honestcomm.com

We live in an era of change, social and cultural mobility is a frequent occurence, and it means that we are now working in much closer partnership with people from accross the globe. Your Cardiff based call centre may have counterparts working in Egypt or Manchester – telecomunications have developed so much that geography means little to your office boundaries.

With this in mind, your work colleague could work 2 desks down, or 2,000 miles away – and could come from a vastly different culture.  Few employers offer courses that “teach” its employees how others live – and it’s something that could really empower a workforce.

Working in a call centre often means seeing around 1,000 different faces every day, and it is not easy to pin point who comes from where, or believes what. Tolerance of others people beliefs and practices is important to a lot more people these days – once upon a time, very few were prepared to deal with anyone different. Now, as a society, we are far more open to diversity.

But for those who have had little exposure to it, coming into a workplace that has “a bit of everything” can be a shocing experince – and offense can be caused by people who are worried about causing offense! Ignorance is not an excuse – so educate your staff!