The modern services sector in Szczecin

Over the last couple of years, Szczecin has become one of the most-popular locations for BPO, SSC and ICT centres. Apart from the availability of office spaces of the highest standard and a large number of highly qualified employees, the things that appeal to investors are low labour costs, knowledge of foreign languages and the strong work ethics of the residents of Szczecin.

Szczecin is a city of young active people, a city of dynamic growth in the office space market and innovative technologies. The city is open to science, entrepreneurship and investors. It is also a rapidly growing IT service centre. The basis for the economic development and competitiveness of Szczecin is modern technologies, and that is why the city invests in research and development centres, the IT infrastructure and business environment institutions. Over recent years, the sector of modern services has experienced dynamic growth in Szczecin.

The sector currently employs around 4.000 people, and it is expected that 1.000 additional jobs will be created in the next two years. The investments come from 9 countries. Among the 21 Szczecin centres, only 4 of them are companies with Polish capital. The companies operating in the Szczecin market are, among others: METRO SERVICES PL, Coloplast, Brighton, Dansk Supermarked, Convergys, DGS Business Services, Tieto, Asseco Data Systems, UniCredit Business Integrated Solutions, and Arvato Polska. Szczecin was chosen by around 20 companies from the modern services sector for their registered office. The most recent project is an investment of the Wincor Nixdorf company. The company is planning to employ over 300 people in Szczecin, the majority of whom will be technical support specialists with knowledge of foreign languages, mainly German.

The characteristic feature of Szczecin is the balance between the types of centres, which include R&D companies of relatively high employment (1.200 people), and IT centres, but also international SSC and BPO centres, leaders in outsourcing. The companies have been able to find employees displaying high linguistic competence, which enables them to provide services in 16 languages, including Arabic and Turkish. The delivered processes are mainly all kinds of IT services, including high-end services, or software development.

The companies in the modern services sector to a large extent are guided by the number of students speaking foreign languages fluently. A report on the knowledge of foreign languages among the residents of Szczecin, prepared for the city of Szczecin by the Focus Group Research Consortium in February 2016, states that the most popular foreign language among the final-years’ students of Szczecin’s higher education institutions is English. 94.1% of all research participants take pride in the knowledge of this language. The same percentage of people declaring a knowledge of English was obtained in research conducted in 2013. Knowledge of German is declared by 63.7% of students taking part in the research. Apart from English and German, Scandinavian languages are gaining in popularity.

There are approximately 1.600 IT students in Szczecin. Moreover, economic studies are highly popular with students, and it is a huge potential to be used by the companies from the BPO/SSC/ICT sectors. Similarly to other cities, Szczecin is struggling with a low birth rate, and that is why the City promotes its attractiveness and supports housing availability.

THE OFFICE SPACE MARKET

Over the last three years, the office space market in Szczecin has experienced a record-breaking growth. The existing resources exceed 166 thousand sq m. It is worth mentioning that the record increase in office space was noted in the period from 2012 to the second quarter of 2015; the development of 71.000 sq m of office space was completed in this period. BCG Szczecin sp. z o.o. is planning to provide an additional 36 thousand sq m of office space within the Szczecin Odra Park complex. The project was divided into 3 stages of 12 thousand sq m each.

In 2015, the vacancy rate was on the rise, mainly due to the new supply. At the end of the first quarter
of 2016, approximately 18.3% of the existing resources was still unleased.