State of the Workforce
Herkimer, Madison and Oneida Counties

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Financial Services

Key Factors

Call center staff represent a major entry-level pathway for the region’s workers.
For call center operations, success and profitability are extremely dependent upon the people who work there and how they respond to the company’s and customers’ questions, needs and demands. Call centers provide employment opportunities for students, individuals reentering the labor market after an extended absence, and individuals seeking to attach to the workforce after a period on public assistance.

Soft skills for both of the above-mentioned sectors are vital, and would include:

• Work ethic — a motivating belief that employees owe their employer a full day of diligent work, including following supervisors’ instructions.
• Courtesy — the habitual use of “please,” “thank you,” “excuse me” and “may I help you” in dealing with customers, supervisors and colleagues.
• Teamwork — the ability to share responsibilities, confer with others, honor commitments, help others do their jobs and seek help when needed.
• Self-discipline and self-confidence — the ability to arrange one’s own tasks for best performance, to learn from experience, to ask questions and correct mistakes, and to absorb criticism and direction without feeling defeated, resentful or insulted.
• Conformity to prevailing norms — the ability to govern one’s dress, grooming, body language, tone of voice and vocabulary according to the particular style of a given workplace.
• Language proficiency — the ability to speak, read and write standard English in a businesslike way.

Policy Actions

The WIB’s NITAS initiative is expected to help financial services employers deal with major IT workforce development needs. The WIB will also seek to work with existing call center operations and the Women’s Employment Resource Center to see whether WERC’s highly successful call center training can be adapted for a wider constituency.

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