Workforce Management Featured Article
How Workforce Management Can Improve Employee Motivation
Workforce management can do a lot of things for a company. It can ensure that realistic schedules are created and adhered to, ensuring that the contact center is making the most of its human resources and that customers are always helped promptly and accurately and provided with the correct information. It can help ensure that people with the right skills are in place to meet a contact center’s needs (and customers’ needs) and that managers have real transparency into the day-to-day operations of the contact center.
Something else that workforce management can do that isn’t as talked about is motivating employees. While there are plenty of stories about resistance by employees to workforce management solutions – they don’t like feeling that “big brother” is hovering over their shoulders – the truth is that an advanced workforce management system can benefit agents by making their jobs easier and more productive. This, in turn, helps motivate agents.
So how can workforce management help motivate employees? According to solutions makers such as NICE, simple end user interfaces and tools to ensure employees own their schedules and perform is key. Employees who feel they have more control over their jobs and that their contributions are valued are simply more likely to stay with a company and give that company “their all.” This saves money directly by reducing turnover and creating better performing agents.
Some of the features that help motivate employees to be better workers include:
Time-off requests. Once upon a time, time-off requests were processed on paper, and they were subject to the whim of managers. Many employees felt there was favoritism involved and that other agents were getting preference by busy and all-too-human managers. By implementing a system that allows agents to request time off automatically, companies can set criteria for time-off requests (by seniority or by job performance, for example), and time-off can be granted automatically. Agents perceive the system is fairer and that they’re not subject to managers’ whims.
Mobile schedule checking. For many agents without regular shifts, the shifts they are assigned can come as a “surprise.” Many of today’s workforce management solutions have mobile apps that allow employees to check their schedules from anywhere on their mobile devices.
Shift-trading. Swapping a shift with a coworker also used to be a nightmare of manual paperwork. With a workforce management solution, the process can be automated (as long as the agent meets the right criteria for the shift he or she wants to swap for). Essentially the solution ensures that coverage won’t suffer while at the same time giving more autonomy to agents.
Other modern workforce management solutions even allow agents to share ideas for improving day-to-day operations. This helps them feel they more input into the process and therefore ensures they will be more vested in a successful outcome.
When adopting a workforce management solution, it’s essential that companies present the solution to employees in a way that helps them understand it’s there to benefit them, as well. It’s one way to take the “big brother” feelings out of real of workforce management.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi