It may be a growing industry which employs one in 20 people in the North East but many still see a job in the contact centre industry as nothing but a temporary stopgap on the way to a job they really want to do, according to new research from Durham University. Christopher Knox reports.

WITH the decline of some big North East industries like shipbuilding and coalmining the rise of the call centre business helped to reshape the region’s economy.

In fact, the industry provides work for 60,000 people in the North East, across more than 145 call centres – figures which have increased over recent years as companies look to support their ever-increasing web presence with extra call handlers and save money by outsourcing sales, marketing or customer care services.

However, a new study suggests that most people view call centre work as a source of temporary employment, with little opportunity for career development.

The Durham University study interviewed call centre staff in the North East, as well as those working in India, and found that most viewed their job as a staging post on the way to better things.

While it found some workers were reasonably content with their conditions, most complained that low rates of pay and the lack of opportunities for promotion and advancement saw them view their jobs as “dead ends”.

The findings add to the long-held and often undeserved reputation of an industry which has tried to modernise itself and faces the cost of dealing with a high turnover of staff, including perpetually hiring and retraining new workers.

Dr Jon Warren, a senior research associate in the Department of Geography at Durham University and author of the study, said: “Call centre workers taking part in the study both in the UK and India expressed a lot of aspiration and had plans for the future.

“But they saw themselves achieving this by leaving call centre work and moving on rather than by staying within the industry.

“People in the North East preferred call centre work to some other forms of employment such as working in retail or factories.

“But they mainly viewed their work as transitional and it wasn’t something they wanted to do on a long-term basis.

“Often call centres see the solution as offering better incentives and bonuses for performance or allowing greater flexibility such as allowing people to work from home.

“But if you really want to retain workers, providing better pay and a clear opportunity for career progression would more adequately meet the needs of the workers we surveyed.”