The UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) is launching a landmark programme to address a key skills shortage in middle to senior management in the South African business-process outsourcing (BPO) and call-centre industry. The skills shortage has been identified in recent research studies on the local industry.
According to a recent department of trade and industry report, the South African BPO and call-centre industry is fast gaining momentum and gradually becoming a preferred BPO and offshore destination for the United States and the European market. This is largely due to the country’s favourable time zone differences, healthy business climate, deregulation of the telecommunications industry, language, political stability and cultural ties.
The report, however, identified a skills shortage in middle to senior management as one of the key areas holding back South Africa’s competitiveness in the global call-centre industry.
Albert Rossouw, director of the new advanced programme in call centre leadership at the UCT GSB, said the programme responds directly to this call for action. “The programme addresses these key shortages head on and will go a long way to developing management and organisational capacity in the South African call centre industry. It is a nine-month modular-based curriculum that is designed to develop people both in terms of their personal mastery and in their business and management capability.”
The first module gets under way in February.
For more information on the programme, contact 021 406 1346 or go to www.gsb.uct.ac.za/callcentre