Unlocking BPO Jobs for Township Youth

The Jobs Fund and CCI Group have a shared vision of sustainable job creation in South Africa. Whilst few would argue that creating countless skilled jobs is critical for our country, delivering on this goal is no easy challenge. When CCI, South Africa’s largest international contact centre, launched CareerBox in 2012, few would have believed that it would be possible to create large numbers of long-term jobs for previously disadvantaged, unemployed and inexperienced youth and women. An innovative partnership with the Jobs Funds exceeded its ambitious job creation targets and established Durban as a globally competitive BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)/Contact Centre destination.

The CCI Group had a vision to develop Durban (and eventually South Africa as a whole) into a leading player in the international contact centre industry. Contact centres are a growth industry and can potentially create large numbers of high-quality jobs and global investment. The challenge for the CCI Group was a shortage of skilled employees. This presented a significant risk to their continued business growth.

CCI piloted a range of different solutions to address the challenges of reducing the number of unsuccessful candidates that had applied for roles and the time it took to fill vacant positions within the business. In 2012 CCI launched CareerBox as a stand-alone business that provides impact sourcing, recruitment, adult education, training and placement. CareerBox focuses explicitly on helping previously disadvantaged, unemployed, low-skilled, and inexperienced youth find employment within the CCI Group.

The CareerBox model showed immediate results. It delivered on CCI needs and relieved the pressure of skills shortages in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)/Contact Centre industry in Durban by producing a pipeline of well-trained candidates that previously would have been rejected. CareerBox candidates also displayed better behavioural characteristics such as higher adherence to their timetables, lower absenteeism, higher motivation levels, and lower attrition.

Inspired by the amazing success of CareerBox, the CCI Group decided to expand the impact of the initiative. They, however, realised that they could not scale CareerBox effectively without assistance. So, in 2016, CCI Group-CareerBox partnered with the Jobs Fund to further expand the impact of their value chain solution within the support for work seekers funding window as an innovative delivery model for job creation.

The five (5) year relationship between CCI Group and the Jobs Fund has created and sustained thousands of jobs. The Jobs Fund provided the much-needed support to the CCI Group – CareerBox initiatives. The project scaled its operations and now has 4 Contact Centres and outperformed all the initially agreed project indicators, creating 2,875 permanent jobs and training 3,633 beneficiaries.

In 2019, CCI SA and the Jobs Fund partnered again to establish a Workforce Development Centre (WDC) to build on the progress made with the first Jobs Fund project. This time the project sought to address and service unemployed people in townships. Specifically, the WDC focused on township residents who could not actively seek work opportunities due to socio-economic, financial, skill-level and geographic constraints. The WDC was launched on 7 August 2019 at the Umlazi Mega City shopping complex in Umlazi township.

Despite the impact of COVID-19 on the domestic economy, the WDC project has already produced 1,165 permanent jobs and trained 1,255 beneficiaries. The learnings and benefits of the CCI Group - CareerBox partnership with the Jobs Fund will continue to long after the WDC project is completed. The future of job creation is looking bright!