Ashghal launches a Shared Services Affairs contact centre

As part of its continuing efforts to achieve operational efficiency, the Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’ has launched the shared services contact center. The integrated internal call center has been established to enable employees to access all the services it provides by contacting a sole entity.

The Shared Services Affairs contact center receives staff calls, responds to employee's inquiries, meets their requests, and follows up with them. The shared services contact center comprises a team of four employees trained to deal with callers inquiries and to meet their requests in accordance with the authority they have which enables them to access staff databases in order to address their demands. The team also processes, registers and classifies each request with a sequential number, in special databases and follows up on those requests until they are processed.

The services provided by the Shared Services Affairs contact center include receiving requests and inquiries related to the human resources department, namely services related to salaries, leaves, and all kinds of allowances, as well as exit procedures, training courses,official duties, and other HR services. The call center also handles all the IT requests and inquiries such as hardware requests, requests to extend and repair networks, as well as requests to activate the applications adopted in Ashghal, in addition to other IT services.

With regards to the services provided by the Financial Affairs Department, personnel from the contact center receive calls regarding governmental housing, furniture allowance expense, financial approvals,payment requests, etc. Furthermore, the call center receives calls regarding office furniture orders, access and exit cards,vehicles parking, guests housing, and all the services provided by the General Services Department.

In this regard, Mr. Meshaal Sultan Al Hitmi, Director of the Shared Services Affairs in Ashghal, said: “We always aim to improve the quality of the services provided by Ashghal to its employees whether through the shared services contact centre or through internal systems provided by Ashghal, namely self-service system for the employees via an electronic portal and the number of self-service operations has reached around 40 services.This portal eases the electronic submission of applications such as training courses requests, performance assessment procedures, and many others. Moreover, the development and expansion operation will continue and new will be added in accordance with the work requirements and the need for these services which continue taking shape with the progress of the implementation path.”

Mr. Meshaal Sultan Al Hitmi added: "The paper use in the authority has decreased significantly since the launching of the shared services affairs contact centre and the employee's self-services system becameoperational.”

The purpose of the shared services contact centre is to save the employees' time and effort and to provide immediate response to all their inquiries and follow up on their request to ensure it is managed as swiftly as possible. This is part of Ashghal's beliefs in the importance of the employees' time so as to achieve the policy adopted by the authority regarding time management and strengthening institutional efficiency. Since the launching shared services contact centre, it has been taking around 1150 and 1300 staff requests and inquiries per month. The working group of the Shared Services Affairs contact centre was carefully selected and has undergone intensive training to ensure its ability to handle the several inquiries it receives. The centre answers any request regarding IT, general services, financial affairs, and HR.

In a related context, Ms. Abeer AlHajri, IT Department manager, Planning and Quality Department manager, and the project’s manager, clarified that the "Ashghal adopts the latest technology to strengthen the operational efficiency."

Ms. Al Hajiri noted that the "Shared Services Affairs contact center is an integrated internal contact center whose work is not only limited to providing support for the employee. It comprises a system aiming at collecting and documenting complaints and requests within a database in a way that grants each call,request or complaint a sequential number. This allows Ashghal to analyse the data in order to identify the areas that need development and optimization. In addition to this, the centre logs all the applications and inquiries in a central database which helps them to extract and compile reports for each department separately and easily.”

Ms. Eman Mohammed Abdullah, a staff member in the Shared Services Affairs contact center said that: “The contact center is a successful project by all standards, simply because it spares the trouble to hundreds of employees in Ashghal’s headquarters in West Bay, Salwa, and Najma areas. Once they call 1234, they can get immediate support and response to any inquiry regarding any of the four departments related to the Shared Services Affairs in Ashghal and if what they need falls within our jurisdiction we handle their applications immediately and follow-upon them to make sure they have been completed."