This case highlights two different issues. First, it is an example of an outsourcing strategy adopted by a call center, and second, it highlights some methods used to recruit for scarce skills. It is based on the authors’

research with one of the largest global providers of Human Resources services (a Fortune Global 500 company)

which provides career and staffing services for job seekers and employers, and with a technical customer services call center for a multinational IT company.

Blueberry is a subsidiary of a multinational IT company based in the US (Globalchip) which established its European help desk three years ago. Currently, it directly employs 40 staff whose contracts are permanent. New recruits need to be fluent in a European language other than English and have technical competence (computer skills, some product knowledge) and customer service skills. The recruitment of individuals with these relevant technical and language skills has been very difficult.

Currently, the Customer Service Unit includes fluent speakers of Spanish, French, Italian, Finnish, Dutch, German and Greek. The majority are non-UK nationals.

In the United States, the parent company, Globalchip, operates a similar help desk for Asia. When the Asian Help Desk was established, the strategy adopted, after much discussion and deliberation, was to outsource the whole unit to an agency (Succuro) which recruits the staff, employs them and manages them with respect to personal development, discipline and performance management. There is a very tight budget for salaries. Blueberry managers are responsible for the overall operation of the unit.

The HR Director of Blueberry’s parent company asked the HR partner, Liz McDonald, who is responsible for liaising with the European Help desk, to identify the steps which would need to be taken to put a similar outsourced help desk in place. She was also asked to collaborate with her US colleague to determine the difficulties that Succoro currently face in recruiting individuals with the required skills and competencies.

Her enquiries have shown that Globalchip has a three-year contact with Succuro, which is due for renewal soon. A ‘service-level agreement’ was produced by the company, which clearly indicated what level of performance was expected of the agency, for instance, time to fill vacancies, provision of statistical data about the levels of absence and performance of agents.

Succoro is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit suitable people within the budget constraints. However, it is an important contract which it wants to retain. The agency has been performing well and exceeding the service-

level agreement in some indicators. Succoro use an online application form, and then screen applicants in a telephone interview. Globalchip managers are involved in the final selection decision.

Liz McDonald is a member of her local HR network, which is a group of HR practitioners who meet every three months to share their knowledge and experience in order to help with their continuing professional development.

One of the other members, Jim Gray, works for an agency which runs a similar operation for a mobile phone company in a different area of the UK. Jim Gray offered to share his experience of recruiting those with languages and technical skills.

The main difficulty is trying to attract applicants to jobs which are paying a little below the average rate.

Our agency cannot afford to use some of the more popular websites, because they are expensive. We need to use other ways of targeting people who might be willing to live and work in the UK – almost to sell the experience. We try to use networks, like websites for those who want to travel and work abroad, to advertise. We target social networking sites like Facebook and Gumtree. We are having real difficulties getting speakers of, for example, Dutch and Finnish to come to work here in our UK site.

Jim added, It takes about eight weeks to fill a vacancy, though for some of the more common languages, there sometimes is a pool of applicants in our skills bank.

We advertise on our website in the UK but have links posted in other national websites for our agency. Liz is still investigating the implications of outsourcing for Blueberry.

Question

1 How would outsourcing change the HR function?
2 What is a service-level agreement?
3 Which methods would you use to attract applicants to their international call center in the UK?
4 To what extent is this an example of ‘viral’ recruitment?
5 Companies target applicants who are predominantly young people under 30 years old who use social network sites. Is this potentially discriminatory?