Calling for more jobs in Great Falls

If local economic development efforts are successful, more Great Falls workers may be wearing telephone headsets.

According to a recent report, service centers are a good fit for the local economy and should be recruited.

By JO DEE BLACK
Tribune Staff Writer

Montana’s work force has been touted as a good labor pool for the industry because of a higher-than-average high school graduation rate and the lack of prevalent accents.

The area’s most recognizable incoming call center, National Electronics Warranty, employs roughly 550 workers, and officials say there is room for growth.

"The statistic I’ve heard is that 3 to 5 percent of a community’s employment could be corporate servicing jobs," said John Kramer, president of Great Falls Development Authority. Using those numbers, Great Falls labor force could conceivably support between 1,000 and 1,800 of those jobs.

Kramer cringes at the use of the phrase "call center."

"That’s a name that died out about 10 years ago," he said. "A better name is service center. Service center employees aren’t calling people at 6 p.m. to sell them something."

N.E.W.’s local manager, Beth McFadden, said her company fights a misconception that employees call customers. Rather, employees at N.E.W.’s two Great Falls call centers take incoming calls for everything from people needing information about appliance warranties to those who want to order office furniture parts.

N.E.W. contracts to provide the services with a host of national companies.

McFadden said entry level jobs at N.E.W. pay more than minimum wage and include a full benefit package. Posted job openings continue to attract a good-sized application pool.

"This is still a very good labor market for us," she said. "If it wasn’t, we couldn’t employ so many people."

Last week, N.E.W. trainer Michelle Baran walked about two dozen employees through a software training session. Many were new hires.

"Most of the people who apply for jobs with us are looking for careers, and we offer a lot of advancement opportunities," McFadden said.

Kramer said the pay range for service center jobs runs from $6.50 to more than $300 per hour.

"The level of sophistication of service centers has increased as companies have cut back their own work forces," he said.

For example, a national insurance company opened a service center in Iowa, where Kramer formerly worked in economic development. The center employs about 30 actuaries who serve small agencies that don’t have the expertise. Those were well-paid jobs, he said.

Untapped pool

Bill Fredrick is a member of The Wadley-Donovan Group, a consulting firm hired by the Great Falls Development Authority to identify industries the city should work to attract.

The firm’s preliminary report places business and information services at the top of the list.

Fredrick said that category includes everything from technical service centers — where employees help people with software questions — to "back offices" for companies based in other cities. Those "back offices" provide administrative support, such as internal payroll functions or insurance claims processing.

"The starting salary for those types of jobs runs from $20,000 to $30,000 annually," Fredrick said.

Such service centers provide an opportunity for people with some post-high school education or college degrees, he said.

"Right now in Great Falls, existing service centers provide a good opportunity for people who want to get training, but there is a component of your labor pool that is not satisfied with those types of jobs," he said. "That’s the labor market we want to tap."

Well educated

Service centers are a natural fit for the local work force, which is well-educated and has the reputation of a good work ethic, Kramer said.

"The high school graduation rate for our kids is higher than the national average," he noted. "And a large percent of our kids get some college education."

High school dropout rates are difficult to compare because states use different data to calculate the statistic. The National Center for Education Statistics reported nationwide in 2000, 10.9 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds were high school dropouts.

The same year in Great Falls, 3.8 percent of high school students dropped out. Statewide, 4.1 percent of high school students dropped out that year.

Of the Great Falls students who graduated in 2001, 88 percent said they planned to attend either a two-year technical school or a four-year university of college.

Fredrick agrees the local education level is a plus.

"You also have an older population which is more mature, a benefit for many companies," he said.

As far as the lack of a prevalent accent, Fredrick said it’s not as big of a factor in the decision of where to locate a new service center as it has been in the past.

"In most cases, companies are looking for cost opportunities and the quality of labor," he said. "In your case, it would be profit-enhancing for companies, but not a deciding factor."

Mid-sized centers

Compared to the national average, N.E.W. is somewhat of a super-sized center.

McFadden said she has been told the average-sized service center in the United States has 30 employees.

"There are some megacenters with 1,500 employees, but that gets to be too many people to manage," she said.

The companies Great Falls should recruit are those that need about 100 people to staff a center," Fredrick said.

"You don’t want to go after anything too big, or the company will come in and say the local labor pool won’t be able to support us," he said.

Second language

Although Montanans generally don’t have strong accents, they don’t have a reputation for being well versed in second languages, either.

The local pool of bilingual folks isn’t huge, but so far it has been enough to meet N.E.W.’s need for Spanish-speaking employees, McFadden said.

"We have a real good team of Spanish-speaking customer service representatives right now, but that is not to say we don’t need more," she said.

Drought doesn’t matter

One of the most appealing aspects about recruiting service centers is that their business is often insulated from factors that influence the local economy.

"Our business has been growing steadily," McFadden said. "Our volume hasn’t changed because of the four-year drought in the area, because our customers aren’t from here. But our paychecks keep going into the local economy."

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