9 Employee Engagement Tips to Avoid Attrition in BPO Company
High agent turnover rates have always been an issue for business process outsourcing companies. According to the Quality Assurance and Training Connection (QATC), the BPOs in the US have around 30–45% staff attrition rate. Poor employee engagement and monotonous work culture in BPOs is the primary reason for increasing attrition.
Probably, increasing staff turnover is the biggest challenge for every BPO outsourcing firm. Loss in business productivity and a threat to customer satisfaction is rising with increasing attrition. What is the solution?
Well, it is vital to work on employee engagement in the same way companies focus on improving their customer satisfaction. Efficient employee engagement is the only key businesses can augment productivity. Agents working with positive energy have a better chance of driving customers’ interest, thus neglecting employee satisfaction won’t work.
Every BPO company aims at increasing customer loyalty and it’s the company’s culture that helps bring the same. A happy employee is a key to bringing positive customer feedback, which is why companies need to work upon building an engaging environment. As per “The Demand Metric 2013 Employee Engagement Survey”, companies retain 80% of their customers when they maintain 50% employee engagement.
With a change in work culture, call centres currently understand the challenges faced by the agents. Companies today emphasize employee engagement and feasibility by easing restrictive business nature. What else can call centres do to avoid staff attrition?
Techniques to Elevate Employee Satisfaction:
Plan the Recruitment Process
When we talk about managing staff attrition for business process outsourcing companies, streamlining the hiring procedure plays a key role. The candidates hired for designated jobs need to have expertise and interest in the same field to avoid frequent turnovers.
The right agent for the right job can help limit attrition. Employing an incorrect match for the job brings dissatisfaction to both employee and the employer. As a result, BPO companies need to plan their recruitment process, so that the agents stay loyal to their responsibility.
Work on Training Programs
BPO outsourcing companies need not forget to emphasize and work upon their training programs. Recruiting professionals is fine; nevertheless, a learning approach always helps to boost productivity. Call centres have to handle the secondary functions for several clients, which is why training in-house agents simultaneously is essential to improve knowledge of different products and services.
Moreover, with the reforming technologies, it is vital to offer training sessions to the agents, so that there is no mess in handling the latest tools. Upgrading the employee’s skills with training programs helps with increased job adeptness and augmented customer satisfaction.
Check on Agent Performance
Every BPO company needs to focus on its staffs’ performance monitoring, as it helps to highlight possible stress levels. By focusing on performance, companies get to know about the employees’ average call handling time and calls per hour. This notifies the potential hindrances that the staff may be facing and the areas where they need assistance.
When call centres’ check performance and appreciate efforts, agents tend to stay long. Employees work hard when they find their providers want to help them in skill development. A check on performance helps to lessen errors, contrarily boosting effectiveness.
BPOs aiming to reduce turnover rates need to help their employees strengthen abilities and work with a customer-centric approach. Checking performance and helping the agent improve skills helps the business build a customer-friendly tactic, later offering a satisfying solution.
After all, it is always helpful to coach and work with the existing staff rather than wasting time and money on re-hiring and training.
Recognize Good Work
Business process outsourcing companies’ work to handle the secondary outsourced responsibilities of multiple clients. These firms have a team of agents who work 24X7 to offer stupendous support. It is integral here to reward and appreciate every agents’ exceptional work.
Agent retention is possible when the business environment is positive and the employees are rewarded for good work. The agents feel motivated when they receive a token of appreciation for quality work. Thus, companies need not avoid recognizing good initiatives!
Transparent Communication
Every member of the team is important and the agents need to know it! To reduce attrition and improve retention, call centres’ need to make the employees feel that their ideas and opinions matter. Make the employees aware of all the communication channels and make them feel free to share their ideas and the issues that they might be facing.
Involving the team and making them feel important contributors to decision-making helps augment retention rates. When the employees have transparent communication opportunity to share views, they feel valued and stay long, consequently, contributing to business productivity.
Career Scope Opportunity
The biggest reason for increasing employee attrition in a BPO company is the lack of career growth opportunities. Offer promotion and reward the employees for good work. When the staff feels to have the possibility to grow in the present company, they never switch to another firm.
Equipment Availability
The lack of adequate equipment accessibility in business process outsourcing companies is one more reason for the increased employee attrition rate. When the BPO outsourcing firm has all the necessary tools available for the staff, offering stupendous support becomes easy.
Keeping unrealistic expectations ultimately results in increased staff attrition and depreciated business productivity. Therefore, to augment customer satisfaction and minimize turnover rates, call centres need to work upon making necessary working tools available.
Significance to Employee Health
High turnover rates have always been an issue for the call centre industry. The monotonous work culture, 24X7 availability on workstations’ and flexibility loss are among the top reasons that increase attrition. Among the same, the lack of employee health facility also causes increased turnover rates.
Accordingly, BPO outsourcing firms need to work on employee health wellness to avoid more loss. Companies can introduce new policies that cover health insurance for the staff. When agents join a firm that looks after their overall development, attrition decreases automatically.
Engagement through Activities
An engaging company culture always retains employees. Companies having a monotonous work environment tend to lose agents to the companies that cater to staff happiness with flexible work atmosphere. By conducting events, games, etc. BPOs can engage employees and assure stress-free service performance.
As per the 2018 TalentLMS Gamification at Work Survey, conducting events and games can make the agents feel relaxed. Moreover, employees tend to perform better with 84% agents feeling more engaged in the business service, 87% more productive and 82% feel happier at work.
Ending Note:
Every company aims to attain supreme customer satisfaction. But, who drives the customers to the business? This is where it is vital to remember employee satisfaction. The agents reach the customer with the business-related service, thus their satisfaction is supreme. A happy employee always boosts productivity; consequently, agent satisfaction is significant for customer loyalty.
Increasing attrition can be the reason for a lack of opportunities in-house. Hence, it is important to introduce new ideas to elevate employee satisfaction. To mitigate attrition, companies need to make employee engagement integral. Furthermore, irrespective of wasting time and money on re-hiring, in-house service management needs emphasis.