Engage. Optimize. Retain. This is your new mantra. Starting today you are an employee engagement champion. Read on to fill your proverbial tool belt with useful tips to motivate and retain your employees.
The call center industry has traditionally had higher than average turnover rates and in these tough economic times a greater focus has been put on hiring and retaining skilled agents. The need for employee retention strategies has never been greater.
ENGAGE.
Why engage? Many employees leave jobs they like because of negative interactions with their direct supervisors or upper management. Employees who have frequent, positive interactions with management feel “in the loop” and have a greater sense of company pride. Make sure your managerial staff has the skills to effectively provide feedback to employees. Reinforcing good behavior and correcting bad behavior must be done on a daily basis to keep agents performing at optimal levels.
OPTIMIZE.
Why optimize? Optimizing employee performance ensures that you and your company are making the most out of each individual employee’s strengths. The most effective way to maximize employee performance is to provide constructive feedback. Employees who receive feedback feel they have more control over their work which increases job satisfaction and the quality of their work.
Positive feedback is the easiest way to boost employee confidence and increase job satisfaction. There are many effective ways to praise but I believe the below exercise is most effective.
B = Behavior. Identify preferred behavior so employee can continue doing it.
E = Effect. Explain how the behavior contributed to the customer’s positive experience, company bottom line or anything else that details why the behavior is desired.
T = Thanks. Always thank the employee. This shows appreciation and reinforces that the employee did a good thing and encourages them to continue doing it.
RETAIN.
Why retain? Increasing employee retention is a smart and necessary way to increase profits. Happy employees are long term employees. Retaining skilled agents reduces your overhead and increases customer satisfaction. Human Resource professionals were asked which employee retention strategies best worked for them and the three top responses were:
- Tuition reimbursement
- Competitive vacation and holiday benefits
- Competitive salaries
Investing in your employee’s future will guarantee long term company success. Employees would rather receive additional job skills training than higher salaries. Many executives make the mistake of offering more money to encourage employees to stay. But you know better. To successfully engage, optimize and retain, you and your staff need to positively interact with employees.
I really liked this post. One of the things we have been working on for some years now is to discover where exactly in an organisation is the biggest lever to employee engagement. Where does it operate? The resounding answer is at the smallest unit level – me, my team and my boss.
We have also been researching hard what drives employee engagement. The answer is that a lot of things do, as do different things in different organisations. What is a common theme, however, is the relationship that exists at the team level. What can a manager do about this? Three things.
– ensure they work hard to build and maintain traust
– work hard to build emotional engagement and meaning for their team members
– create a workplace climate that is conducive to performance and more importantly discretionary effort.
In a call centre environment you only have to look at US retailer Zappos as an example of these things.
What can we do about it? Find more information here http://bit.ly/t9N8UR
Thanks
Joe
Hi Joe,
Thanks so much for your comment. Management has everything to do with employee engagement and I am glad to hear that your company is researching best practices to help out others.
Rachel