CASE STUDY

Name: - Sameer Prasad

Roll No: - 82
Subject: - International Business Environment
Faculty: - Dr. Mahima Singh
 Pratibha Institute of Business Management
Department of MBA
CIE 3- Caselet
Submission Date- 14 Oct. 2020

Call Centre job migrated to INDIA

Case taken from The International Business Environment, by Janet Morrison

Call centers were once heralded as the providers of much‐needed jobs in areas
where the decline in manufacturing industry had left economic stagnation and
high unemployment. Areas such as the northeast of England and Wales attracted
call centers, largely in banking and financial services. An element of their
attraction for businesses was the low‐cost environment which they offered, and
for employees, job and training opportunities. However, the reality turned out to
be less rosy than expectations had suggested, and the quest for cost savings has
led to a migration of these jobs to low‐cost locations, particularly in India.

Low pay, poor working conditions and limited career prospects have led to high
staff turnover and employees seeing this type of work as casual or temporary. A
number of high‐profile companies, including HSBC, Aviva (insurance) and
BT(British Telecom), have shifted call center jobs to India. HSBC, the world’s
second largest bank, cut 4000 UK jobs, relocating the work to India, Malaysia
and China, in one of the largest transfers of British jobs to overseas locations.
Its chief executive said: ‘As one of the world’s largest financial services
companies, HSBC has a responsibility to all its stakeholders to remain
efficient and competitive’. For HSBC’s UK employees, the company’s
advertising slogan, ‘the world’s local bank’, had a particularly hollow sound.

Announcing the shift of two call centers to India, BT’s management highlighted
the dilemma – the need to seek the low‐cost locations, but also sensitivity to the
employment implications for current UK employees. BT has outsourced jobs to
service companies in the UK, reflecting a trend of ‘outsourcing’ which has
developed in the industry. Under an outsourcing contract, a specialist call center
company agrees to provide call center services for an organization such as BT.
Garland Call Centers is one of these companies, employing 1300 people,
making it the largest private sector employer in Hartlepool in the northeast of
England. Customers phoning a helpline with a query regarding a gas provider,
mobile phone provider or bank will probably have no idea they are speaking to a
Garland employee rather than directly to the provider. For Garland, the
attraction of Hartlepool was a pool of potential workers, many with a university
education, with the added advantage that, because of high regional
unemployment, they are willing to work for as little as £10,000–13,000 a year.
A third of Garland’s employees have university degrees.

By comparison, call center jobs in India are mostly held by graduates, but the
starting salary of the Indian graduate is £2000 per year. Here, specialist call
center companies are growing rapidly, fueled by large numbers of graduates who
speak English. These are considered desirable jobs, with relatively good
conditions by local standards, but rates of staff retention are low, with annual
turnover running at 40–50 per cent. Indian workers have found it difficult to
adjust to the night shifts which are required of them, to deal with customers in
time zones the other side of the globe. Then there are the pressures of the job,
combined with the language and cultural adjustment needed to deal with
customers in the US and Europe. They, like counterparts elsewhere, are unlikely
to see their careers in call centres. The future of call centre workers, wherever
they are, will depend largely on the extent to which automated technology is
able to take over many routine tasks, through voice recognition, email and the
internet.

Case questions

1) In what ways can it be said that globalization is affecting the call Centre
industry?
Ans:
I. In this age of globalization, it is getting kind of’ hard to imagine that any business
or industry whatsoever, is going to remain the exclusive purview of any specific
country.
II. Globalization is the procedure of rapid incorporation of different countries that is
occurring in the process of better foreign trade and foreign investment.
Globalization has certainly minimized the distance between different countries
and has turned the entire world into one single market place.
III. Due to globalization the government of several nations have eased up the trade
and sanctioned additional flexibility in their trade procedure to offer equal
opportunities to MNC’s in their domestic market. The Indian government also
had to do the same due to the pressure from the WTO (World Trade
Organization).
 IV. The introduction of the MNC’s also affected the Indian corporate as well as the
social culture. Globalization affected Indian system start from the basic facilities
in both positive and negative manner. Government has initiated quite a few
developmental programs for encouraging the living standard of people.
V. The call center industry is one of the most rapidly growing areas of work globally.
Drawing upon a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to studying call
centers, the book and report reviewed here provide sociological insights on the
process of globalization and the transformation of work and labor relations.
VI. Issues addressed include resource strategies, managers and management, jobs and
job skills, control and autonomy, and union organizing. The studies illuminate the
need to rethink some of the logic that drives work organization in the call center
industry and offer strategies for collective mobilization, including the role of
unions in protecting the rights of workers within and across nations.
VII. In India Low pay, poor working conditions and limited career prospects have led
to high staff turnover and employees seeing this type of work as casual or
temporary.
VIII. These are the ways which is said that globalization is affecting the call Centre
industry.

2) HSBC’s chief executive referred to the interests of stakeholders – what

did he mean?
Ans:
I. As HSBC is one of the high profile companies in India, Aviva (insurance) and
BT(British Telecom), have shifted call center jobs to India. HSBC, the world’s
second largest bank, cut 4000 UK jobs, relocating the work to India, Malaysia and
China, in one of the largest transfers of British jobs to overseas locations.
II. Its chief executive said: ‘As one of the world’s largest financial services companies,
HSBC has a responsibility to all its stakeholders to remain efficient and competitive’.
For HSBC’s UK employees, the company’s advertising slogan, the world’s local
bank’, had a particularly hollow sound.
III. A stakeholder is a party that has an interest in a company and can either affect or be
affected by the business. The primary stakeholders in a typical corporation are
its investors, employees, customers, and suppliers. However, with the increasing
attention on corporate social responsibility, the concept has been extended to include
communities, governments, and trade associations.
IV. Stakeholder is a group of persons who have a direct or indirect interest in the
performance of the Business. They will gain when business performance improves.
they are owner, shareholders, workers and managers. Owners will receive more
profits, shareholders will get more dividends, workers can expect better salary
/working conditions and managers will get higher positions.