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I'll give a counter-point here. While I agree with a lot of what you said about the challenges of these roles, my company is actively providing opportunities f

by sbarre 3y ago

I'll give a counter-point here. While I agree with a lot of what you said about the challenges of these roles, my company is actively providing opportunities for our call centre folks to access internal re-training programs (designed in collaboration with professional educational institutions) to bring them into junior development and product roles within the company, as we transition more and more to a self-serve model (and therefore need less and less call centre agents). Obviously this is not for everyone (our first cohort was 60 people and we had just over 1,000 applicants, out of which only about 30% met the qualifications). It's been a very successful first cohort in 2022-23 and one thing these re-trained folks bring to the table as transferable skills is a very clear understanding of the problems and shortcomings of our service offerings, having been at the "failure" end of many processes as you put it. As a result, many of them are very quickly contributing way more than a junior who is coming in straight from bootcamps or the outside, and are helping improve our products in meaningful ways that might have been hard, or expensive, to suss out by our existing product teams. So if these jobs didn't exist, we wouldn't have these smart humans coming into our teams with that real-world experience.

Avicebron 3y ago
And that seems great that your company is doing that, but I'm not positive that is the norm. Also what happens to the 70% who "don't meet qualifications?" They now no longer have a job and have told they aren't able to succeed or advance
- sbarre 3y ago
  This definitely isn't the norm, but hopefully we see it more as time goes on. Hiring good people is hard, and if you have folks in your organization who have been there a long time (the program is only open to employees who have been with the company for more than 5 years), then why not reward that loyalty with an opportunity to transform yourself at the same time as the business transforms itself? > what happens to the 70% who "don't meet qualifications?" They now no longer have a job and have told they aren't able to succeed or advance They stay in their current (unionized) job, and can still access other opportunities for advancement within the company, like they always have. We have a long and proven track record of promoting out of our call centres and into our business and management practices, this is just a specific program to help grow out digitization business. This isn't a "retrain or layoff" situation, sorry if that was somehow implied. Our company will continue to need call centre humans for many many years to come I suspect. We just need less of them. Also for anyone who is accepted into the re-training program, their job is secure until they choose to take a new role. At any point during the training program (which lasts about 16 weeks), they can go back to their old job if this isn't what they expected or wanted. They also continue to get their salary and benefits while they're in the full-time training program. The only commitment is that if they go through the full program and take on a new role, they need to stay in that role for 2 years or more, otherwise they have to re-pay a prorated amount for the training program (because we pay our training partner for each person who takes the program) based on how soon after the program they left.
deleted 3y ago
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by sbarre 3y ago

Avicebron 3y ago

And that seems great that your company is doing that, but I'm not positive that is the norm. Also what happens to the 70% who "don't meet qualifications?" They now no longer have a job and have told they aren't able to succeed or advance

sbarre 3y ago
This definitely isn't the norm, but hopefully we see it more as time goes on. Hiring good people is hard, and if you have folks in your organization who have been there a long time (the program is only open to employees who have been with the company for more than 5 years), then why not reward that loyalty with an opportunity to transform yourself at the same time as the business transforms itself? > what happens to the 70% who "don't meet qualifications?" They now no longer have a job and have told they aren't able to succeed or advance They stay in their current (unionized) job, and can still access other opportunities for advancement within the company, like they always have. We have a long and proven track record of promoting out of our call centres and into our business and management practices, this is just a specific program to help grow out digitization business. This isn't a "retrain or layoff" situation, sorry if that was somehow implied. Our company will continue to need call centre humans for many many years to come I suspect. We just need less of them. Also for anyone who is accepted into the re-training program, their job is secure until they choose to take a new role. At any point during the training program (which lasts about 16 weeks), they can go back to their old job if this isn't what they expected or wanted. They also continue to get their salary and benefits while they're in the full-time training program. The only commitment is that if they go through the full program and take on a new role, they need to stay in that role for 2 years or more, otherwise they have to re-pay a prorated amount for the training program (because we pay our training partner for each person who takes the program) based on how soon after the program they left.

deleted 3y ago

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