Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Keep Contact Center Employees Happy with Transparency, Kindness and Fairness
While the rest of Corporate America tries to figure out a way to keep employees engaged with their jobs, contact centers are running three steps behind: they’re too busy trying to figure out a way to keep their employees employed.
The contact center sees some of the highest turnover of any company function. The work is stressful and poorly paid, and employee burnout is common. High turnover, however, is expensive, and companies that can figure out a way to reduce turnover even a little bit will reap the rewards: lower recruiting, hiring and training costs; improved customer relationships and more harmonious work environments for the agents who do stick around.
While there is no magic wand to wave to make all your contact center employees happy, there are ways to help build a healthier work environment that will go a long way toward keeping workers more content. A blogger for Quinyx recently pointed out that honesty and open communication are two of the most important elements of a healthy work environment.
“Open and transparent office environments produce the best performing teams,” wrote the blogger. “Being honest helps you stay true to yourself which means you can avoid feelings of regret, dissatisfaction and demotivation all of which, when combined, can leave you feeling disengaged from your work and unhappy in your job. Honesty is the cornerstone for positive and effective communication.”
This is a great tip for managers, who may not be aware that they’re part of the turnover problem in the contact center. Playing favorites, punishing for things done wrong but failing to recognize things done right, too little training and guidance and a generally grumpy demeanor are all things that will make contact center workers anxious, stressed and continually seeking to leave. Ensure your organization has open communication, transparent reviewing processes and an equitable system for giving time off or extra shifts with overtime. Make sure managers and supervisors are not running their contact centers or teams as tyrants. Fear of a boss may produce short-term productivity, but it will have a seriously negative affect on productivity in the long term. Kindness, according to the Quinyx blogger, goes a long way toward employee engagement.
“A study carried out in the UK found companionship and recognition are more important than high salaries in promoting employee loyalty,” wrote the blogger. “Being kind to colleagues creates a culture where warm, positive and respectful relationships are highly valued. Simple acts of kindness on a regular basis will benefit you and your team.”
Equitable treatment of contact center workers may be every director or manager’s goal, but there are simply too many moving parts in a contact center to leave it to chance. Consider investing in a great scheduling and workforce management solution that can help ensure that hours and shifts are fair, workers aren’t always given their last choice of days off, those who want overtime are able to bid for it according to fair criteria and expectations of schedules and performance are properly laid out so workers don’t have to “guess” how to please their managers.
If there’s one overriding quality that makes a contact center successful, it’s transparency. Transparency exposes weak spots so they can be reinforced with training, outs bullies, and offers tyrannical or unfair managers nothing to hide behind. It also helps convey expectations, expose processes or policies that are harmful and clears the way for contact center agents to do their most important job: please customers.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi