NCR

It's not just tourists to Scotland who can expect to receive a warm welcome.

If the experience of NCR is any guide, this is just as true for foreign nationals who choose to work here.

The world-leading data technology company has developed an enviable reputation for its 'Welcome to NCR and Scotland' Pack used to greet new recruits at its Eurocentral facility, which opened for business in March 2004.

Welcome to Scotland

Numbers of foreign staff, who work as Customer Care Agents or Service Coordinators, have grown to 160 out of 420 at the facility, which provides call centre support in 12 different languages for the company's European ATM, retail technology and IT services network.

The centre serves more than 3,000 UK and European customers and coordinates the workload of NCR's 1,500 customer engineers across the same area.

NCR, which has been operating in Scotland for 60 years, also has ATM manufacturing and research and development facilities in Dundee.

Customer Care Centre Manager Gordian Mothersole says: "Our programme takes great care to help new arrivals settle into life in Scotland from our very first contact with them."

Learning from each other

"A former NCR employee is on hand to help with their search to rent a home. During this time, we provide temporary accommodation at a local college for up to six weeks.

"We also provide a relocation allowance and assistance with vital tasks, such as the opening of a bank account and obtaining a national insurance number.

"We have found the bonds of friendship formed at this initial stage of their stay serve us well at work."

While cultural diversity within the workplace is very much encouraged to enhance integration, the foreign nationals, for their part, have been willing to make concessions: NCR's dress code, for example, is more formal than most of them have experienced but it has been accepted without any fuss.

Gordian believes such give-and-take has been the key to the centre's success and the ease with which the different nationalities have blended so productively.

Lasting benefits

He pays credit to NCR's first recruit at the centre for playing such a prominent role in shaping the Welcome Pack's contents. "Service Coordinator Bruno Staeuble has done a great job in helping compile the excellent menu of information available on the web to potential candidates," he says.

"We've invested a lot of resources to make sure our pack incorporates best practices because arriving to work in a new country can be daunting. Our experience is that no effort should be spared in making it easy for new staff to settle in our country and working environment."

The fact that so many at NCR have chosen to make their stay in Scotland permanent underlines how such an approach can have lasting benefits – not just to the people in question but also to NCR and their adopted country.

Find out more about NCR at: www.ncr.com