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Job satisfaction has steadily declined in
the American workplace over the past ten years. The
Conference Board reports, “half of all Americans are
satisfied with their jobs, down from nearly 60 percent
in 1995.” Only 14 percent say they are “very satisfied.”
The largest decline was in employees ages 35-44.
CareerBuilder has recently reported, “six out of ten
workers plan to leave their current employer for other
pursuits within the next two years!”
With declining job satisfaction comes the
risk of increased turnover and all of its
well-documented costs:
 | Increased hiring expense
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| Decreased productivity
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| Increased absenteeism
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| Wasted training dollars
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| Decreased safety
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Improve satisfaction and retention;
improve profitability.
The Harvard Business Review reports that
a five percent increase in retention often
results in in a 10 percent decrease in costs
and productivity increases ranging from 25
percent to 65 percent! As an individual
business, it may help to learn what produces
job satisfaction. The correct answers are
not always the obvious ones! Take this quiz
to see what you know about producing job
satisfaction:
Mark these statements as True or
False.
- Level of compensation is the most
important factor in job satisfaction.
- Self-esteem produced by the workplace
ranks very highly in determining
satisfaction.
- Match between employee occupational
interest and job requirements does not
count for much in measurements of
satisfaction.
- Flexible work times rank low on the
overall scheme of job satisfaction.
Check your answers in the box below.
How well did you do? What can you do to
improve employee satisfaction in your
business? Ideas:
| Make repetitive tasks less boring.
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| Provide workers with responsibility as
well as the authority to accomplish it.
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| Look past formalities and establish
genuine growth paths for all employees,
not just executives. |
With a little work and creative thought,
even employees with low morale can become
motivated, enthusiastic and satisfied in
their jobs!
Answers:
- False: Only 20 percent rank
money as the number one factor,
and nobody says they get too much!
- True: In companies with very
low turnover, 40 percent rank
self-esteem as the reason they
stay. Producing self-esteem costs
little, but requires managers to
give thanks, recognition and
positive feedback for good work.
- False: It is the driving force
behind a growing trend in “career
shifting;” mid-life jump from one
career line to a different
occupation.
- False: At Hewlett Packard,
managers allowed employees to
create their own work schedules.
Some opted for three-day, 12-hour
weekend schedules, with four hours
of work on Monday, enabling those
employees to be involved in family
and school activities during the
week. This allowed weekday
customer engineers to make weekend
plans, knowing that others were
covering those shifts. Benefit to
HP? Overtime costs fell by 36
percent! Many customer engineers
who were thinking of leaving
stayed.
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CALL
CENTERS—A PLETHORA OF SPECIAL CHALLENGES
CALL CENTERS PROLIFERATE ACROSS NORTH AMERICA
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| WHY?
The worldwide call center market continues to
achieve compound annual growth rates between 30
and 60 percent. Even with the backlash against
overseas outsourcing, call center business in
North America has experienced even more
explosive growth. Datamonitor expects Canada to
develop 800 new call centers between now and
2008, along with 93,000 agent positions.
Why are businesses of many types looking to
call centers for their Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) functions? According to
industry guru Nadji Teherani:
| They can usually do a far more efficient
job of marketing than an in-house department
can.
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| Most are equipped with more
high-technology than in-house companies, thus
the client can expect far superior results at
lower cost than purchasing the equipment for
themselves.
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| Since teleservices is the only thing call
centers do, their core competency generates
leads, builds databases and supports sales, e-commerce
and customer relationships.
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| Call centers perform sales, marketing and
customer service functions at a fraction of
the cost to an in-house company, simply
because the agency can spread its costs across
its client base. |
As long as call centers meet these
expectations, growth seems inevitable.
CHALLENGES:
Frieda Barry, Executive Director of industry
group CIAC (Call Center Industry Advisory
Council), points out, “With the explosive growth
of call centers, the absence of qualified
individuals is hurting recruiting efforts and
the ability of call centers to operate at an
optimum level. The need to have individuals
that are competent to hit the ground running is
ever pressing. Until now, very little has been
done to validate the call center profession or
to promote working in call centers as a credible
career choice. The industry...is also hindered
by negative perception of call centers...as
telemarketers.”
