| |
| |
|
|
|
| |
Training, Retaining and Maintaining the Workforce Management Professional
By Douglas Patton |
|
|
All contact centers face significant challenges in hiring and retaining good personnel. Yet so much attention is paid to agent staffing that organizations often forget to make sufficient investments in the staff that keeps the contact center running smoothly – workforce planners.
Without a clear plan to develop and retain skilled workforce planners, the center can compromise the goals of the entire organization. A comprehensive training and retention strategy for these employees can preserve continuity in the workforce planning office and, by extension, bring order to the contact center as a whole.
Recognizing the Need for Planning Expertise
Perhaps the most common mistake many organizations make in the workforce planning arena is failing to realize that it is a distinct profession, with a unique skill set. Budget limitations and a lack of forethought on this front typically result in supervisors or data-entry personnel receiving a short vendor training session before having workforce planning responsibilities heaped onto their already heavy workloads.
Such a rushed introduction to workforce planning can give a few employees the ability to generate basic forecasts and run a schedule that meet basic operating criteria. But it is not enough to develop a professional workforce planner. Someone with only cursory planning skills will not have the foresight to develop crucial planning rules and exceptions, such as schedule variances timed to coincide with the introduction of major marketing campaigns.
Call Out: “Workforce management systems are like musical instruments — without a skilled artist to exploit them, their true potential will never be realized.”
Without someone dedicated to staff planning, the workforce management system will be underutilized and the service goal attainment will surely reflect a lack of focus. Workforce management systems are like musical instruments — without a skilled artist to exploit them, their true potential will never be realized.
Once the organization recognizes the need for an experienced planner, it’s time to begin the search. If the perfect candidate is not available within a reasonable timeframe and salary range, look for someone with strong experience with scheduling others as well as exposure to ACD data collection and analysis.
Develop from Within
Keep in mind, however, that hiring an experienced planner is only one way to add workforce planning talent to the organization. Developing planning expertise in-house is a sustainable and flexible way to build up the strength of your planning team. Use the skilled agents you already have in-house as a viable alternative to hiring outside experts.
Consider "borrowing" agents or starting an "intern program” for the workforce planning team for a one- to three-month stretch. During these special assignments, promising agents can learn the basics of workforce management operation and schedule planning. Intern duties would include manning the call-out line, watching real-time screens, entering data into the workforce software and gradually increasing their duties until they become fully proficient. Rotating promising agents through the workforce planning team every six to twelve months keeps their skills sharp and ensures they are exposed to the latest tools and techniques used by the full-time members.
More important, for the long-term health of the planning function, this internship structure ensures that the company has a strong pool of candidates ready to fill any vacancies in the planning team. Whether new slots open because of growth pressures or the departure of an incumbent, trying to staff through outside hiring can be too time-consuming and result in adding an unknown quantity to the organization. Tailor-made interns provide a viable alternative. Even if these agents are rarely called upon to join the workforce planning team on a full-time basis, exposing a rotating group of floor staff to the "inner sanctum" of the workforce management group can build better appreciation and understanding of workforce management’s role in the company among the agent pool.
Make Training Comprehensive
Regardless of how workforce planning experts join the organization, their talents are most valuable when kept fresh. Yet too many companies often view the introduction of workforce management as a single event, rather than a process.
When the workforce management system is initially installed, system training is conducted for the base staff to teach them best practices. Refresher training or knowledge expansion, on the other hand, usually comes through peer training instead of formal, instructor-led courses. Although this internal sharing of knowledge and tactics is valuable and should generally be encouraged, informal knowledge transfer has its limitations. When training is conducted exclusively or primarily through knowledge transfer instead of through formal training courses, it can amplify the impact of inefficient shortcuts or other suboptimal practices. Consequently, when the techniques are passed down this way they become "the way we do business."
Successful training, both for new hires and to refresh existing practitioners, should incorporate a blend of outside expertise and internal mastery. Vendors with strong customer support programs will typically engage in wellness programs that include refresher training and a process auditing to ensure the workforce planning group is operating optimally.
Don''t wait for departmental turnover to renew acquaintances with vendor training materials. Outside the scope of new hires and functional upgrades, new practices and procedures are constantly being developed by the people responsible for delivering a quality workforce management platform.
The contact center also shouldn’t underestimate the need for cross-training – even within the workforce planning team. Too many planning groups are siloed along forecasting, scheduling and real-time management roles, with little cross-training between job functions. Those silos represent missed opportunities for both employees and the company, restricting the flexibility of planning professionals and constraining management when it becomes necessary to replace someone in the planning group. From a daily operations perspective, broad cross-training fosters a greater capability for the team to act as its own internal troubleshooting group, making them better able to quickly resolve unexpected issues on the fly.
Retaining Top Performers
No company with a shred of self-respect considers itself anything other than the "employer of choice" in its market. But the truth of the matter is that mobility and competitive pressures mean that no position can be taken for granted, particularly not those in the workforce planning team where decisions are made that affect the availability and productivity of hundreds or thousands of agents. Compounding the problem in the workforce planning group is that the skill set is so heavily in demand and will only become more so as a growing number of companies implement workforce management, thereby creating a bigger market for skilled planners.
The retention challenges in the planning group are familiar to many job environments. The role requires key specialties, which are not easy to come by, thus making a talented practitioner valuable to a number of companies. At the same time, the fact that it is a unique specialty often causes companies to put its workforce planners in a box, locking them in with no career progression and giving employees little hope for advancement but to seek out a new job.
Workforce planning groups, particularly those in larger operations where a team of six or more individuals are distributed across multiple sites, can create their own internal career progression. This can include the escalation of duties and responsibilities where team members can take on leadership roles within the planning group. For example, more senior members can be entrusted with planning the group''s daily and weekly activities, development goals, and have a direct line of communication with the rest of the contact center operation. For instance, someone entering the group may start off conducting real-time monitoring and then move up a job grade once they learn how to perform forecasting and scheduling functions.
Over the longer term, workforce planning professionals can rotate into database administration, reporting and management, or even evolve outside the planning group as new, homegrown planning interns are ready to take their place. Ignore this aspect of career development, and planning professionals will soon enough recognize when they have hit a dead end and look to advance their careers with another company.
Remember, the same attrition issues the center faces in the agent population can arise in the workforce planning team. Don’t forget to build hiring, training and retention strategies into the center’s plan. Without a well-trained, motivated and loyal workforce planning group, all the software in the world can''t make a contact center a success. |
| |
|
|
Home | Current
Issue | Previous Issues | CP Wire | EASy Hiring Solutions | Call Center Jobs | Web Events | White Papers | Subscriptions | Advertise | Contact Us
©2001-2008 Contact Professional magazine |
|
