Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Improving Employee Engagement Requires Careful Employee Schedule Management
What does employee engagement have to do with workforce scheduling? Plenty, as it turns out. Americans’ attitudes toward their jobs – whether positive or negative – are strongly tied to their work/life balance. Increasingly, workers today are rejecting the work-all-hours formula that the Baby Boomers used to try and succeed, and are instead taking back their personal lives. While they’re ready and willing to do a good job at the office, they expect that down-time will be down-time. How much a workplace contributes to this work/life balance will dictate how well its employees are engaged with their jobs. It’s in managers’ best interest, therefore, to ensure that workers’ schedules aren’t burning them out. The quality of a boss – a strong indicator of employee engagement – is often measured by how well that boss manages’ employee’s schedules. This idea is backed up by recent research.
Randstad U.S.' latest Employee Engagement Study found more than one-third of U.S. employees (39 percent) don't believe their bosses encourage them to take allotted vacation days, and almost half (45 percent) say their bosses don't help them disconnect from work while on vacation. These are critical statistics to focus on if a company is pursuing improved employee engagement. Workers who feel that their employers are actively discouraging them from taking time are not going to value or even like their jobs, and they are less likely to focus their efforts on helping the company succeed.
"It's essential employees feel empowered to take a break from their jobs, and managers should take note of these study findings to determine whether their company's culture truly supports and allows the opportunity for this," said Jim Link, Chief HR Officer of Randstad North America in a statement. "There is no doubt taking time off to unwind is healthy and ultimately better for the organization.”
Burned out employees make mistakes, miss opportunities and fail to approach their jobs in a creative and innovative way. If these workers are dealing directly with customers, their burnout will be easily communicated to customers, who will be put off by workers’ attitudes. For this reason, managers must encourage workers to take their allotted time off.
“Employers who proactively maintain positive relationships with employees and encourage them to utilize allotted vacation time are more likely to boost company morale, reduce turnover and increase productivity, all of which can positively impact a company's bottom line,” according to the research report.
Use your workforce scheduling to ensure that employees are scheduled for regular time off, and that they take it. Discourage them from signing into their e-mail accounts or working during vacation times or late at night. While it might seem like a good short-term strategy for productivity, it’s not doing the organizations any favors in the long run.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi