Staff Retention in 2015
Between 2002 and 2008 I was employed by British
Telecom as the Central Regional Sales Director.
This afforded me the ability to influence, coach, mentor and deliver
results through a staff of over 300; across 2 call centres and Field based
consultants. I wrote this article a few
years ago but never published it, but I feel it is relevant now as the increase
in the economy generally increases attrition rates.
Just to set the scene, my call centres had an
attrition rate of almost 37% when I took responsibility in 2006, but following
the following principles below, I was able to reduce my annual attrition to
below 15% with less than 4% annual absence records. This may sound high to some but for a Call
centre environment this is fantastic!
Recruitment – getting it
right from the start
It is essential when recruiting that the correct competencies
and behaviours are defined in order to deliver your business’s
requirements. Once the potential applicant’s skills and capabilities have
been rigorously tested, you ensure that applicants gain a thorough
understanding of the operation.
Welcome booklet
Applicants listen to calls, tour the operational floor, meet
current employees, ask questions about the business and take away a welcome
booklet that provides them with lots of information about the company. I
believe honesty is the best policy, and after the recruitment process
applicants have a very clear picture of what it is like to work for you.
Refer a friend
I have refined my recruitment and on-boarding process over time
and have seen the difference reflected in improved employee retention,
especially during the first six months. By taking a rigorous approach and
selecting candidates who meet my competencies and behaviours and those people
who would be most comfortable working in a call centre environment, I have
become a preferred local employer, with many of our employees having been
referred to us through our refer-a-friend scheme.
Reward – be innovative and demonstrate commitment
One of the most often overlooked aspects of helping to reduce
attrition is reward, mainly due to the long period of time some schemes can
take to show any reasonable return on the investment. However,
implementing lifestyle reward products can help to encourage people to remain
with your business.
Flexible benefits
A flexible benefit scheme, or flex, is one such product.
This can be billed as a lifestyle product allowing the employee to use their
salary to purchase benefits relevant to their lifestyle. Whether they are
a single parent in need of childcare vouchers or a more mature person who wants
private medical cover or a recent graduate who still has itchy feet and wants
to buy more holidays, the options and flexibility is there for all to use.
Regular incentives are vital when motivating and rewarding
people. A clear line of sight between the target and the reward is
essential. Is doesn’t matter if the reward is a bottle of wine, a
box of chocolates or an LCD TV, people enjoy being rewarded and if they believe
the target is achievable everyone will strive to meet it.
Extra holiday entitlements
Don’t be afraid of being innovative and bucking the trend.
Sometimes being brave and investing more in your people can bring its own
rewards. Contact centres generally offer holiday entitlements in line
with the statutory minimum. BT was no different, but I recently introduced a
discretionary holiday policy over and above their contractual holiday
entitlement. This enabled employees to gain up to an additional 7 days’
holiday entitlement based on achieving satisfactory performance and attendance
standards and certain service durations.
The initial cost of extra holidays was minimal in comparison to
the rewards gained from reduced absence, reduced attrition and increased
productivity. This also meant that I could control the scheduling of the
time off as opposed to reacting to unplanned sickness absence.
The discretionary holiday policy is assessed every year to
determine if the benefits continue to outweigh the investment. The scheme
has been a great success for the last two years and I have seen increases in
performance, a reduction in absence and improved attrition rates.
Employees view this as a great benefit as it helps them to manage their lives
more effectively.
Call centres are often a very sociable environment where people
who work together also socialise together after hours. Employers can tap
into this culture by offering rewards for referring a friend. This not
only rewards employees for encouraging like-minded friends to apply for jobs but
also reduces the amount spent externally on advertising, recruitment agencies,
etc. BT offers a referral scheme that increases the amount paid to employees
successfully referring large numbers of friends.
Recognition – find out what people want
Due to the repetitive and often boring nature of the work in a
call centre, having formal development plans in place and regular opportunities
for people to progress ensures commitment. When people can see that they
have a career and not just a job their perspective often changes and they
realise the contribution and difference they can make to the business.
These are the leaders of the future and should be recognised accordingly.
Identify why people stay
Identifying the reasons why people stay with BT enabled us to
tailor our recognition schemes to meet the needs of the employees. BT
uses two methods to achieve this; my VOICE and my VIEW.
Employee forum (my VOICE)
In 2006 the my VOICE employee forum was created and has been
successfully used to engage with employees. As well as the many topics
discussed on a regular basis, the forum provides an ideal source of information
about the needs and wants of employees. Often BT shares new initiatives
with the my VOICE forum to determine whether it will work but also to gain buy-in
and support for launches.
Employee satisfaction survey (my VIEW)
The employee satisfaction survey my VIEW has generated much
information about recognition over the years and has been used effectively to
help the business shape its programmes. For example, BT launched two new
schemes, new starter of the quarter and employee of the quarter, both schemes
form part of the employee of the year scheme.
