Our newest survey of the business services segment indicates that the planned marked growth of Czech centres can only be realised with the help of foreigners and native speakers. There is currently a lack of Czechs with sufficient language skills.
Employees of shared services centres (SSC/BPO) must not only be professionally competent, but must also have foreign language skills. As well as being highly technically erudite or having a legal, economic or IT education, employees should also speak excellent English and at least one other foreign language, frequently less usual languages such as Finnish, Swedish or Dutch. A total of 31 languages are spoken in Czech SSC and outsourcing centres. And it must also be pointed out that foreign language skills are reflected in the financial reward offered to employees and may consist of up to 15% of the total salary.
Even though language skills have improved significantly in the Czech Republic in recent years, and 42% of the population can speak one and 24% of the population can speak two foreign languages, this is still not sufficient for the planned growth of the shared services centre segment. Companies will consequently also have to focus on foreigners and native speakers during employee recruitment. An average of 34% foreigners already work at shared services centres. These are employed by 97% of all companies active in this segment.
The survey also indicated that 68% of SSC/BPO centre employees have a university education and 5% actually have a postgraduate education. The remaining 27% employees have completed their secondary or higher vocational education.
For more details please see our latest press release.
