Insight: Why inclusion matters more than ever in the age of the AI contact centre

The contact centre and customer experience sector has always claimed that its greatest asset is its people, writes Nick Hughes, Divisional Director for our Reed Wellbeing division.

We talk endlessly about empathy, connection, emotional intelligence and understanding. Yet when it comes to how we actually design our workforces, many organisations are still operating to models that belong to a different era.

That gap is becoming more dangerous as AI accelerates.

We are entering a period where technology will fundamentally reshape roles, expectations and skills inside contact centres. But if leaders believe AI somehow reduces the importance of diversity and inclusion, they’ve misunderstood both technology and people. In reality, it makes inclusion more critical than ever.

Because as automation handles more transactional work, what remains is deeply human.

The conversations become more complex. The emotional load increases. Nuance matters more. Judgment matters more. The ability to read tone, understand context, navigate cultural differences and build trust becomes the differentiator. And those capabilities don’t come from uniformity. They come from difference.

Across Reed in Partnership’s programmes, from our justice and health services to our employability provision, driving theory test services and retrofit advice, we consistently see that the highest performing environments are never the most homogeneous. They are the cultures where different personalities, backgrounds and perspectives genuinely thrive. Where people don’t waste energy trying to “fit the mould” and can instead focus on doing great work.

But diversity doesn’t work by accident. And it certainly doesn’t work when you simply hire a broader range of people and expect them to adapt to systems designed for a narrow definition of the “ideal employee”.

Many contact centre environments were built for confidence, extroversion, tolerance of noise, rigid schedules and a particular style of communication. That unintentionally excludes vast pools of talent: neurodiverse individuals, people with disabilities, older workers, parents and carers, career returners, and people from cultures where communication styles differ. These are not marginal groups. These are capable, high‑value contributors, when the environment allows them to perform.

As AI reshapes the workplace, this becomes even more pronounced. We will need more critical thinkers, more emotionally intelligent communicators, more people willing to challenge assumptions rather than follow scripts. That means we must design environments that support difference rather than suppress it.

Physical and digital environments suddenly matter more than many leaders realise. As a Disability Confident Leader with nearly one in five of our workforce currently declaring a disability, 27% higher than the national average, we continuously witness that lighting, noise, layout, remote working options, assistive technologies, flexibility of schedules and psychological safety are no longer “wellbeing initiatives”. They are productivity enablers. And AI itself must be designed inclusively, otherwise we simply embed bias and exclusion into the next generation of systems.

Operational practices need to evolve too. Too many hiring processes still reward confidence over competence. Too many performance frameworks favour the loudest voice rather than the most thoughtful contribution. Too many career paths still reward traditional leadership stereotypes instead of modern leadership capability. If we’re serious about building future-ready teams, we must remove those structural biases rather than pretending they don’t exist.

But the hardest work isn’t physical or procedural. It’s attitudinal. Inclusion lives or dies in leadership behaviour. It always has, and it always will.

It requires leaders who are curious rather than defensive. Who are comfortable admitting they don’t have all the answers. Who listen to understand rather than listen to respond. Who create environments where challenge is safe and difference is valued. That kind of leadership isn’t soft. It’s harder. It demands self-awareness, humility and emotional maturity, qualities that become even more critical in an AI-augmented world.

The uncomfortable truth is this: diversity is easy to recruit. Inclusion is hard to sustain. Belonging is rare to achieve.

But when organisations commit to doing this properly, the results are transformational. Engagement improves. Attrition reduces. Customers feel better understood. Innovation increases. People bring their full selves to work rather than a carefully edited version designed to survive the culture.

In a sector built entirely around human interaction, and at a time when technology is redefining what work even means, there is nothing more strategically important than building workplaces where humans can genuinely thrive.

Not because it sounds progressive, but because it’s how you build the strongest, most adaptable organisations for the future that’s already arriving.