Hi Bhawana,
Am extremely sorry for delayed response on account of pressure on work front..
Retaining good employees is always a challenge in today;s competitive environment but keeping employees who are geographically dispersed adds even more complexity..
There are three ways to handle this vexed issue:-
1. Make the supervisors responsible for the achieving the retention goals esp to the leaders. Am sure you have heard that people don't leave the company but the bosses..so set the retention goals for the leaders and the track the same by way of rewarding or consequences..
2. Provide the leaders retention training & coaching to achieve their goals.
has anyone analysed as what do people want from their bosses..?..TRUST..have the ability to to share credit and not blame..
3. Ensure that supervisors have the retention discussions with the far flung employees..by asking the following
*as what they expect from them..
* what are the grey areas/issues that needs to be resolved..
* By asking question..what would make you leave this organization?..
Hope this provides some pointers to start with.
To provide you some insight please refer to the article on Call Centre Attrition..
Cheers,
Have a great day..
Rajat Joshi
Now You See Them. Now You Don't. The Facts About Call Center Attrition
A Call Center Q&A with Richard Finnegan, TalentKeepers
Is your agents’ disappearing act dragging down the performance of your call center? Getting to the root cause of agent attrition is the first step toward resolving one of the call center’s biggest headaches. Richard Finnegan of TalentKeepers talks about what draws people to our industry, what keeps them here, how satisfied they are and why they may leave your center.
Call Center Magazine: Estimates for industry turnover are all over the map. What do you think is a realistic expectation of turnover in a good, reasonably well-run call center?
Richard Finnegan: Realistic expectation” is hard to reduce to a number because conditions vary so much from center to center. For example, urban locations tend to have higher turnover, as do outsourced centers. But I’m sure we would all agree that annual attrition of 20% to 30% would be very desirable, although some centers would see that as a dream. More important than targeting a number is to set an ongoing attrition reduction goal.
CC: Do incentives and morale-boosting programs have any significant impact on turnover, or do they just reward those who are most likely to stay anyway?
RF: Yes, incentives and morale-boosting programs do impact turnover, but they are only a part of the solution. Our TalentKeepers research makes clear that the main reason agents stay or leave is their relationships with their immediate supervisors. So good supervision with good programs will cause agents to stay with your centers longer, whereas good programs with ineffective supervision is at best a very short-term retention fix. Or said another way, poor supervision will trump good programs every time.
CC: Given the immense cost of hiring, training and then incenting agents, what tools are available to automate or improve the pre-hire assessment process to get the right person in the seat in the first place?
RF: After ineffective supervision, we find many agents quit because they didn’t understand the nature of the job. For some applicants, job conditions such as sitting for long periods of time, speaking through a headset, and in some instances selling services all sound easier to do in an interview than post-hire, day after day. We find that the best hiring practices include putting applicants on the floor with an agent to monitor calls and learn the real nuances of the job.
CC: Where should a new manager concentrate his or her own training – on learning about technology, or on learning about people management?
RF: People management for sure, particularly retention leadership skills. Most managers come up through the call center ranks and have strong job-relevant technology backgrounds, whereas we find they have little people management training. Frontline supervisors have the least, as they are usually promoted from agent positions. These frontline supervisors are the primary drivers of agents’ stay/leave decisions, and they can learn the right skills for retention. For example, we find the number one talent that agents want in their supervisors is to be trustworthy. Supervisors can learn to meet their commitments, avoid blaming, share credit, admit mistakes and apologize – all of the behaviors that build trust between and leader and team. But most must be trained on how to build these talents.
CC: What are the real career-path options for agents and supervisors? What percentage of agents go on to become supervisors, and ultimately, how many of those go on to management positions? Is there a sense of what skills an agent should have to progress, rather than just to excel as an agent?
RF: All of these questions relate in this way. While some agents will be promoted to higher-level jobs, we would probably all agree that there are too few career path options for agents overall. As a result, supervisors on all levels must develop retention talents so they can keep those agents whom they don’t plan to promote for a longer period of time in their current agent jobs.
So those agents who are promoted to supervisory positions must have retention talents so they can retain their subordinate agents longer. Our research indicates that supervisors who develop ten specific retention talents keep their agents longer, talents such as building trust, increasing flexibility, and monitoring their teams for clues they might be leaving and taking appropriate action.
CC: If you had to identify three main “best practices,” what would they be?
RF Centers that approach attrition best do these three things well:
1. Set retention goals at the supervisor level and establish retention as a very important key performance indicator (KPI). Centers that look at attrition on the center-level only are “old school,” as they fail to realize that attrition usually varies greatly from one supervisor to another and these patterns remain consistent until action is taken to improve supervisors’ retention talents.
2. Measure retention talents with inputs from the agents. For example, agents stay longer for supervisors who demonstrate trust, are reasonably flexible with policies and the ways work get done, and who build a day-to-day climate where agents want to come to work. Most operations managers don’t know how their supervisors conduct themselves with their agents, and most supervisors don’t know how their agents perceive them. Everyone wins if centers survey their agents on their supervisors’ retention talents, and supervisors then learn their blind spots and can build plans to improve.
3. Increase the amount, frequency and quality of people management of retention leadership skills training in call centers. Based on feedback from agents, identify the retention talents supervisors need most and train them to improve. Present the training as tools to help supervisors achieve their retention KPI and then track their progress. Those who learn and apply new retention skills will see their attrition improve and all of their KPIs will improve as well.