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Even your best-performing agents will have off days.

It’s natural – from time to time everyone wakes up not quite in the mood for a day at work. However, as a manager, the onus is on you to minimize how this impacts task completion by motivating your staff.

While incentivizing is often done through monetary means – promotions, bonuses – the truth is that this isn’t always possible.

In this article, we’ll explore some current methods being adopted by workforce managers to motivate their staff through non-financial encouragement.

1. The fun of gamification

One of the newest tools in a personnel leader’s arsenal is gamification.

Reduced to its fundamentals, gamification involves turning a pre-existing task or process into a game. This holds a number of benefits in the workplace:

• Motivation – It’s true that familiarity can breed contempt when it comes to repetitive daily tasks. By turning these into a fun activity, however, you can prevent complacency and engage staff. In fact, when properly implemented, gamification can enhance employee motivation by 51.6 percent, according to Karl Kapp, Instructional Technology Professor at Bloomsburg University
• Education – By flipping duties on their head in this way, you force yourself and other participants to think about them in new ways. This can result in learning outcomes that improve your systems in the long run.
• Participation – A side benefit of gamification is the way that it encourages employees to work together – this teamwork can contribute to an overall increase in cohesion in your contact centre.

All sorts of daily tasks can be overhauled with gamification, but here are a couple of great examples:

The Quality Scores Sports Game: 

Monitoring quality is high on the priority list for any manager, and why not make this process fun for staff who might otherwise see it as daunting? First, work out a sport that your staff are into, and then assign points that link quality scores to a sports event scenario.

For example, if U.S. football was your chosen sport, an average quality score could equate to an extra point (one point), a good score to a field goal (three points), and an excellent score to a touchdown (six points). You could run this competition over a month, with the agent who gains the most points winning a prize.

The Customer Experience Game:

Customer experience is hugely important to a business’ bottom line. Indeed, 73 percent of consumers worldwide name this factor as important in influencing their buying decision, states research from PwC. 

In this example of gamification, each agent has a sheet featuring a list of factors that contribute to a good customer interaction. The idea is that customers complete the sheet by checking off specific items – for example, informing clients of upgraded products. However, they can only check one box per customer – this prevents the game being over after one call, and encourages staff to alter their approaches to dealing with different callers.

Gamification is the latest technique in workforce motivation.

2. Flexible work arrangements

More and more, we’re seeing an erosion of the traditional 9-5 office job. This trend is particularly true in line with the desires of Millennials and Generation Z, who are filling up an increasing percentage of the job market. Flexible working arrangements have been shown to build loyalty among this demographic of employees, and improve business performance, according to Deloitte.

Call Design’s ME mobile app allows staff to manage their schedules by swapping shifts with colleagues and requesting time off. This allows them to create a program that provides them with an optimized work-life balance, meaning they’re working at times where they feel most motivated to do so.

To do this effectively, you need to establish a process that both you and your employees should stick to. Flexible working requires trust on both sides, but can do wonders for your staff’s motivation when properly implemented.

3. Awards ceremonies

Whether on a grand, annual scale, or at smaller departmental meetings, public recognition of hard work can go a long way to encouraging similar performances in the future.

A great alternative to monetary rewards in these instances can be personalized gifts. Branded company items, for example mugs that also feature the winner’s name or photo are a great touch. Gift tokens that match with that individual’s personal interests also often go over well – for example, movie tickets or books and sports tickets.

For smaller scale wins, a post on a company-wide intranet or social media platform can reinforce the perception that stellar performances don’t go unnoticed.

Internal awards ceremonies motivate staff by showing the rewards and recognition available to hard workers.

4. Involvement in decision making

While, traditionally, decision making is left to senior management, there’s a lot to be said for opening the floor to employee input. Your agents see the business from a different perspective, and will doubtless have ideas of procedural changes you can make that will improve efficiency.

As well as potentially improving the day-to-day running of the company, such initiatives make it clear that you value your staff’s input, which can be a highly motivational tool. Communicating that you’re always open to new ideas will encourage individuals to go beyond the scope of their role and brainstorm concepts that could help shape the future of the company.

From your point of view, that practice of regularly engaging with your team in this way also shows you who might be most suitable for more senior roles, should such an opportunity come along.

With so many different ways of motivating your staff with non-monetary incentives, there’s no reason for not starting to implement some of these ideas today. For more training and solutions to improve performance among your agents, get in touch with the team at Call Design today.

It’s no secret that attrition is one of the biggest challenges facing contact centres, and it’s something the industry acknowledges. In fact, 40 per cent of contact centre managers want to improve retention rates among staff, according to Deloitte’s Global Contact Centre Survey. (more…)

Absenteeism is costing US and Canadian businesses $225.8 billion and $16.6 billion per year respectively. These stats come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Conference Board of Canada, which highlight the cost of absenteeism in the hourly and salaried workforces.

