Calabrio’s recent Agent Wellbeing and the Great Resignation study uncovered a fundamental disconnect between intent and reality in contact centres aiming to enhance workforce wellbeing and reduce stress.
Indeed, 86% of organisations acknowledge that lowering stress is a top priority. But, only half have a strategy in place to do so.
So, how can companies combat this problematic disparity? Acknowledging the following three workforce wellbeing blockers and addressing them with the suggested solutions below is the ideal starting place.
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Rising Stress and Burnout
According to the aforementioned Calabrio report, work-life balance is the number one challenge in contact centres today.
The study, which surveys hundreds of agents, also finds that 96% of contact centre employees feel stressed at work at least once a week. Meanwhile, one in three feel stressed multiple times a week, up from one in four just five years ago.
Flexibility is a critical tool to combat this. Yet, offering hybrid work alone will not suffice. While sharing the accounts of many unsatisfied employees, The Washington Post reports that hybrid work is “messy and exhausting”. It reads: “A hybrid schedule sometimes means going to the office and discovering you’re the only one there."
Of course, the ability to offer remote and in-office work is an enabler to better engagement - if brands get their strategy right. However, it is not the be-all and end-all.
The Solution
To achieve better work-life balance, give employees control of their working lives via their schedules.
Such is the advice of Ed Creasey, Director of Pre Sales at Calabrio, who says:
“More contact centres will use software to automate the shifts agents work as we move from a nine to five, Monday to Friday, single-channel contact centre to a 24/7, omnichannel, multiskilled, multilingual operation. With this transition, employees want flexibility.”
During the pandemic, many innovations came to the fore to enable this, including split shifts and respite shifts, which may make a comeback due to rising inflation and the energy crisis.
Even soft-scheduling – which empowers agents with an app to book a holiday, change a shift, or request a shift swap - can provide a new level of flexibility and autonomy.
Then, there are more sophisticated tactics, such as “build your own schedule”, which leading WFM providers – such as Calabrio – help to accommodate.
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Subpar Training and Development
As a new cohort of Gen Z employees enters the workplace, curating a career is especially critical. Unlike other generations, many young employees are less likely to be interested in job security. Instead, they are more pragmatic and risk averse.
Making this point, Deloitte research suggests: “A more nuanced picture emerged as we explored career aspirations, career development, working styles, core values, behaviour and character, education, and stance on diversity.” In this new reality, agents require a more forward-thinking approach to training and development to remain enthused by their work.
A monthly skills refresher is no longer enough to meet these aspirations. After all, queries that reach human agents are becoming tougher to resolve, thanks to the rise of self-service and automation. Therefore, more personalised coaching for agents is required.
The Solution
Creasey recommends a three-pronged approach to reinvigorate performance management, starting with self-assessment, which he believes is “one of the simplest contact centre wins”.
After all, playing back calls to an employee or showing them transcripts of digital interactions and giving them the space to reflect on the exchange – perhaps against a framework or as a more general qualitative assessment – is often eye-opening.