Pillow moments
We understand that people prefer to be recognised in different
ways and we try to develop initiatives that reflect this. Every Friday is
dress-down day and pillow moments allow an employee to have either an extra
hour in bed or an early leave on their birthday.
Thank You cards
We issue Thank You cards to recognise above and beyond
contributions and Santa visits the office in the 12 days before Christmas. Our
employees really appreciate our efforts to say thank you in so many different
ways.
Our current attrition rate has reduced by 20 per cent over the
last three years. Absence levels have been below 4 per cent over
the same period and over a third of employees have in excess of five years’
service with the company.
The leader’s role in
retaining staff
Sales-focused organisations, particularly call centres, are
known for suffering from unacceptably high attrition rates of 20%. A recent Call Centre Helper article revealed
alarming retention facts including:
•Over 50% of the people recruited into an organisation will
leave within two years.
•One in four people recruited will leave within six months.
•Approximately 50% of organisations experience regular problems
with employee retention.
If you think you have a retention problem you need to follow the
thread back to the source. There is a
view that it is impossible to identify the one single cause to any problem –
and that is certainly true of retention.
At least two of the places you need to focus on investigating include
the recruitment process and the way you attract people through an engaging employer
brand.
What is it really like to
work in this call centre?
Be very honest. Is that
what it’s really like to work in this organisation or this call centre? Do people really get what they were
‘promised’ by the reputation of the organisation? Are new joiners surprised by what it’s like
to work under the pressure of sales targets and exacting performance standards?
As for recruitment, how good a job do your managers do to really
make sure that people are given as full and as accurate a picture about what
it’s really like to work in your organisation?
Are your managers sufficiently well skilled to make the best decisions
about who to hire?
Make sure you match
interview promises
Many people leave organisations because the things that were
promised at interview, either implicitly or explicitly, never really
materialise. Make sure that your
messages are congruent and your managers are highly skilled in recruitment and
selection. This means focusing on the right questions in interview but also
ensuring that managers also test the behaviour and skills of interviewees. Do they take time to fully explain the sales
targets or explore the extent to which someone one is resilient in the face of
not achieving targets?
Competency-based
interviewing techniques
When recruiting staff consider competency-based interviewing
techniques rather than technical or skill-based questioning. For example, it would be more important to
find out whether a prospective employee could demonstrate that they had showed
resilience in the past, rather than their technical abilities to use a CRM
system. The technical skills can be
trained.
Understand the scope of
the problem and get the data
The first thing to realise is that you can’t hold on to all of
the people for all of the time. People will leave. However, without sounding too cavalier, you
need to make sure your leavers are the people you can afford to lose and not
those with high potential, or those with specialist skills, or those who have
just had a whole heap of development.
Why are people leaving?
Exit interviews are still the best way to get this
information. You may find the data you
get back challenges some of your own assumptions about whether career
progression exists, or whether the shift patterns that operate are really the
issue.
Linked to this, how are people feeling about working in this
organisation? Staff engagement surveys
will give you valuable data about how people are feeling. These can be comprehensive surveys or short
‘pulse’ surveys but will give you crucial information about what issues you may
need to address:
•Which managers are best at holding on to their staff?
•Which managers have a poor track record?
•What’s the age range of leavers? Length of service?
•Do particular roles or functions or locations have higher
turnover than others?
Once you have your data, then you can work out a specific
strategy. But beware, many companies fail to ‘go public’ on feedback so make
sure that as a leader you communicate and celebrate the good feedback as well
as creating strategies for improving and changing the bad.
Have a broad-based and
proactive strategy
Effective retention depends on a long-term approach, and leaders
should continually be thinking about broad-based proactive efforts to retain
their talent.
Are you flexible?
Are you being as flexible as you can be as an employer? For example, research shows that companies
who offer different shift patterns, and recruit staff to fit certain hours have
better retention than those companies who have one or two shift patterns, and
force these upon employees after recruitment.
Develop your managers and
leaders
We know that people leave managers rather than organisations as
managers have the most direct impact on employees. So the quality of your leaders and managers
is vital to retention of staff.
Recent leadership research indicates that people will follow –
and continue to follow – a person who inspires them and seeks to get the best
out of them.
Are you developing leaders
and managers who create meaning, who engage people and who people want to follow?
We also have more loyalty to leaders and managers who are
authentic. This means developing
managers who have a deep level of self-awareness and an accurate picture of
themselves – who know their own strengths and development gaps, who understand
their impact on others. And, most
importantly, who act in accordance with their values and beliefs, i.e. they
walk their talk.
And on a skills level, are you confident that your managers are
both skilled and confident in the core areas of setting objectives, creating
accountability, coaching, identifying and enabling potential, having tough
conversations… because to retain people in a busy call centre, they certainly
need to be.
by Grant Stanley 2015
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