Help Employees Know When to Engage and When to Disengage

We know how workforce management and workforce optimization solutions can help a contact center manage employees when they’re on the job and on the clock. It’s worth giving a little thought to how it can help them when they’re not working.

Americans are some of the most productive people in the world. There are many reasons for this, but at least one of them may be a problem: we have a hard time turning off from work. During vacations, we check work messages. We have terrible trouble disengaging from our jobs, which is just as important as being engaged with them while we’re working. Employees who feel they can never cut the cord from work feel more stressed and have no time to recharge, according to a recent employee engagement study by Randstad.

"Given 24/7 accessibility to their teams, managers must be mindful how their actions set the tone about being 'on' outside of normal work time," said Jim Link, chief HR officer for Randstad North America in a statement. "Managers should clarify expectations regarding after-hours communication and encourage teams to develop daily routines that respect work and personal boundaries. Imbalance can easily lead to stressed and disgruntled employees, negative health and morale issues, and diminished worker productivity."

The study found that 42 percent of employees feel obligated to check in with work while on vacation and more than a quarter (26 percent) feel guilty using all of their allotted vacation time. It’s for a manager to step up and correct this behavior. While working employees to the point of breakdown may produce positive short-term results to the bottom line, in the long run it’s a disaster for employee productivity and turnaround. And the problem will only become more pronounced as the bulk of the workforce becomes made of Generation Y, or the so-called “millennials,” who are their own worst enemies when it comes to always-on functioning.

"Gen Y was born into the era of technology and as a group is more comfortable than baby boomers or Gen X with being constantly connected in both their work and personal lives," added Link. "As Gen Y and incoming Gen Z employees populate the workforce, companies will need to create protocols that thoughtfully address work/life boundaries to meet both organizational goals and employee needs and tendencies."

One way to create these protocols is through workforce optimization, which can be one of the most important tools a company has in ensuring they are offering employees opportunities for a better work-life balance. Solutions such as NICE Workforce Optimization can be used to create rules regarding overtime, and ensure that time off and vacations are being assigned fairly. Allowing employees to swap schedules in order to accommodate important life events or simply day-to-day home responsibilities is also valuable. Companies can even consider offering perks that improve work-life balance such as modified schedules (allowing employees to work a four day, 40 hour week), for example, while at the same time ensuring that full coverage for optimum customer support is never compromised.

If you’re using a workforce optimization solution to help improve your contact center’s employee engagement – and you should be in this era of omnichannel customer support expectations – also consider how you can better use it to help employees disengage when it’s time to recharge. You’ll find if you can accomplish the latter, then achieving the former will be far easier.


Edited by Rory J. Thompson