(note to self: fix that damned paging bug!)

John

I think we have to make agents in India responsible. How often have I trained agents who tell me that they are 'here' just for a month or two - making some 'pocket money' instead of sitting at home while they wait for... whatever it is.

30% of trainees feel and think like this. Another 30% 'use' one call centre to get some experience and move to another one which was more difficult to get into, in the first place.

Something has to be worked out where they end up 'paying' for the training only if they leave before a stipulated time frame.

That would be fair to all concerned. Especially the poor recruiting agencies who end up giving dozens of 'free replacements'!

Navaz Hilloowala

I'm amazed there is even anything to discuss on this issue.

If companies experience issues with high levels of staff leaving within the first few weeks then they need to look at themselves, not the employees.

Are you employing the right people? Is your recruitment process all it should be?

The industry must have attracted this type of action amongst the workforce - by continuing to recruit them -and this suggests there are larger issues to resolve. Is employing a recent graduate, who plans for a career in Molecular Biology, the right candidate to answer phones all day every day?

I really could not imagine working for a company that wouldn't pay for training.

On the other hand I know that the last contact centre I worked in had a big problem with taking our 5 weeks of training and then quiting before they hit the floor and we got an ROI.

It started to become an epidemic as more and more people did this. Nothing we could really do to stop it though besides screen people closely and watch for telltale signs.

I let a few people go that would have been excellent but were overheard bragging how they were going to quit the first day.

"If you complete your training (1-2 days) and stay for a minimum of 5 days we'll pay your training days otherwise they go unpaid."

Does anyone find this any more palatable???

I think that unpaid training is not an effective option as the staff are not motivated by the companies apparent lack of trust in them before they have even started, whilst the solution we used still leans this way, it gives an incentive for staff to stay for at least 3 months, whereby if they left we were not left financially short, but if they chose to stay they could potentially get a pay rise based on the pay scheme used.

My last call centre (outsourced) had the issue of keeping staff after 5 weeks of training. The solution that we found worked best was for us to incentivise staff to stay after their training for long enough that we could bill the client the cost of the agents training.

We did this by paying the agents a fixed rate whilst in training with a pay rise upon completion, if the agent then completed a preset amount of time after training, approx 3 months, we would then pay them the difference between the training wage rate and the completed training rate for the 5 weeks of training

We calculated that the agent working for 3 months covered the cost of training them as well as the extra money they received as a one off bonus.

This worked well for us as the length of service for new agents increased and the quality monitoring by an external company showed that we did gain some benefit from this method.

Scott

I am curious Scott did your company improve its recruitment practices or only the pay structure??

I think that half the problem with staffing is getting the right staff with the right conditions.

Before we implemented this change we were constrained by a generic HR process to recruit staff. This method was used for all campaigns and enforced by company policy. We argued this point and got a concession to interview and vet our own staff, this allowed us the freedom to direct the advertising and the interview and job specifications to our campaign, and also to use the actual team managers to interview the staff, giving us not only the visibility of staff before they start (from a TM POV) but also direct feedback from the interview as to any holes/ areas to improve in our job specs/interview process

So in answer to your question, yes we improved both our recruitment practices and pay structures

IMO this was successful as the average new leavers Length of Service increased from approx 10-12 weeks (inc training for 5) to 22-24 weeks over the year following this process change

what are your thought on this process?

>>>what are your thought on this process?
Firstly I'm glad it worked for you and sad that your HR dept seems somewhat inflexible and not on the ball with regard to training and retention issues, they should drive the issue forward.

Did you ask any questions on motivation for the job and how did you ensure the candidates weren't pulling the wool over your eyes??

We did ask motivational questions and the interview was discussed between the management team. I was mainly involved in resourcing so i don't have much info on the actual interviews.

With the bonus being paid after 3 months the agent was within their probationary period. All new agents that started were closely monitored on their performance and compared with leves for a new agent. If we had poor performing agents they would get extra training to help them improve, but if they showed a lack of inclination to improve or a blatant 'don't care' attitude they would be warned that they would not be taken on if they did not work to improve their performance.

One of the key things we did in terms of recruiting, was to get a group of good,average and not so good performing agents and asked them to come up with a fair job description, detailing the day to day tasks of an agent, IMO this would have helped to get better informed candidates and therefore agents better prepared for the job.

We may have been fortunate, but we did not recruit many candidates that were 'pulling the wool', but those who managed to pull the wool over our eyes would have been identified during the first 3 mnths.

Scott,

If you remember Ritchie and I also restructured the teams so that
someone coming out of training wasn't immedietly hit with the complex
calls, this was done with the aim of giving them experience on the simpler
calls in the first 3 months and not givning them an 'I can't cope with this'
morale sapping strain.

That was when we went to the 3 way skills based routing model,
oh must have been late 2001.

Staff retention 'seemed' to improve after that.

regards

DaveA

I remember, but between you and ritchie doing that and me helping implement this process, it was being headed up by alison and elena with bina for assistance, When i started it was like you had never been there!!?

I did re-implement the process of agents taking simpler calls before being exposed to all manner of weird and wonderful experiences long before this process was introduced

Something I implemented many moons ago was a "holding pool" for fresh out of training agents. These had decided OPA time - over time the mix of off phone and on phone time changed (reduced off phone and more on phone), until the end of week four when they were "released into the wild" so to speak.

And on the first point of paid for training - yes, all were paid, and if they failed they still got the months worth of money.

Ian

All centres I have knowledge of oeprate some kind of creched environment for an easier transition.

And all pay in training.

Z

In all centres i have worked in there has been some sort of 'Early Learning Centre', just to clarify, when Dave was there he implemented it, about 2001, i joined the same campaign approx 2003, between Dave leaving and me working on the campaign the ELC was integrated into the main teams. I re-implemented ELC that Dave had put in place Initially

Does anyone have any ideas on how to influence a client who has this policy.

A sophisticated approach would be appreciated.

I have already come up with

1. It devalues training and trainer and fosters less commitment from employee.
2. Promoted the notion that learning is not something that the company invests in.
3. Increases propensity for learning to be unsuccessful (as learners have obstacles to learning)
4. Does not promote investment in training, a quality metric with long term gain.


However the companies view may be
1. It maximises our ROI with temporary staff who are unlikely to stay given our high attrition rates.
2. It acts as an incentive to learn and do well.
3. Reluctance to increase costs.