I want to know from the members some suggestions for reduction of attrition rates in call centres by devising good recruitment policy. Is it viable? are there any models adopted in UK and US linking these two issues?Are they linked or are they looked as independent issues?

Vedula,

Interesting topic; I'm surprised nobody has tried to help here so far. Anyway, it's not my area of expertise so I won't pretend to be an expert, but there is always a lot to be said for looking at the process from the perspective of theemployee, rather than the employer.

Attrition rates can be tempered by looking at the overall package that is being offered as a whole, and seeing if it is less attractive than similar packages offered within the industry.

Obviously, money is a prime motivator - we all need it (like it or not) and so examining the rates offered by other call / contact centres in your geographical area and also in your market sector is worthwhile - don't pay too much over the going rate, but aimto be perceived as an employer who values the employee.

Other things to look at include working conditions (very important! ensure that people enjoy their work, or at worst do not feel particularly negative toward the tasks they undertake on a daily basis), career progression (it is often good to know that there is a career path within an organisation into which an individual can map their own personal and career development), respect from supervisors/managers (treat the employees with respect otherwise they will feel undervalued), challenge, training and so on.

People move on to new positions for a variety of reasons, and striking a good balance of the everyday factors leads to job satisfaction, which is essential if you wish to keep employees.

Recruitment policy should be tempered to identify individuals who are sound and dependable, show pragmatic approaches to work, do not have a history of moving on every year or so and so on. Don't reject anyone who has moved around, however, it can be a sign of someone gaining a lot of experience. However, be sure to identify the rationale behind such 'active' career moves. Listen to what potential candidates are looking for - do you honestly offer what they seek? If not, they may become dissatisfied or disillusioned and move on.

It's a science and an art in itself, and as one who sees things from the employee side more than from the employer side, it's crucial that you do try to pay attention to the basic needs of individuals - security, money, respect, challenge - and try to maximise good features and minimise bad features of the roles and work environment.

Hope this helps, and also stimulates some more responses...

Let us know how you get on!

John

The obvious linkage....

The way we recruit is as important as the way we retain. If at the time of recruitment we can identify the attrition contributors- like interest in job, the constraints that are evident in the resume, innumerable breaks in service and too many functional changes in carreer, family background and additional information about personal life incidents which are highlighted by employee during interviewing.

The monotony of the job, lack of career options at workplace,non-supervision/over supervision, lack of recognition and lack of training and lack of business ethics at workplace also contribute to high attrition.

Motivation and attrition are interlinked and recruitment policy can be an effective tool to overcome manpower shortages.One example that I can give here is of short listing of 10 candidates for 5 posts.You know that within one month 2 or 3 more will or 5 more may leave therefore your database for prospective employees is always updated and readilyavailable for immediate replinishment.

In India where call centre industry is booming, the attrition ratio is very low compared to other industries. IN INDIA VERY FEW JOBS ARE AVAILABLE AND UNEMPLOYMENT IS VERY HIGH AMONGST THE EDUCATED CLASS.This is the main reason why people do not like to leave a job although they are unhappy.

I suppose even in UK/US with economic recession and massive job cuts across industries, call centres may be able to attract more people from other industries.Whether such a switch affects even call centres is already discussed in some other forum in CCV.

To sum up briefly Motivation/control of high Attrition/scientific Recruitment all are vital functions of management and a business which fails in these functions may also fail overall to deliver to its customers and shareholders...

Increasing retention is not hard to do if we follow one principle;

Don't hire people who will not become successful employees.

The hard part is knowing which qualified job applicants are most likely to become successful employees. Even this isn't hard to do if we use job matching.

Interesting idea, Bob. However, your idea doesn't address those individuals who might come across well in an interview situation, but subsequently become disillusioned or frustrated by their role. I've been in this situation personally, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

John

PS. Welcome to the community; I hope you'll find it useful and interesting!

Hi peeps.

Personally, I gave up recruiting specifically on skill some years ago.

My philosophy now is to hire people who can understanding and capability with software (if thats whats needed) but who are primarily people who, once again, can that they consider others in the executioon of their roles.

The reason for this is that I want people to understand that business life is in lots of way like chess. One can accumalate lots of individual pieces (what we in Britian call the culture - "Can't do that sir, more than my job's worth...") but still loose the game.

So, it's the end game that is important; hiring people who are sometimes willing to sacrifice their individual 'bit' for the greater good will ensure you win.

David

Certain words completely disapperared from my first reply!!! John, for your note, they had the 'less than' and 'greater than' characters surrounding.

Try again.

Hi peeps.

Personally, I gave up recruiting specifically on skillsome years ago.

My philosophy now is to hire people who can understanding and 'demonstrate' capability with software (if thats whats needed) but who are primarily people who, once again, can 'demonstrate' that they consider others in the executioon of their roles.

The reason for this is that I want people to understand that business life is, in lots of ways, like chess. One can accumilate lots of individual pieces (what we in Britian call the 'Job's Worth' culture - i.e. "Can't do that sir, more than my job's worth...") but still loose the game.

So, it's the end game that is important; hiring people who are sometimes willing to sacrifice their individual 'bit' for the greater good will ensure you win.

David

Hi David, nice to see you back again.

Some characters are treated as html markup; it's how I can do this - however, the tradeoff is that sometimes the odd 'innocent angle bracket' gets caught in the crossfire. I *think* you need to type an ampersand followed by either lt or gt to do the less-than or greater-than brackets. We'll be looking into the issues surrounding markup fairly soon, and you're not the first casualty - I often get too fancy and end up getting it wrong, so it's a useful tool with BITE!

