Staff numbers continue to rise in UK call centres. According to the latest annual survey by Incomes Data Services, a clear majority of respondent companies say that they have hired more people in Britain in the past year and most expect to create yet more jobs in the coming year.
The report, Pay and Condition in Call Centres 2004, analyses information on 107 organisations employing around 92,000 call centre staff. The findings show:
· 58 per cent of organisations said there had been a growth in employment over the past year, up from 51 per cent in the 2003 survey
· among those organisations with 500 or more call centre staff, a clear majority said they expected their workforce to grow over the coming year
· among the sectors most likely to forecast expansion were financial services, telecoms, utilities and the public sector
· almost two-thirds of organisations reported difficulty in retaining staff – on average around one-in-four staff left last year. When asked how long agents typically remained in post, call centres gave responses ranging from just six weeks up to five years, with a median of two years
· the average salary for a customer adviser is £15,000, an increase of 3.5 per cent on last year
· average starting pay for customer advisers was up 4.7 per cent on the previous year, reflecting upward pressure on recruitment salaries.
Commenting on these findings, Sarah Miller, Assistant Editor at IDS, remarked that “they show that, despite all the worries about work being moved to India, the call centre sector is very much alive in the UK. What’s more, we found that most employers in our survey are taking active steps to improve the retention of call centre staff, for example, building in opportunities for career progression and making the working environment more pleasant.
Source: IDS
2004-10-08
Em Foco – Pessoa