Garlands folds: 1000 call-centre jobs axed in Northeast

@ devilman

Oh dear, someone else trying to flame someone on something they know nothing about. FYI they had 3 sites to tell simultaneously and rather than having other directors do it in each site she did it in the only way tecnically possible (obviously there were directors available on each site to talk with staff after the announcement)

For me the saddest thing here is that a company with a strong people and technology focus in the North East has gone due to cheaper labour aborad. The outlook in the area is currently not good either (anyone remember Corus).

AC as family member used to work there.

No they didn't.

Garlands had one of the highest staff turnovers of any company I've ever worked for. They paid low, and didn't seem to care very much for their staffs welfare, gripes etc. They would employ just about anyone, even staff who had been sacked for fraud from other companies!

I worked there for a couple of years, taking a job in their Orange call centre when I was desperate for work and there were no IT jobs in the area to which I'd just moved to be with the significant other. Out of the 30 people who started the same day I did, only 3 survived to the end of the 4 week training course. Every time a bunch of new starters came in, it was the same thing. Out of 20 starting, 1 or 2 actually stuck it out.

I went in to the job knowing that the minute something else came up doing what I normally done, I'd be out of there. As it happened,within 3 days of completing my training on how to answer a phone, a job came up in their IT department and I got it and moved there. They did treat their backend staff better than the agents to be fair, but the agents were like cattle to them.

In the end I left after over two years there having been what I felt was constructively dismissed as I was effectively sidelined so the boss could get his best mates in to do the job I was doing. This was after the guy who was boss when I started left due to the same sort of treatment.

He did warn me before he went that I was likely to be next.

However, to be fair while that guy was there he put me through some certs, and got me into telephony, IVR'S etc. Due to that my career progressed quite nicely after a I left. So while I left with a lot of grievances towards the company, they very quickly subsided and I was thankful to my old boss for furthering my career. Kind of 2 steps back to go ten steps forward.

The one thing that used to irk me badly though was that they employed anyone. Some of those employees customer services mannerisms were terrible and must have gave the mother company their contracts were offered to a very bad reputation. A lot of the agents just thought they were there because they had to be and it was their god given right to be as rude to their customers as possible.

That IMHO does not make for a good company reputation.

However at the end of the day, it's a shame they have gone as no one likes to see lots of people being made redundant and there was some very good people working there.

D