Say hello to new call centre hub in Nasrec

A new global business services (GBS) hub housing call centres at the Johannesburg Expo Centre in Nasrec hopes to bring fresh job opportunities to the surrounding township areas.

The Gauteng department of economic development (GDED) recently announced that construction will start in a few months, with operations beginning within the next year. 

The GDED has partnered with business process outsourcing company Merchants SA, which will handle the training and recruitment for the hub.

“We are taking our call centres out of normal commercial centres and are rebuilding them in the townships,” says Kevin Afrikaner, operations director at Merchants SA. 

The Nasrec hub follows the successful running of a similar centre in Jabulani, Soweto, which Afrikaner says taught them many lessons in identifying the best area and performing due diligence. 

Through it all, the centre has been successful and acts as a proof of concept for the next venture in Nasrec and other areas, such as Alexandra. The Jabulani GBS hub is close to residential, education, shopping and other facilities. 

“Our staff don't have to travel into town or Sandton to get to work, they can walk.” Afrikaner says this has reduced absenteeism and allowed increased word-of-mouth referrals.

“And that helps us with our impact sourcing, getting new people into the economy — that's how we get people employed.”

GBS falls under the 10 high-growth sectors the provincial government has identified in line with the Growing Gauteng Together 2030 strategy.

The department aims to attract regional investments and turn Gauteng into the country’s mainstay for global business services. This will enable youth upskilling and small and medium enterprises to thrive in areas such as call centre work, data annotation and business support services. 

Goitsione Motloung, GDED's chief director for sector & industry development, says this venture is part of the department’s bigger push in creating jobs while uplifting township economies.

“We have a mandate of transforming the face of our townships by creating economic activity. Townships are actually the new gold because that's where you get the huge labour reserve.”

Tapping into the large pool of young, unemployed people and using it to drive the economy is key. “GBS is a labour-intensive sector and that's where entry-level jobs are found,” says Motloung.

GDED MEC Tasneem Motara says since SA English is considered easy on the ear for international businesses, the sector has great potential to grow and thrive in the province.

“We want to market SA and importantly, Gauteng, as a business processing service destination of choice, in particular for call centres.” 

Motara says though the cost of doing business is rising along with challenges such as intermittent electricity supply, there is hope for projects like these. “An initiative such as this shows the business sector still has confidence in doing business in Gauteng.”

Afrikaner says the Nasrec hub is still in its infancy, but they are working on bringing in a client soon. “It's early days, but the conversations have started.” The Nasrec hub is part of the wider expansion of these centres, particularly ones that hold between 150 and 200 call centre agents, rather than the 60 to 80 that Jabulani has. 

“We'd like to move as many of our centres as possible into townships. One of our founding principles is [caring for the] people in our communities and how can you talk about that if you don't go into the community?”

He says while these ideas have been around for a long time, the Covid-19 pandemic and increased working from home meant companies like Merchants SA took the idea of building closer to where staff live to heart. 

Motloung says there is untapped potential at Nasrec for further expansion. “The strategy is to introduce other operators because Nasrec has the potential to be scaled up.”

“The number of jobs will keep coming because we have not stopped recruiting at Jabulani.”

The GDED hopes to keep expanding the number of opportunities for job seekers and expand to more sites. 

Interested candidates can connect through www.merchantscx.com.

This article was sponsored by the Gauteng department of economic development.