Workforce Management Featured Article
Consider Mentoring Programs to Help Integrate Different Generations of Workers
Call center managers are busy people, so procedural shortcuts are always welcome, as long as they don’t affect the quality of service. Most experienced managers have learned a lot of about managing agents over the years and may believe they’ve got a handle on human behavior in the contact center. The truth is, however, that there can never be a “one size fits all” approach to managing agents. Managing all agents in the same way is a great idea – if your goal is to have turnover and poor customer service experiences.
“People are people” is true in many cases, but huge differences can show up in agents who are from different generations. An older contact center manager used to managing more mature workers may find himself or herself dumfounded when it comes to managing younger (“Millennial” generation) employees. After all, their attitudes toward technology, their attention spans, their speech and writing and many other factors may be different. And when agents and customers of mixed generations engage in a transaction with one another, misunderstandings can occur.
According to data presented in an infographic by Yorton Clark Jr., a professor and chair of the business administration department at MidAmerica Nazreen University, there are actually large gaps between the generations in their attitudes toward productivity and their confidence in their skills. Sixty-eight percent of Gen-X workers believe their generation to be the most skilled, and 61 percent of Baby Boomers believe the same. On the other hand, only 41 percent of Millennials describe their generation as the most skilled. Only 16 percent of Gen Xers and six percent of Baby Boomers describe Millennials as “most productive.” It would seem that a minority of people have confidence in the skills and dedication to productivity of the Millennials…including the Millennials themselves.
While it may seem smart to skip hiring Millennial age workers altogether, it’s simply not possible. (It’s also discriminatory.) There are over 53 million Millennials already in the work force, and these numbers will swell with each passing year. Contact center work is often poorly paid, so counting on Gen-X workers with Bachelor’s degrees isn’t realistic. Smart contact center managers are simply going to have to learn how to manage younger workers. This will include addressing smart phone usage in the contact center; moving away from classroom training and instead crafting training to become more interactive, hands-on and frequent; and setting up mentoring programs to help more experienced workers give younger employees a leg up.
Another critical element, according Clark, is to have a strategy for integrating the generations of workers in the contact center so they can take advantage of one another’s’ strengths.
“Once a manager has addressed the unique make-up of each generational segment on his or her team, it’s time to look for ways to integrate the generations and help people work better, together,” wrote Clark. “One fascinating statistic to emerge from a 2016 Deloitte (News - Alert) study of the Millennial generation, is that Millennials are very hungry for mentorship—61 percent reported having a mentor and 94 percent of those said they received good advice from their mentor.”
A mentoring program can yield a lot of benefits to workforce management. It can help more experienced workers transfer their skills to younger workers. In the long run, it’s a great way to build continuity into the workforce and foster a “family” atmosphere that can lead to lower turnover and better employee engagement.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi