The Workplace, the Society and the Wider World: The Offshoring and Outsourcing Industry

Abstract

Workplace language assessment poses special issues for language testers, but also, when it becomes very large scale, it poses issues for language policy. This article looks at these issues, focusing on the offshore and outsourcing (O&O) industry as it is transitioning from native-speaking (NS) countries into nonnative-speaking (NNS) destinations such as India and the Philippines. This is obviously most impacted in call centers, where the ability of customer service representatives (CSRs) to communicate with ease with their native-English speaking customers is central to business success and can be key to a nation's economy. Having reviewed the (limited) research in this area, we take the Philippines as our example to explore how government, academe, and the business sector are dealing with the language proficiency and personnel-training issues caused by the exponential growth in this industry. Appropriate language assessments that are practical, while also being valid and reliable, are critical if the Philippines is to retain its position in this emerging market. Currently, call centers in Philippines complain of very poor recruitment rates due to poor language ability, and of poor quality communication outcomes measures: But how do they assess these key areas? We describe and evaluate the current situation in call center language assessment in the Philippines and discuss possible ways forward, for the Philippines and for the O&O industry more broadly.

Multilingualism in the Workplace

“…Call centers are a currently expanding domain where English is demanded (e.g., Friginal, 2007;Rahman, 2009). Hamp-Lyons and Lockwood (2009), who made a needs analysis of call centers in the Philippines, found that outsourced call centers complain of very poor recruitment because of poor English language ability. Herat and McLoughlin (2010) analyzed 330 advertisements for jobs in the commercial sector in Sri Lanka.…”

International communication in a technology services call centre in India

“…Previous research into outsourced business processing outsourcing (BPO) call centre interaction (Forey and Lockwood ; Friginal ; Lockwood et al , Hamp‐Lyons & Lockwood , Lockwood ) has shown that many communication difficulties occur where native speaker customers talk to non‐native speaker agents in such BPO worksites in the Philippines and in India. There are onshore political and business concerns around outsourced call centres resulting in the agents requiring extremely high levels of English and the language training this industry provides aims for native‐speaker norms.…”

Business Communication and Public Speaking in the ESP Domain: Some Considerations

“…They are integral to the workplace, but they are shaped by factors such as a company's external and internal environments, which in turn influence management approaches and modes of work organization [38,39,42]. Within the workplace, oral communication is influenced by the status of the parties, the purpose of communication, and the medium [44].…”

“…Nevertheless, it is claimed that, in the context of English as a global language of international business, multinational corporations find ways of matching the authentic workplace requirements with non-English background preparation [42]. Moreover, according to Bhatia and Bremner [41], dissatisfaction from the side of the student is strong, as most learners need support both in English for Academic purposes and in English for the workplace: the perception of business teachers generally reinforce and complement this statement.…”