THE number of people working at call centres in Scotland will more than double to 37,000 by the year 2000 as more companies set up telephone-based operations North of the Border, according to a survey conducted on behalf of Scottish Enterprise.
Call centres have emerged as a flourishing new source of employment in Central Scotland during the 1990s. Their functions range from selling banking and insurance services to giving advice on how to solve computer software problems.
Almost half the 16,000 call centre jobs created so far are in the greater Glasgow area, and the survey by the universities of Strathclyde and Stirling concludes that Glasgow will also capture most of the jobs to be created over the next two years.
Edinburgh accounts for 15% of the call centre jobs in Scotland, and Dunfermline - where Sky television has a huge customer service centre - ranks third with 10%.
The survey highlights three main reasons for locating call centres north of the Border.
First and foremost is the availability of a well-trained and flexible labour force with a large number of job-seekers, including graduates and school-leavers.
The other key attractions are Scotland's excellent telecommunications infrastructure and the availability of suitable office space.
While call centres bring welcome jobs to Scotland, many of them skilled, the downside is that the working hours are irregular and most of the posts being created are part-time.
More than three-quarters of the 119 call centres surveyed operate a shift system that allows them to remain open for up to 17 hours a day.
And while two-thirds of Scottish call centre jobs are full-time at present, this proportion is set to fall to just half by the end of the century. Most of the part-timers are women.
Some of the larger call centres require access to a large pool of relatively unskilled labour within easy commuting distance. A case in point is the new call centre being built in Hamilton by First Direct, the telephone banking arm of Midland Bank, which will employ 5000 staff.
But most call centres in Scotland are much smaller - the average number of employees is 138 - and not all of them are restricted to simple clerical processing functions.
McQueen in Edinburgh, for example, employs computer science graduates fluent in foreign languages to advise customers throughout Europe on how to sort out their software problems.
Tom Hart, the business operations director at McQueen, said: ''Scotland provides an excellent environment in which to live and work, and we have experienced few problems in recruiting high-calibre well-qualified and multi-lingual staff.''
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article