THE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES OF DISABLED PEOPLE AT CALL CENTERS: SOME CASES FROM TURKEY

• Published in: European integration studies (Kaunas University of Technology) no. 5; pp. 205 - 212
• Main Authors: Kocak, Orhan, Kavi, Ersin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kaunas University of Technology 12.01.2012
• Subjects: people; employment of disabled people; call center
• ISSN: 1822-8402; 2335-8831
• DOI: 10.5755/j01.eis.0.5.1098

The issue of employment is very important subject for countries where the rates of unemployment is high in the world. While the issue of unemployment is seen a major subject in some countries, other countries see it more minor. However, every country, including developed, faces with unemployment depending on their development level. The lack of skills and knowledge, matching problems and legal and regulatory issues in labor markets may cause and increase the unemployment rates of countries. In addition, there are different groups in unemployed people who are socially and economically excluded such as youths, old people, women, uneducated and disabled people. Especially, these excluded groups are benefited of the emergence of information and communication technologies. In this sense, the last decade, disabled people had many employment opportunities by using information and communication technologies either at workplace or at home. In this mean, call centers offer new opportunities for disabled people in terms of workplace environment. When it is investigated the data related to call centers in Turkey and the world, it is seen that call centers have a potential on employment and a high turnover rate. Call centers are popular businesses and day by day they are becoming an important employment sources for the disabled people who can reach that kind of jobs and adopt easily with their disabilities. Also, because call centers don’t require high level qualifications, they make disabled people, who can’t reach education opportunities, more socially included. Technological developments make the call center businesses more adaptive towards flexible working models and implement these technologies into their work processes. With the new emerging technologies (information and communication technologies), call centers can use either offices or homes as their work places. Thus, disabled people, who can’t go to work places from home, can work at their homes and take part in working life by using information and communication technologies and the internet. Of course, there are some risks when disabled people work at home, they may become excluded from social life and environment. Also, when disabled people work at home they will feel more relax, but they can’t be integrated into social life and be excluded from the society. In order to include disabled people into society, call centers businesses should establish their offices rather than giving jobs to the homes. With this sense, call center projects are developed so as to provide employment opportunities for disabled people in the world and Turkey. The common point of these call centers projects is to include disabled people into working life in short term by giving them necessary training. However, legal and social responsibilities are going to be completed for companies by giving disabled people working opportunities. With this study, employment opportunities are provided by information technologies were examined for disabled at call centers in the world and Turkey. In the first part of the paper, the definition of disabled people, their inclusion and employment opportunities are studied. In the second part, the definition of call centers, their working processes and if they are an employment source are examined. At the final part, disabled people and call centers relations and call centers’ contribution to employment of disabled people are evaluated with some examples. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.5.1098