Diversity is a hot topic in any area of South African society. The call centre industry offers more employment and investment opportunities than almost any other, but is it properly exploiting the diversity of its talent pool?

There is a new buzz phrase in the industry, ‘socially responsible outsourcing’, which advises that those who benefit from job creation in the Business Process Outsourcing industry should be the individuals who need jobs most. But is this approach a shortcut to a fractured workforce, hidden costs in the form of poor agent efficiency and, ultimately, loss of business?

Diversity versus team matching

Conventional wisdom recommends cultural matching during the recruitment process. Agents may work in isolation on the telephones but they still rely on the sort of positive interaction critical to team building and career development.

Incorporating team matching into South African call centres does not take into account the available agent talent pool, nor does it reflect a diverse local consumer demographic or the sensitivity of our country’s history of racial groupings.

Managing diversity through common culture in the contact centre

Management strategy is key to meeting the challenges of call centre diversity; resisting the urge to be caught up in ethnicity and focusing rather on the commonalities that draw diverse individuals into a common corporate culture.

Bulelwa Koyana, former interim CEO of BPeSA, believes, ‘There is ethnicity even among people of the same colour, so it is best to keep in mind that people are individuals. It is the overriding organisational culture inculcated in call centres that is critical to operations.’

David O’Dwyer, Associate Director of Operations at Cape Town-based Fusion Outsourcing Services, has worked in call centres in the UK for 12 years and South Africa for the last five. ‘It’s possible to draw people into a corporate culture irrespective of their ethnic or cultural background. We ingrain our corporate message into everything we do. We are huge on communication, using multiple channels and constantly adapting our communication style.’

David believes it is important to provide the necessary support to help individuals to fit into this common culture. ‘Fusion SA runs a tighter ship than almost any organisation I’ve worked in. We want our culture to be based on customer-centricity. It has to be part of our values, part of our HR processes and all our interactions from the top down. We have high standards when it comes to delivery of our KPIs and the performance of our agents and the level of service they provide. But we offer an extremely supportive environment. The people who come into Fusion SA and decide to grab with both hands the opportunity to better their lives, are the people we want to work with. ’

Train then train some more

Rene Nel, Industrial Psychologist and Human Capital Executive at Fusion SA, believes the call centre environment is a levelling-ground for cross-cultural teams catering to cross-functional clients’ needs. ‘A team of agents can easily consist of individuals from seven different language groups, male, female, school leavers and 55-year-olds. The most difficult position to recruit for is a team leader able to deal with that sort of diversity in an extraordinarily fast-changing environment.’

Accredited as a Further Education Training College, Fusion SA has adapted the SETA-accredited training manual to be relevant to the present call centre environment which changes on a weekly basis. Through role-play and turning theory to practice, operational processes are stream-lined as trainees provide solutions during team leader training.

Rene Nel explains, ‘Most of our recruits are Generation Y’s and their approach is: don’t tell me about future growth prospects. I want to see my growth opportunities now. The call centre industry is in a unique position to gratify this. This year alone 30 call centre agents have been promoted to specialist, team leader, quality and support roles, following stringent selection and training programmes. Another 30 have moved into coaching roles. It’s a case of, an advertisement for an internal vacancy goes up and there goes my friend next to me.’

Beyond Ethnicity

The industry accounts for 180,000 jobs in South Africa and the Department of Trade and Industry has recently rolled out an incentive scheme that will cut operational costs by a further 20 percent. The objective is to further grow the industry and alleviate poverty through the creation of wealth and jobs. There are few sectors better positioned to deliver than BPO (Business Process Outsourcing).

According to Bulelwa Koyana, the industry faces many challenges in the year ahead. ‘We need to competitively market ourselves and enhance our talent pool. We are working with SETA to professionalise the sector. This is very important. We must improve the customer experience through training and providing clients with customer assurance through a system of professional accreditation.’

As for South African call centre diversity, it is alive and well, demographically representative and flourishing organically in organisations that are putting in the time and effort needed to develop strong and clearly defined corporate cultures and identities. For those that do not, government-backed industry incentives may not be enough to keep them in business in one of the fastest-growing and competitive industries on the planet.