A major outsourced call centre operator has been accused of pressuring managers to fabricate performance statistics and sweep serious privacy breaches involving Centrelink customers “under the rug”.
The allegations, which the company strongly denies, form part of a series of claims by current and former call centre workers who say their employer, the Perth-based Telco Services Australia (TSA), penalises staff for taking sick leave, and does not allow for adequate breaks, putting workers’ health at risk.
TSA is part way through a multi-year $90m-plus contract to run call centre operations for Services Australia, the agency responsible for social security.
A former TSA senior staff member told Guardian Australia he was tasked with investigating privacy breaches whereby callers accessed other people’s information by impersonating Centrelink recipients.
“There were many times when I was asked by my boss to essentially say that, yes, this occurred, but it’s not a privacy breach when, according to our resources and our documentation, it is a privacy breach, and we should have reported it,” the person claimed.
“I had to sweep things under the rug to protect the company’s contract, essentially.”
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The former senior worker alleged that during quality assessments, some managers were told to listen to multiple calls from underperforming staff until a suitable call could be marked as a “pass”.
This compromised the results, according to the claim, because assessors should have marked the first call they listened in on.
“A lot of the [key performance indicators] they report to stakeholders are manufactured; they’re not recording incidents, and they are fabricating stats to keep this contract,” the former employee alleged.
TSA is one of a handful of private operators running call centres for major government agencies, including Centrelink, the Australian Taxation Office and the National Disability Insurance Agency.
Over the past several months, Guardian Australia has detailed the inner workings of the private companies, which employees say prioritise profit over worker wellbeing and service quality.
They say they are inadequately trained and receive near-minimum pay, leading to high stress and staff turnover.
A TSA spokesperson said privacy was so important to the company that “often our own internal standards exceed the requirements of the relevant regulations and our clients’ individual requirements”.
“Appropriately dealing with privacy requirements is a core component of our staff training, and we have a separate, dedicated compliance department which monitors compliance and deals with any breaches, including escalation to our clients,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the company regularly assessed calls, using TSA supervisors, third-party assessors, and the government agency client.
Burnout and breaches
Guardian Australia spoke to five former and current TSA workers for this story, including experienced employees, new recruits and two staff members who left citing deteriorating mental health.
A current TSA worker said many of the privacy breaches had occurred during “nesting”, which referred to the period when recruits first took calls after formal classroom training ended.
“I have witnessed privacy incidents where instead of putting it through the correct process, it’s just told to a team leader and kept as something that’s a one-on-one conversation instead of recorded as a privacy incident,” the worker alleged.
“This is where we’re intercepting people doing out-of-scope activities. This is where we’re intercepting all of those mistakes that happen because the prior training is not thorough enough.”
The worker said that time pressures also dissuaded call centre workers from self-reporting breaches.
“They just don’t want to go through this incredibly lengthy process when their KPIs are all about call handling time,” the employee said.
“It’s a long process and often doesn’t get done.”
Outsourced call centres on government contracts tend to have high staff turnover.
A 2025 report by the tax ombudsman found that only 44% of call staff at the ATO’s three outsourced operators had been in their roles for more than 12 months, a far lower percentage than those working in similar roles in the public service.
In recent months, TSA has advertised a $500 bonus to prospective employees who pass a three-month probation period as an incentive to join.
But most don’t receive the bonus after passing probation, according to employee claims.
One worker who didn’t get the bonus said employees were penalised for taking too much sick leave in their first few months, which apparently disqualified them from receiving the bonus despite passing probation.
“There was no mention whatsoever of this beforehand,” they said.
“They are big on KPIs that aren’t KPIs; it’s never actually written anywhere, so the company can’t be held accountable for it.”
The company strongly discouraged sick and bereavement leave, according to some workers.
Another employee, who passed probation, said: “I didn’t get the bonus because I got the flu.”
The TSA spokesperson said employee attendance was crucial for the delivery of services, “so like every business in Australia, we encourage our employees to turn up for their rostered workday”.
“But we understand that if people are sick or bereaved, they will need to use the leave to which they are entitled,” the spokesperson said.
Kept in the shadows
Government agencies traditionally used outsourced operators to cope with fluctuating demand or to access specialised skill sets before the practice ramped up under Coalition governments, according to the Community and Public Sector Union.
But moves by Labor to curb reliance on external consultants and outsourced workers have stalled just two years after it ordered agencies to bring skills back in-house, with the government sensitive to criticism over any plans to increase the size of the public service.
A Services Australia spokesperson said the agency thoroughly monitored contractual compliance, including with all relevant laws, rules and regulations.
“If breaches are identified and substantiated, we take appropriate contractual action which, in serious cases, could result in termination,” the spokesperson said.
“To ensure contractual compliance and a consistent customer experience, we conduct regular site visits, monitor performance through side-by-side call listening, observe training and deliver feedback sessions.”
Outsourced workers manning government agency phone lines say they have been kept in the shadows, working on low pay without the protection and career opportunities of the public service.
A former worker told Guardian Australia she had to make a choice between work and her mental health.
“If I took more than two bathroom breaks in a day, I’d have to have a meeting and explain myself, which is, you know, awkward,” the former employee said.
“How does that conversation go? I can tell you, not great.
“I quit because I noticed my mental health was declining because of the job, and that was a pretty universal thing. All of my colleagues there had some kind of anxiety about just going to work.”
