In connection with the relocations and changes in the labor market caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the interest in working in business services has skyrocketed. In recent months, candidates who were previously employed in tourism, hospitality, education, and even healthcare have applied for vacancies in recent months. This follows from the information of the business service centers associated in the ABSL association.
According to a survey by the recruitment agency Randstad, Czechs have been ranking business services among the most attractive sectors on the market for several years. With the expanding scope of the centers, employees from other fields move into business services, most often from finance, IT, marketing or human resources. The pandemic has further raised the number of people interested in a career in business services, especially language-skilled tourism workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus crisis.
“The centers are also reporting a growing number of language tutors, and even nurses, who are especially popular in customer service, are patient and manage top-level client care from the beginning,” said Jonathan Appleton, ABSL’s director.
Business service centers functioned smoothly in times of emergency and quarantine. The pandemic even brought new business opportunities to more than half of them. Some centers took over processes from their sister organizations in Asia where the infrastructure did not allow all people to be transferred to work from home and there was a temporary slowdown. Other centres expanded their regional reach or began to provide new services such as IT support for home workers, consolidation data, digitization projects or the introduction of robotic automation.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic in our field, fluctuations have also decreased, employees appreciate the stability we offer. Due to the development of the business services sector, new talents have a very good opportunity to find employment within this sector. Compared to other industries, we expect an increase in the number of employees this year, by up to 10,000, ”
says Jonathan Appleton, adding that a number of new positions are being created, especially in customer service, but IT and accounting experts with language skills are also being sought.
A change of field is not unusual among Czech employees, according to a survey by the personnel agency Grafton Recruitment, 75% of people have changed their field of work during their professional lives. A quarter did not even start working in the field she studied. Young people under the age of 35 have the greatest desire to change their field, which fully corresponds to the most typical age of employees in business services. More than 60% of it is made up of millennials, and even the youngest generation Z is already starting to assert itself. “It is the young generation that is probably most affected by the coronavirus crisis; unemployment is growing fastest in the under-25 age group across Europe. So our sector can play an important role in employing this covid generation, as economists often call it today, ”concludes Jonathan Appleton. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, the Czech Republic had the lowest unemployment rate in this age group in Europe with less than 5%, but in May the number of unemployed young people rose by more than half.
