Call center adds 500 Omaha jobs

In a possible sign of a brightening economy, Omaha's West Corp. will be adding 500 full-time jobs at one of its Omaha call centers.

The new positions come as the result of increased demands from several clients, including leading communications, medical and sports entertainment providers, West officials said. West's Monday announcement said the jobs will be added at its facility at 9910 Maple St.

The Omaha-based communications giant said the positions would pay $9 an hour plus benefits, including paid training and a 401(k) plan.

The company had announced earlier this year that it would be laying off about 300 workers. Now with the new business, some of those layoffs will be avoided, and workers who left the company in good standing will be offered the chance to return to one of the new jobs, said company spokesman David Pleiss.

“Certainly for us, we're thrilled to have this additional business and to be able to bring it to Omaha,'' Pleiss said.

David Brown, chief executive of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, said the new jobs were good news for the city.

“It's always another good sign that our economy is doing well when an employer like West adds 500 jobs. We're happy they're doing it here.''

The new jobs will bring the number West employs in Omaha to more than 3,000, Pleiss said.

West will be offering the jobs on both a temporary and permanent basis in an effort to make positions available to college students and others looking just for summer jobs, said Geoff Heller, the company's director of human resources.

Most of the positions focus on taking incoming calls from customers inquiring about existing accounts. The company also is seeking to fill some English/Spanish and English/French bilingual positions.

Candidates will need to have communication and computer skills and be required to pass a background check and drug screen, the company said.

Source: http://www.omaha.com

Company hiring 150 workers for Reno call center

RENO, Nev.—The Hartford Financial Services Group plans to hire 150 full-time workers by spring for a Reno call center.

The Connecticut-based company says the workers will take service calls from members of AARP, the nation's largest organization for people 50 and older.

The Hartford and AARP have a business relationship that includes automobile insurance.

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Call centre workers more likely to fall sick

A British study has shown that workers associated with customer services, such as call centre operators, are more likely to be off sick than those with different jobs.

According to statistics from the Office of National Statistics, customer service workers are twice as likely to call in sick as the average employee.

The survey revealed that 4.8 per cent of the customer service workers had taken at least a day off in the previous week, compared with the national average of 2.5 per cent.

It certainly might explain those long waits, listening to the hold music, receiver pressed to your ear.

Karen Darby, a call center veteran who founded the price comparison service Simply Switch, said that she was not surprised by the figures.

She said that the findings had little to do with call centre workers being more sickly than average.

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Call centre workers stressed and depressed, study finds

Canada's half a million call-centre workers are suffering higher rates of stress and emotional difficulty than those in other industries, a study released Monday says.

Workers in call centres are more likely to access their employee-assistance programs than employees in other industries, the survey said.

According to data compiled by Shepell-fgi, a provider of workplace health services, seven per cent of call-centre employees access EAP compared with five per cent in all other industries. Younger workers are also far more likely to seek help - 42 per cent in call centres versus 17 per cent overall.

As well, call-centre worker accesses to EAP programs were more likely to be for emotional issues (15 per cent versus 11 per cent overall) and stress (19 per cent versus 15 per cent overall).

"There is no question, working in a call centre is unique and has its own concerns," said Rod Phillips, CEO of Shepell-fgi, which describes itself as Canada's leading provider of workplace health services.

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The Indian call centre workers who turn to drugs to stay awake on the night shift

Call centre workers in India are turning to drugs to keep them awake while speaking to British callers.

There is growing evidence of staff smoking cannabis during work hours and abusing over-the-counter medicine to keep them going through their long night shifts.

More than a quarter of call centre workers used drugs, mainly cannabis, compared to just 4.1 per cent of the wider population, according to a study published in the Indian Journal of Sleep Medicine.

Last week, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime visited India's outsourcing capital of Bangalore to warn India's largest call centre companies of the problem and persuade them to cooperate with the first detailed survey on the issue.

Pradeep Kumar, the UN's project coordinator, said it is difficult to convince the major companies running call centres of the urgency of the issue.

'Denial runs pretty deep.' he said. 'And it's not because they don't know of the problem. They are vaguely aware of it, but it's not really a priority.'

He said the UNODC had decided to target Indian call centres after being alerted to the growing problem of drug use by doctors running clinics near the main call centre areas in Bangalore and Gurgaon on outskirts of Delhi.

'It was a matter of anecdotal evidence coming from the GPs, psychiatrists and counsellors, who say that they do see a large crop of young people coming in with drug abuse problems, which was not the case five years back.'

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A call centre in your bedroom?

The trend for call centre workers to be based from home is set to increase rapidly over the next five years as businesses look to cut customer service costs.

Analyst Datamonitor claims the use of outsourced home agents is now becoming a mainstream option for businesses.

There are currently around 47,000 home-based outsourced call centre workers working 20 hours per week or more globally - predominantly in the US - and Datamonitor predicts this will rise to almost 224,000 by 2012.

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