Understanding the statistics is one thing, but fixing them is another. To help your contact center, we discuss four absence management strategies below:

1. Identify the root cause

Absenteeism is not a problem, it’s a symptom of a problem. Most likely a variety of problems, compounding together. Issues that can cause absenteeism include:

1. Low morale or engagement levels.
2. Stress or burnout.
3. Workplace conflicts (e.g. bullying or harassment).
4. Illness, injury or disability.
5. Work/life conflicts (e.g. the needs of work and the needs of, say, childcare, conflicting with each other).
6. Limited consequences for lack of attendance.
7. Time theft (aka taking elongated breaks, regularly leaving early or turning up late).

Awareness is the first step to solving a problem. Take time to investigate what issues your contact center may be suffering from. This can be done through regular 1:1 personal sessions between staff and their team leader, and through anonymous feedback surveys.

2. Create an attendance policy

A clear attendance policy has two major benefits:

1. It sets out your expectations for attendance so staff and their managers know what is and is not considered acceptable.
2. It helps you benchmark individual attendance levels against the company expectation, so you can measure their performance. Without this, unconscious bias or favoritism may lead you to challenge some staff more than others.

What goes into an attendance policy?

An attendance policy should include comprehensive descriptions of your expectations around annual leave, sick leave, what constitutes tardiness, leave request procedures, rules around special leave (i.e. bereavement or jury duty) and so on.

This should be included in your employee handbook and all staff should be able to find and access it easily.

3. Consider employee wellness programs

Employee wellness programs are typically a combination of policies, perks and initiatives that encourage staff to look after their physical and mental health. This could include discounts at gyms or medical centers, health insurance packages, policies designed to promote better self-care, and environment support (e.g. desk ergonomics, green spaces and so on).

These programs have been found to work. In a Comcare review, it was found that wellness programs such as smoking cessation interventions, physical activity and/or nutrition interventions, and changes to organizational culture showed real health-related benefits to employees.

There’s a growing call for flexible working around the world. One study by the Intelligence Group showed that 74 percent of the Millennial generation use work-life balance as a leading factor in evaluating job opportunities, while workers in Generation X can find themselves in need of workplace flexibility in order to care for aging parents.

Can your business handle flexible working arrangements? Some contact center leaders find it difficult to accommodate variable hours or working from home due to the schedule-intensive nature of the job. Staff levels must be carefully planned and easy to predict in order for the business to handle call volumes.

However, this is not an unsolvable problem – it just requires a technology upgrade. Consider investigating workforce management solutions that enable smart scheduling and easy shift swapping, as this will help you encourage staff to balance their working lives and personal lives without impacting your company’s bottom line or the customer experience.

Choose Call Design to help you

If you aren’t sure you can do this alone, it’s time to seek help. Call Design is a leading workforce optimization consulting provider, featuring a team of experts with an average of 10+ years of experience. We have an array of WFO tools, solutions and training courses to help your business find and improve the root causes of your absenteeism issues.

To learn more, contact us today.

We’ve all heard the adage that happy staff make for happy customers. A cliche, maybe, but one backed up by data. In fact, companies considered as customer experience leaders have 1.5 times more engaged employees than companies who lag behind, according to research by the Temkin Group. (more…)

Smartphone applications enhance workplace management and save businesses time and money. With 77% of North Americans using smartphones, and 1 in 5 adults accessing the internet exclusively on smartphones, now is the time for your organization to be at the forefront of this emerging digital trend.

There are a number of clear benefits when it comes to implementing mobile technologies in the workplace. Companies that are more profitable than their competitors are more likely to use mobile apps and to introduce measures such as comprehensive training to facilitate app adoption, according to the 2015 Accenture Mobility Research report.

What is the ME smartphone app?

ME is a workforce management application that’s compatible with iOS and Android devices. It enables staff to remotely access their schedule and calendar, monitor their performance, apply for time off, and swap shifts.

 ME can help your organization increase efficiency and profitability by:

• Improving employee engagement

ME’s Schedule View function enables staff to interact with each other and their employers. Whether they’re on the bus to work in the morning, or sitting in the doctor’s waiting room they can easily access their work schedule on the go.

• Reducing HR expenditure

There’s no need to schedule a meeting with HR or to fill out a lengthy form. If an employee wants to book time off or swap a shift, they can do so at the touch of a button. ME’s Leave Request function enables staff to ask for annual leave and to receive feedback via notifications. They can also view the status of a request using the Request Viewer function.

