology Assignment, DCU, Ireland

After more than seven years working in the field, Aoife accepted a new job within an emergency call center as a quality improvement coordinator. Her previous experience left her well prepared and eager to carry out her new responsibilities. She worked within a team of 3 others, with one lead person as her boss heading the final decision-making and the other sharing much of her same responsibilities. Upon accepting the new job, Aoife’s defined role was to listen to and review calls coming in and out of the center, assist call takers and supervisors with necessary improvements and/or remedial training recommendations, and ensure that all calls comply with mandated guidelines.

After more than seven years working in the field, Aoife accepted a new job within an emergency call center as a quality improvement coordinator. Her previous experience left her well prepared and eager to carry out her new responsibilities. She worked within a team of 3 others, with one lead person as her boss heading the final decision-making and the other sharing much of her same responsibilities. Upon accepting the new job, Aoife’s defined role was to listen to and review calls coming in and out of the center, assist call takers and supervisors with necessary improvements and/or remedial training recommendations, and ensure that all calls comply with mandated guidelines.

When the training finally began, knowing the job well already, Aoife was aware that it was not being carried out in a way that would ever give her the skills she needed. Her trainers were not equipped with appropriate knowledge and were unable to answer questions that she had regarding the job. Aoife sought out assistance from her boss and the training coordinator, however, no effort was made to solve the issue, and eventually, the training stopped altogether. They instead granted Aoife the opportunity to perform her role based on her prior knowledge and capabilities and negated the training requirement.

Eventually, Aoife began to do what she was hired to do. She started documenting and working towards the improvements she was told she was responsible for. However, any time Aoife tried to address them with the director, she was told not to worry about it and just to keep the review numbers up. Day by day, Aoife carried out the same job with the same results. Any time she tried to pursue improvements or training; it fell upon deaf ears. When she tried to take on new responsibilities, she was not able to successfully fulfill them because she was trained so poorly. When it was time for the semi-annual feedback, Aoife would receive mediocre scores based on all the things that she did not do while the director failed to acknowledge that they were not done because of her lack of training. No matter how much effort she applied towards being excellent, she consistently lacked the resources needed.