The Kintyre Forum

Employees made redundant recently from the Call Centre at Drumore met today at Craigard with a delegation from a firm who are hoping to employ them in the near future.

After an enjoyable lunch hopes among the ex staff of Contact4 were high and hopefully most of them will be back in employment soon, albeit on a small scale.

The jobs will entail doing much the same as they did for Contact4 but as one member commented. "Hopefully a bit more responsible than the last lot"

S

Great news

What is the timescale - I realise such an estimate can be only speculative right now?

M

Mary G wrote:Great news

What is the timescale - I realise such an estimate can be only speculative right now?

M

Not sure at the moment but staff were impressed with the overall professional approach by the managing director and his team who stressed that it will be on a small scale for the moment. Only invited ex employees were there. Hopefully it takes legs.

Maybe one of our council reps know more about the timescale?

S

Whether - the existing purpose built call centre is reused for this or indeed other projects that are in hand is a moot point. As for references regarding responsibility, it did pay some peoples wages for two years and it was lack of cashflow that ultimately led to the demise of the previous organisation.

wizard&paradox wrote:Whether - the existing purpose built call centre is reused for this or indeed other projects that are in hand is a moot point. .

Eh? What do you mean?

wizard&paradox wrote:As for references regarding responsibility, it did pay some peoples wages for two years and it was lack of cashflow that ultimately led to the demise of the previous organisation.

While it did pay wages it certainly had considerable help from the HIE.....

What's all this about reliable staff?
Surely it's up to the employer to recruit suitable staff during the interview process.

I agree with £3.73 and I see little point in expanding on what he has said as his views are well founded and correct.

Reliable staff - Recruitment well if you have interiviewed locally you would know how difficult it is to find enough suitable employees who are willing to work for a minimum wage.

One of the greatest attractions for an employer should be a core of employees who turn up on time and have good attendance this generally cannot be determined during an interview. The concept of low attrition and a low shrinkage due to attendance issues should you would think be the greatest positive of an employer considering investing in Campbeltown.

From experience this was not proven to be a paticular benifit to employers within the call centre.

A lot can be gained from the interview process,
for example, candidates should provide at least 2
employment references which the new employer should
check.

petewick wrote:A lot can be gained from the interview process, for example, candidates should provide at least 2 employment references which the new employer should check.

I can't comment on the recent issues within the call centre at Drumore Park but I can put in my tuppence worth regarding your above post. In my opinion you have a very naive and simplistic view on the process of recruitment.

Businesses like Call Centres who have just won a large contract have to possibly recruit immediately. They may have in the past few weeks put in place a bank of staff who had already been interviewed with a view to employing them if the tender was successful.

Previous employers don't answer right away with references and employees may have to be recruited on their performence on the day of their interview. It's not just one or two employees that are being recruited, it could be 30 or more.

It also has to be remembered that a large proportion of the recruits are school leavers with no previous employment records and with a bank of careers officers behind them trying to place school leavers to justify their own jobs.

Pressure to get some of the youngsters off their books may lead to agents being a bit forgetful that wee Hamish and Mary persistantly forgot to turn up for appointments at the careers office and would not be the best bet as a reliable employee who would turn up on time or even manage to attend for 2 days in a row.........so how is an employer supposed to guage what they are like as employees. Add to that the fact that they still think they are in school and that their job will wait for them no matter how many days they play "truant".

S

Well look how the place ended up due to their haste in getting the place up and running.
Down the pan.
Its far from naive to suggest that potential employers check work history and references.
If they did, businesess may survive.
Get a grip on reality Spangle

petewick wrote:Well look how the place ended up due to their haste in getting the place up and running.
Down the pan

I doubt if the employees would appreciate that comment. They had no control over the demise of the place. As pointed out above by a more experienced and knowlegable poster than you or I the closeure was due to cashflow problems that were probably not there at the outset.

petewick wrote:Its far from naive to suggest that potential employers check work history and references.
If they did, businesess may survive

..........How can school leavers have a work history?

petewick wrote:Get a grip on reality Spangle

I lost my grip on reality the minute I registered on here Petewick and as it is obvious that neither of us don't know what we are talking about this interview is terminated. Security will see you off the premises.

S

petewick wrote:Well look how the place ended up due to their haste in getting the place up and running.
Down the pan.
Its far from naive to suggest that potential employers check work history and references.
If they did, businesess may survive.
Get a grip on reality Spangle

The current building after a honeymoon period will cost circa £20,000 per quarter payable to the landlords HIE
There is then rates, water, electricity, maintainance and all the other costs associated with running a business.
For a company to consider using a purpose built 150 seat centre in Campbletown effectively they would require to use the space. There was opportunites in the past 2 years to get the headcount of the centre up to 100, it was not possible to do this simply due to a lack of willing suitable applicants and of course the not so large attraction of working for a minimum wage.
Should the centre of hit 100 heads then another bunch of grants would of been initiated!
Whether Contact4 had any intent of staying longer than 2 years can be debated over and over, they made substancial investment in a well known external media company in the hope of bringing more inbound work. Of the back of that the local centre tried to recruit and had developed plans in place to increase its employee level.
Needless to say this plan failed, Contact4 was missold a deal and lost its money, when the US Sub-Prime market started to loose cash this had a severe impact on many businesses in the UK several of which worked in partnership with the finance wings of Contact4. The majority of these lenders and partners have gone out of business as such doing so owing money to Contact4, this had the obvious impact of reduced cashflow.
The signs were obvious 79 employees during the Scottish Power Campaign, (inbound), Scottish Power is bought out by Spanish Power company and reduces its external costs by bringing its services back in house.
Contact4 is left with a work force who are developed in terms of computer systems specific to Scottish Power and inbound customer services.
Despite several offers of various outsourced campaigns none were actioned or accepted to whatever vision Mr Pearse Flynn had.
So what do you do when your employee base is left with the option of working on his Creditfix campaign one which is outbound cold call sales.
Most left some gave it a go and did not like it or were managed due to performance.
The few who were left began to feel the turning of the screws when HQ realised they were loosing partners and cashflow was becoming minimal I do not wish to expound too much detail here, although it would of been more honest and upfron if Mr Flynn had admitted last September that the centre was getting micromanaged with an aim to closure.
After the swift and from a company point of view hidden closure of the Campbeltown Centre, It was evident that Contact4 planned to do the same to their 3 Irish Sites... this has been done.

Going forward unless more than one company is willing to use the centre and HIE is willing for more than one company to do so then the Custom Built property will be a bit of a folly.

There are of course options to start a smaller team in a more practical space.

spangles wrote: I lost my grip on reality the minute I registered on here Petewick and as it is obvious that neither of us don't know what we are talking about this interview is terminated. Security will see you off the premises.

S

That was cute.