• Improving compliance and productivity

Employees can track their performance with the Agent Productivity function. This enables staff to pinpoint potential areas for improvement, check their productivity statistics and monitor hours worked.

• Enhancing employee autonomy

If an employee wants to work a different shift, they can access ME’s Schedule Trade function to swap their schedule. This increases staff autonomy by allowing shift swaps without staff needing to make a phone call or be on site.

How to seamlessly implement ME into your workplace:

The team at Call Design are here to help with installing, programming and tailoring ME’s functions to suit your workplace. We can teach your employees how to use each of the application’s features on their smartphones and can provide on-site or remote training for your management team.

If you want to learn more about how ME can benefit you, get in contact with the experts at Call Design today.

If you’re able to empower your employees, increased productivity will be a byproduct. Find out how to successfully optimize your workplace to ensure your agents are empowered and engaged.

Upskill managers and empower staff

Upskilling managers is the best investment a business can make – it opens doors and provides new learning opportunities which can be passed on to other employees. This culture of development creates a workplace that is never stagnant but is continually evolving.

Call Design’s training courses are designed to improve staff performance and to hone management skills. The manager essentials course teaches managers to manage their team effectively, monitor staff performance, provide effective coaching and keep staff engaged. No matter which course you’re interested in, Call Design will maximize your time spent learning and can cover everything from coaching employees and providing feedback to setting challenging yet achievable KPIs.

Optimize workplace health and wellbeing

People employed in more sedentary occupations, such as administrative workers, spend an average of 22 hours per week sitting for work. Unfortunately, It’s likely that in workplaces such as contact centers, these numbers are even higher.

Sedentary behaviour in the workplace can lead to to adverse health outcomes, which can decrease employee productivity and engagement. To encourage employees to move around more, employers can implement standing desks or tables and can provide the option of exercise balls for employees to sit on. Standing or walking meetings are a great way to ensure staff spend less time sitting.

Managers can also look at implementing some lunchtime workplace challenge using sports or active games where employees can compete with each other to win points and prizes. Sometimes just making sure employees get up from their desk and take a walk around the office can dramatically increase morale and productivity.

Increase employee flexibility (ME)

Empowered staff are those that feel trusted in their ability to make their own decisions, to work autonomously and to regularly upskill. Software such as Call Design’s workforce management tool, (ME) offers employees the ability to use an application their phones to view their schedules, apply for leave and see their adherence wherever they are. This app increases autonomy by allowing schedule adjustments without staff needing to be in the office.

If you’re interested in growing your business by empowering staff and optimizing your workforce get in touch with the Call Design team today.

We hear about employee engagement all the time but do you know why it matters? Sometimes it can feel like actively engaging your team is a nice-to-do not a must-have. However, research shows employee engagement is a core driver of key business outcomes. Just take a look at some of the stats:

• Gallup research found that companies with top quartile levels of employee engagement performed 21 percent better in terms of profitability compared to companies in the bottom quartile.
• Organisations with engaged team members also had 17 percent higher productivity levels, 10 percent higher customer ratings and lower employee turnover rates than companies with low levels of employee engagement.
• Another study, conducted by Aon Hewitt, found that only 63 percent of employees consider themselves highly or moderately engaged.

This has massively important implications for contact centers. When your employees aren’t engaged in their work, it directly affects your bottom line. So, how can managers ensure their agents are engaged with their work? Here are just a few places to start.

1. Talk to your team about engagement

If you’re going to invest in engagement, start by engaging your team in the process. Sit down and chat with them about what would actually engage them. What things are currently working? Which aren’t? Your agents are a key source of information here – they know better than anyone else what would engage their peers.

2. Show your team some recognition

The Aon Hewitt study found that rewards and recognition have the most potential to improve engagement. Take a close look at what systems or processes you have in place for recognising your team and think about how you could improve them.

3. Develop them professionally

One study by PwC found that modern workers are more motivated by learning and development opportunities than financial rewards. Create pathways for your agents, as doing this will help them understand that you value you them as a team member and see a future for them in your organisation.

Interested in learning more?

Employee engagement is just one piece of the management puzzle. To effectively lead a contact center you need to ensure you’re aligning staff to core KPIs, providing actionable feedback, implementing effective recognition structures – the list goes on.

That’s why Call Design has created a one-day Manager Essentials course as a part of our Workforce Optimization Program. In this session, you’ll learn a variety of better leadership techniques, through a series of actionable training modules.

To learn more about the course and what you can learn, head over to our training courses page!

By 2020, millennials will make up 50 percent of the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But do you have a strategy in place for their unique performance needs?

