Developing people capabilities in knowledge intensive remote services

Abstract

A phenomenon of the information technology age is call centres, and these workplaces communicate interesting challenges for human resource practitioners. This paper presents the human resource practices followed in a technical support call centre. Most of the call centre literature discusses cases where the customer support task is routine and low in complexity. Call centres are considered as modern equivalents of factory sweatshops in this literature. Technical support, however, is an example of a knowledge intensive support service and it was found that in such a service industry, there is a need for a very different kind of HR policy that specifically treats employees as a valuable organisational resource.