The downsides to this job aren't really the fault of first source it's Sky. They set our shift patterns and they are mostly horrendous. The shifts are 11hours long and frequently we are put on 3days on one day off, 3 days on after which we are all mentally exhausted and burnt out. Firstsource do their best to do something about this but their hands are tied and Sky are the ones who give us these anti social hour shifts which are difficult to balance with a family. Team leaders are great in that they will always call Sky and slide shifts for us if they can but they are totally dependent on Sky allowing these shift slides. Holidays aren't easy to book but again team leaders are always ready to contact Sky to ask them to allow the holidays. You can't take a day off sick without it being considered misconduct no matter how sick you actually are and any incentives are linked to customer service responses. Even if we ourselves gain top marks from the customers for our services any complaint/low mark against Sky reflects on us personally and we lose our incentives bonuses simply because customers arent happy with prices or sometimes a previous Advisor. We can also lose our free Sky if we lose too much time off for genuine sickness. The worse thing at the moment is that the incentive vouchers are being replaced by cash incentives which will be swallowed by the tax man and national insurance contributions and loss of tax credits and housing benefit will result in a big drop in overall earnings for many of us, taking travel into consideration I may be looking for another job after Christmas. Never having a weekend off unless we book it as holiday is also a bad drawback to the job but again it's Sky not first source who decide our shifts