You can’t ignore millennial contact center agents, nor can you treat them differently based on whatever stereotypes you may have heard. In this article, we offer three techniques on how to properly motivate and manage millennials in the contact center environment.

Technique 1: Use the best technology you can

Millennials consider “technology use” the defining characteristic of their generation, according to a Nielsen study. Having grown up in the years of major technological advancement, your younger staff members will have not only an affinity for better systems, but a preference for them.

• Key takeaway: If you’re managing a large number of millennial staff, consider updating your systems to better optimize their contact center lives. Try linking their daily workforce management platform with a mobile app like Call Design’s ME Mobile so they can check in on the go, on whatever device suits them.

Technique 2: Invest time in personalized coaching and development

Millennials want to be upskilled – to develop their careers, advance in the ranks and earn a better wage. A report on millennials by PwC found that “opportunities for career progression” was the top-most attractive trait of a potential employer, followed by competitive pay and training/development programs.

• Key takeaway: Performance management can be a highly effective tool for motivating and managing millennial employees. Set your Gen Y agents clear goals and offer them coaching to help reach these, then evaluate their performance so they can upskill, achieve promotions and earn more money.

Technique 3: Offer two-way, clear communication

Numerous call center leaders agree that millennials prefer it when communication channels are open, encouraged, and work both ways. Backing this up, Deloitte’s 2017 millennial survey also found that senior millennials rank “communication” as a more important skill than analytics, sales, business knowledge and even academic skills.

• Key takeaway: You need to talk to your Gen Y agents. If you think other managers aren’t effective at this, run communications training programs, and release communication policies that help staff young and old understand when and how they can talk to each other. Note, though, that PwC also found millennials prefer electronic comms over face-to-face, so ensure your new policy allows for a variety of mediums.

With these three techniques, you’ll make great strides to better engaging your millennial staff. If you’d like assistance with improving your contact center’s technology or implementing performance management plans, Call Design can help. Get in touch with us today to talk to one of our expert consultants.

Absenteeism costs Australian businesses approximately $578 per employee, per day of absence. This statistic comes from the Australian Industry Group’s Absenteeism & Presenteeism Survey Report 2015, which highlights the fact that you absolutely cannot ignore absenteeism within your contact centre business.

However, Australian office leaders aren’t stuck dealing with the costs if they know how to prevent absenteeism, and have an action plan to minimise it. So how is a contact centre manager supposed to prevent and manage sudden staff absences?

1. Update schedules immediately

Make sure staff schedules are updated with sick or annual leave as soon as you become aware of it. This will help provide everyone with a better insight into the impact that the absence is likely to have, enabling you to optimise breaks, meetings or other activities during the day so that your customers’ experience is impacted as little as possible.

If the absence isn’t entered until later, other activities might be approved that shouldn’t be.

If sudden absence is due to a negative event like illness or bereavement, HR firm KGA recommends that office managers begin all conversations about the required time off with “I’m sorry you’re going through this.” Managers should then offer their assistance or, at the very least, their ear.

While this won’t necessarily help on the day of a sudden absence, it could prevent absenteeism in the future. Forbes explains that a lack of staff motivation can cause absenteeism. And motivation is linked to job satisfaction, which in turn is linked to empathy. The Center for Creative Leadership found in a study that there’s a positive relationship between manager empathy and staff job satisfaction levels.

3. Deploy smarter, faster tools

Intelligent workforce management solutions can make a huge difference when office managers are trying to cope with sudden staff losses. Call Center Helper – the worlds’s leading contact centre magazine – says that a major cause of agent call avoidance, which often leads to staff absence and attrition, is getting routed calls at the wrong times. For example, a 30-minute troubleshooting call five minutes before the end of a shift.

However, integrating an effective scheduling system like Alvaria WFM into your centre will give you greater oversight on staff workloads so you can better manage long-duration call types in the future. Additionally, schedules that can be viewed and modified in real time can help you balance the workload between agents should someone suddenly become absent.

4. Offer easier shift-swapping

Call Center Helper also recommends allowing shift swapping between agents to reduce absenteeism. Managers might feel like they need to intricately control shifts and schedules, but in actual fact, most agents will be more than willing – and capable – of swapping between themselves in order to meet the needs of both their personal and work lives.

This is another area where contact centre management software is important. A tool like Alvaria WFM or the Call Design ME app allows agents to quickly and easily request leave or swap shifts, without the need for the often slow process of manager intervention

5. Education

Ensure you educate staff on the “The Power of One”. The purpose of these sessions is to help staff understand why their attendance and adherence is important.

If you’re interested in optimising your workforce with better software or training, contact Call Design today to see what our consultants can do for you.