First Minister heralds ‘Scotland as leading destination for inward investment’

3rd October 2013

Up to 1,000 new jobs have been announced by First Minister Alex Salmond as part of a large recruitment drive by international company, Teleperformance.

The First Minister has welcomed the move by Teleperformance to generate up to 1,000 new jobs in Scotland, taking their Scottish workforce to more than 4,000. The new roles cover customer service advisors, trainers and team managers.

Teleperformance, a global leader in multi-channel customer experience management, is recruiting in Scotland over the next few weeks to grow existing workforces in Airdrie, Erskine, Glasgow and Kilmarnock.

Clients include Traveline Scotland and Students Loans Company, as well as many private sector companies.

Mr Salmond will meet with Teleperformance UK and South Africa CEO, Alistair Niederer, in Edinburgh today to publicly welcome the announcement.

First Minister Alex Salmond said:"Later today I will be meeting Aistair Niederer, the UK and South Africa CEO of French company Teleperformance, who are confirming plans to create 1,000 jobs across sites in Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Erskine and Airdrie.

“This is a welcome boost for employment and further strengthens Scotland’s position in out-performing the UK for securing inward investment.”

Alistair Niederer, CEO of Teleperformance UK, Ireland & South Africa comments:“The current growth plans for Teleperformance in Scotland reflect a confidence in the future, not just for Teleperformance but for the clients we serve. This reflects the level of growth and confidence we are seeing in our business across the UK. We are passionate about getting closer to our clients and their customers by providing the right service experience required to greatly improve efficiency and customer satisfaction. Scotland provides a highly skilled and quality workforce enabling us to achieve this for our clients who are based there.”

Anne MacColl, Chief Executive of Scottish Development International, said:“This is a significant investment by a leading international employer and is a clear endorsement of Scotland’s highly skilled workforce, world leading research and internationally competitive business environment.

“While grants are important, it is these factors which help us to anchor and grow global companies in Scotland. Teleperformance’s decision to further develop in Scotland underlines the fact that the support we provide to help existing investors expand their Scottish operations is highly regarded and helps to explain why foreign direct investment into Scotland is at its highest level for fifteen years.

“Our expertise in finance, IT and languages make Scotland the ideal location for international business service operations such as the service delivered by Teleperformance and we look forward to continuing to work together to support their growth.”

Teleperformance is supported by £2.9 million RSA grant. For more information on RSAs visit http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/rsa

Teleperformance is a global customer service, technical support, call centre, debt collection and social media company.

It has over 138,000 employees across more than 270 contact centres in 46 countries and conducts programs in more than 66 different languages and dialects. In 2011, Teleperformance was responsible for more than 1.5 billion customer interactions.

Teleperformance’s range of services across the world is aligned to help organisations optimise the value of their customer relationships. Offering:


multi-channel contact centres (including social media)
response handling and fulfilment
technical support
crisis management and disaster recovery
in-sourcing

Today’s announcement takes Teleperformance Scottish workforce to more than 4,000 employees across Scotland (Airdrie, Erskine, Kilmarnock and Glasgow and Linlithgow).

Scotland is an internationally recognised Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) location.

Some of the largest BPOs in Europe are based in Scotland. These include Webhelp TSC, Response, IBM, Stellar, Logica, First Data, Capgemini, Vertex and Sykes Enterprises.