HTH,

John

Thanks John.

NOW I understand!!!

David

Dear David,

I perfectly understand the importance of hiring people who can do "their bit" for company cause. What we normally tend to overlook when recruiting only for skill set is their attitude to job.

I was competant to take up an accounting job and had necessary skill, but my interest was lacking.In the same way many are competant to be CSRs but they may not have the right attitude to the job.Hence I feel attitude should score over skill.

Any takers?

Vedula

Thats exactly what I said Vedula.

When I say demonstrating capability (this is great John!) what I am referring to is simply ensuring that a basic skill set is in place to fully utilise software tools etc. It is not being highly skilled/expert. Its a pragamtic and realsitic approach to ensuring that the correct person can use tools that support them in a manner that deleivers best benefit to customers.

David

Dear David,

Thanks for the reply. Do you think call centres should adopt a new metric &? What I mean is - factors that indicate that a prospective employee has a high chance of leaving the job in a short time.

Some important factors which I have encountered are -

1. Applying for the job as he is unemployed (lack of interest in job).
2. Residing far away from the workplace ( In India this is crucial as the public transport system is inadequate)
3.Frequent functional shifts
4. Overburdened by financial and family commitments- get 100 bucks more.. he jumps job...
5. Unable to adopt to change - frequent shift changes....
6. Lack of career options.
7. Emotional imbalance - takes work incidents personally (wrong perceptions).
8. Bad team player ( individualistic - impatient types)

These we can rate on a scale of 3 as Most important, important, least important. Then we can make a weightage of the factors and define a probability factor.

Will this work?
Vedula

Firstly Vedula the reasons people ‘leave’ companies are far more to do with the way they are treated (by the organisation) than money.

Whilst I can understand where you are coming from, if one were to adopt this metric it would signal to bosses that the way they currently treat employees is right and proper. We both know this is not generally the case.

Remember EVERY human being, regardless of race colour or creed, works initially for Security and then, when that is satisfied, for Happiness (Maslow).

So, while your idea is indeed possible, I feel that the practical may prove somewhat problematic. Firstly, one would have to identify the real reasons people leave. This in itself is difficult as it is very rare for people to be aware of the initial reason they decide to leave. Invariably 'money' takes over as the motive as it is the publicly acceptable face of change (excuse) as 'everyone' can relate to it.

Undoubtedly, money is a reason for some people as we go to work to pay bills (as mentioned) and if we don't earn enough to do that then we are forced to move on. The 'real' reason people leave is much more to do with how they feel they are perceived.

If you do not perceive you are adding 'value', your self-esteem (and feelings of security) drops - almost regardless of money. People then feel they are out of control and so 'jump' rather than be pushed.

The ‘real’ metric for a company to consider is, “What metric can I put in place to measure ‘joinability and stickability’ – i.e. “Why should a person join, and more importantly stay with, my company.”

If you can develop that one, what will happen is that you will then have a basis upon which to develop your metric; as you will then be sure it will add value to the Customer Experience.

David

I agree, money is not everything. From experience, one of my clients pay their staff pretty much the minumum however their staff retention is incredibly high. Although people talk about money as though it is the most important thing, enjoying what you do, the people you work with and the environment is far more so. People spend such a large part of their lives at work, if they can find a place where they are happy etc etc regardless of salary they are far more likely to stay.

Annabelle is correct - it isn't just about the money - it's the whole package, a synergy between money, environment, convenience, security, challenge and a whole melting-pot of different factors.

Job satisfaction is a difficult recipe to get correct - no question, there!

However, to be paid a pittance can influence the individual's perception of their own worth (or their perception of what their employer feels is their worth - subtle difference ;-) and create negativity.

...andwe all know that negativity in the workplace is a BAD THING...

John

Happiness and satisfaction are the momentary states of mind. No person can ever be in a constant state of happiness or satisfaction. So devicing a metric which takes into account satisfaction and happiness is difficult. You are right David when you say that it is how the employer perceives attrition and ensures maximum retention by providing an environment in the organization which will keep attrition levels at manageable levels.But to device a metric on joinability and stickability is tough- as both these parameters are subjective.

Can you explain further how I can form the base on these by an illustration?

Vedula

Vedula, I have taken the liberty of deleting your duplicate posts from this topic - hope you don't mind!

All the best,

John

Satisfaction and happiness are not momentary states of mind Vedula; if they were then loyalty as a phenomenon would not exist and even fewer people on the planet would ever smile… They are actually both long term states of mind based on feelings and cumulative experiences.

People can indeed be in a constant state of happiness or satisfaction as each individual has their own levels for constituting what makes them feel that way. I feel what you are referring to is that level of satisfaction or happiness that is characterised by what one might term ‘the silly grin’.

To devise a metric that measures ‘joinability’ and ‘stickability’ is indeed tough but not beyond the wit of man – or at least us. They are subjective I agree but so, I am still told, are feelings and yet we can measure those very easily (now we know how!)

Having thought about it, it seems to me that we would need to do to start is look at the ‘real’ drivers for people joining one company over another – what is described in the UK as making a company an ‘employer of choice’ (by prospective employees). Add to that the real reasons people leave and together one has the beginnings of a metric.

Couple that information with an ability to gain answers to subjective questions and you have a very very valuable tool.

David

Hi John,
thanks for deleting duplicate posts. that day I had some problems with hardware and I was not sure whether my posts were updated. Thanks a million for the right act at right time...

Vedula

David thanks for the suggestion. I will do some more thinking and probably when my metric is done I will discuss and share it with all out here.

Vedula