Bartlesville Call Center Employees May Keep Jobs Despite Site Closure

A Bartlesville call center will close this fall, but all 300 employees may get to keep their jobs.

The Sitel call center has 17 years of history in Bartlesville, and they plan to stay around, just not in town. The employees can keep working if they work from home.

Sitel has 300 call takers answering phones for customer service clients the company can't disclose.  It's in a shopping center with a Dollar General, Hastings and Big Lots. 

The company said it's closing the building this fall.

"The physical building at the end of the third quarter, early fourth quarter will not be occupied, but hopefully most of these people will still be working for Sitel in a work from home standpoint," said Paul Peterson, Site Manager. 

The site manager said the decision comes after technology has made it possible to have everyone work from home - and competition has made it impractical to do anything else.

"That's where the model is heading and we're going to try and place as many people there as we can," Peterson said. 

Peterson said every employee would have the opportunity to transition to working from home, though it does require a hard wired, high-speed internet connection.

"Some of our people are living in the country.  They're not going to have the ability to hook into that internet. So those people might no have that opportunity so were working with the city to try and place those with other things here in Bartlesville, Owasso or even Tulsa," Peterson said. 

The employees will have to undergo training specific for working at home, and have the security of their connection checked; but if they do that they can keep their jobs.