A call center owned by TeleTech (News - Alert) in Hopkinsville, Ky., is planning on expanding its base of operations from 200 employees to around 500. TeleTech, a provider of customer experience solutions for medical service providers and others, is seeking to hire an additional 300 employees locally in order to more than double the size of its call center. To help do this, the Hopkinsville City Council agreed to approve a grant worth $100,000 to train the growing number of employees.
This growth is good for the city because it provides more jobs for local residents. According to Dan Kemp, Mayor of Hopkinsville, the company will begin hiring the new employees almost immediately and aims to conclude their search by June. Kemp points out, “These are all new jobs… [300 new positions] is quite a boost for a city the size of Hopkinsville.”
The grant also ensures that TeleTech is obligated to pay the city back for the generous loan, which came from the city’s urban development action grant fund. A town like Hopkinsville can’t afford to simply pay a business to hire more local employees without some kind of incentive. In this situation, TeleTech will be paying the money back through increased payroll taxes to the city of Hopkinsville. However, until TeleTech is able to pay this off, the city of Hopkinsville will be delaying several tax incentives that TeleTech would otherwise receive, like payroll tax rebates.
Ideally, the call center will do more to help the community than simply providing another 300 jobs. With improved call center services, Teletech can attract other businesses to the area. This could lead to an explosive chain reaction of job growth, where the businesses that arrive for the call center in turn provide jobs and services that encourage more companies to arrive in the little city of Hopkinsville. Especially considering the fact that other nearby call centers are being shut down like those owned by Verizon, this could also attract taxpaying residents from nearby communities.
Edited by Alisen Downey