call center employees

A landscape article published recently by the Voice of America talks about the effects of increased outsourcing and offshoring on countries like Pakistan. Part of their research was conducted in Karachi and some quotes from call center employees based there have been included in the piece. The bottom line is that the rapid growth of IT BPO and offshore software development have drastically increased earning potential and have changed the lives of tens of thousands of families in Pakistan. The effects are not limited to natives of the large cities, as any manager in a Software or Telcom company will tell you. There is typically a large percentage of employees who have come from smaller towns.

Once major infrastructure development projects currently in progress in secondary cities like Faisalabad and Hyderabad are completed, the footprint of tech companies in the country will widen considerably and the IT workforce from smaller towns will have additional - closer - destinations for fast-growth careers.

The quote I particularly liked from the VoA article was one that referenced a Karachi based call center worker:

“It improves my language skills, it improves my sales skills, it improves my confidence and all that. It gives you experience how to work, how to deal with people,” Ahsan Saeed, a young call center worker in Karachi, Pakistan.

The key thing to note here is that its not just about the increased wages, but also the personal growth that these opportunities are providing. They are preparing people like Ahsan to operate seamlessly in an increasingly globalized world. When additional changes occur an dnew opportunities present themselves, Ahsan and tens of thousands like him, will be prepared to grab the bull by the horns.

At another point in the article, the author, Bill Rogers, highlights the broader picture, confirming the poverty alleviation effects of the IT and BPO industries:

Advances in communications technologies have spurred the growth of so-called call centers, centralized offices where most of the phone calls for a particular business can be answered. These centers, often located in countries like India or Pakistan, where wages are relatively low, serve both domestic and international markets and have contributed to economic growth by providing well-paid jobs and new skills to workers who otherwise might not have had such opportunities.