She adds, “Working in a call center is not
viewed as a legitimate career. Most people end
up working in a call center while waiting for a
perceived better job to come along. Rarely when
you ask a person what profession he/she will
pursue do you get the response: I want to work
in a call center." |
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No matter which industry insider you ask, the
first challenge they name involves people:
| Call center employees are the face your
company turns toward your customers. They are
a critical element in building a trusting,
long-lasting relationship with those
customers.
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| Labour is the number one location factor
for call centers, simply because the quality
and skill of the staff making and receiving
calls is a huge determinant in the facility's
success.
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| FedEx—The company wants customers to use
the Web for customer service because it costs
less. But if it cuts back on real people,
customers could get angry. So it spends $326
million a year on call centers.
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| HR professionals constantly seek the most
efficient ways of deploying their call center
capabilities. These efficiencies include
flexible workforce solutions that focus on
staffing, training and retaining quality call
center personnel. |
And, that last item includes the next big
challenge: You’ve hired them, can you keep them?
As call centers have looked to rural Labour
markets for their locations, the inelasticity of
those markets has come back to haunt them.
In New York, when you fire someone or they
quit, your universe of potential applicants
shrinks by a millionth. The same action in
Pocatello, Idaho might reduce it by a few
hundredths. Do this a thousand times a year, and
Pocatello is out of applicants!
MetLife offers these call center turnover
stats:
| 187 percent for outbound selling centers
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| 97 percent for inbound/outbound centers
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| 78 percent for team/group managers
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| 73 percent for entry level representatives
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And, if they don’t quit—but don’t show up?
MetLife cites absenteeism at the 30-40 percent
daily level! |
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| CALL
CENTER IMPROVES RETENTION WITH STRATEGIC
HIRING SYSTEM
A call center company services
several major clients from locations in
widely separated U.S. communities. Most of
the call center’s accounts involve customer
service and technical support, with some
opportunity for incremental sales. They have
grown rapidly and deal with many challenges
common to call center operations nationwide:
| New hire failure rates running as high
as 85 percent in the first month
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| High training costs followed by very
early on-job failure
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| Difficulty recruiting for specific
evening and weekend shifts
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| In some locations, an inelastic
employment pool |
In addition to these familiar problems,
client demands may cause very rapid
fluctuations in required headcount; a
client’s promotional campaign, for example,
may require an immediate increase of 50
percent in agent counts, but a similar
percentage reduction three weeks later. If
other client workloads do not take up the
slack, a round of layoffs becomes
inevitable.
In an attempt to reduce the costly
effects of these challenges and increase
retention of newly hired call agents, the
call center tested a strategic hiring system
of assessments in a “funnel” model.
Prior hiring processes were a traditional
combination of application, basic skills
test, reference checking and two-level
interview.
In the funnel model being tested, new job
applicants complete the Step One Survey II™
(SOS2) assessment and the Customer Service
Perspective™ (CSP) assessment at the time of
application. The HR staff evaluates each
application and the results of a basic
skills test (keyboarding, computer skills).
Based on this evaluation, candidates
selected for interview are scored on the
SOS2; those who qualify with scores above a
criterion are invited to interview with HR
staff. If recommended for continuation by
the interviewer, the CSP assessment is
scored.
Applicants who match the relevant job
pattern above a criterion level are invited
to interview with a call center team leader,
using the interview guide from the CSP as
well as other interview questions. The
combined inputs from the application, skills
test, two assessments and two interviews are
evaluated to select those who receive a job
offer.
While the new process appears more
complicated, staff hours per hire have
actually been reduced with use of the
assessment criteria. Staff hours are now
focused on fewer, more highly selected
finalists.
During the study, client demands required
a dramatic increase in headcount. In the
original hiring system, this level of
increase was always accompanied by an
increasing level of turnover. The left-hand
graph shows the effect of the hiring system
on early job failure. The right-hand graph
illustrates the success of the system over
time; even while headcount levels increased,
turnover declined and continued to trend
downward.
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"Success is not so much
what we have as it is
what we are."
~ Jim Rohn
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“The reason why
so little is done, is
generally because so
little is attempted."
~ Samuel Smiles
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