« Simple comme un coup de fil » ? La prévention des risques dans une cellule d’écoute de la souffrance au travail

This article deals with the rise of phone lines as a means of dealing with suffering at work. For that purpose, it reports on a survey carried out in a hotline of a large administration. What do we see when we listen to work-related problems, and what are the preventive actions that can be undertaken or initiated by telephone? Are the operators in charge of phone calls regular preventers? This article is devoted to the study of what makes up this original arrangement of words, papers and data, as well as to their expected effects in terms of transforming situations of suffering at work. At the crossroads of an examination of the purposes attributed to this apparatus and an analysis of the qualification operations, the article shows how the practices of prevention by telephone are increasingly constrained as the listening apparatus turns into a surveillance apparatus.