Call-centre employees “need more training in social skills”
Call-centre employees “need more training in social skills”
Pre-employment training for work in call centres needs to have greater social-skills content, according to research funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council.
With growth in the service economy, commentators have recognized that an employee's social skills, attitude and self-presentation play an important part in business success. However, according to the study, carried out by Dr Vicki Belt, of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne Business School, call-centre training for the long-term unemployed has been found to focus mostly on IT skills.
Research was carried out in north-east England, an area that has seen a considerable shift away from manufacturing and traditional industries and expansion in the service economy. The study concentrated on four training initiatives intended to help the long-term unemployed to find jobs among the increasing number of call-centre companies in the region.
Commenting on training-course content, Vicki Belt said: “The findings indicate that there is a mismatch in understanding between training providers and call-centre employers in terms of skill requirements.” She believes that there is a need for much better communication between employers and trainers on the issue of social skills and notes that only one of the trainers had entered into “meaningful and ongoing dialogue” with call-centre employers.
The study found that employers were particularly concerned about how trainees “present, use and deploy” their employment assets. This represented a significant discrepancy between the trainers' perceived need for the development of the trainees' IT skills and the employers' desire for soft-skills development.
The deficit in social skills among trainees was only one of the findings. Other barriers to employment included restrictions because of the personal circumstances of trainees and the practices and attitudes of call-centre employers.
Many employers sought to make full-time appointments for shift work that fell outside usual 9-5 office hours. For trainees who relied on public transport and for those who had family commitments, these working arrangements could cause considerable difficulties. In addition, a considerable barrier was presented by some employers' attitudes about the reliability of unemployed people.
Another difficulty for many trainees was taking part effectively in interviews, particularly when they were expected to talk about relevant skills and behaviours for customer-service work. Trainees who had employment backgrounds in manufacturing and with little, if any, previous contact with customers, were at a significant disadvantage.
“Our findings suggest that many call-centre employers do not appreciate the ways in which their recruitment practices, particularly the use of competency-based interviews and insistence on previous customer-service experience, act to disadvantage long-term unemployed people,” said Vicki Belt.
“Employers need to be made aware of this, and encouraged to deal more sensitively with this group during the selection process.”
The study calls for greater appreciation by employers of the distinctive situation of the long-term unemployed and, as a consequence, the modification of recruitment and selection processes that can lead to exclusion.
Turning to training providers, Vicki Belt said that there was more to improving trainees' employability than gaining initial employment. However, the study found that the trainers studied paid scant attention to maintaining employment in the long term, and carried out little monitoring of the trainees'work record once in employment.
She said “Although pre-employment training programmes often report good success rates, the study indicates that training providers tend to focus on the numbers of people they are getting into jobs, rather than the sustainability of employment. It is crucial that trainers take a long-term view rather than going for a quick-fix approach.”
