The number one strategy you can employ to reduce employee turnover and increase engagement is to succeed at operational excellence. There is no substitute for any person or team to increase engagement that can compare to those on the team who feel they are succeeding. And we don’t mean false praise; we mean truly succeeding.
Define Roles and Hire the Right People
This means that you have to do a good job defining the frontline job they need to do and then hire the right people who meet the minimum skills and knowledge in the defined areas. After all, they can succeed once you teach them what they didn’t know before being hired.
Provide Effective Training
Ensure you provide effective training that guides them beyond just doing the minimum tasks. For instance, their level of empathy that makes them problem-solvers or their English skills at a 12th-grade level, but your company’s process, procedures, tools, customer profiles, and so on.
Support Progress and Weed Out Poor Hires
Your processes should effectively support people’s progress and weed out those who may have been hired poorly. Have an Academy Bay where there is more support than one trainer with 20 trainees, where they get extra support as they begin to handle transactions.
Build Confidence Through Rigorous Training
Once you do this, they have a good shot at performing well on the floor. They feel confident that they can do the job because they had a healthy but rigorous training experience.
Ongoing Support from Floor Management
But you are not done. Now that your agents are on the floor, your floor management needs to be all about helping your frontline succeed.
Clients often ask us how many side-by-sides a team leader should do with an agent, and our answer is always “as many as it takes.” Trying to generate some X per agent per month is poor practice. A pre-defined number may lead to exposure, but it does not help people get better and work with their boss daily.
Employees who have very involved bosses do better and are more engaged. If you do all of this, you will have less turnover, increased engagement and lower absenteeism. In turn, you will lower costs and make customers happier because an engaged workforce will care for them.
Focus on Frontline Success Before Other Strategies
Only then would we want you to start thinking about the other kinds of strategies. Because you can have as many strategies, programs and benefits as possible. However, the best way to ensure you have engaged employees is to ensure management is doing everything right so the frontline can succeed.
Judi Bolden, Vice President at COPC Inc., brings over 30 years of expertise in performance improvement, operational management and change management. At Groupon, she led significant enhancements in global support and vendor operations, boosting customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Judi is a sought-after speaker with an MBA from Houston Baptist University and a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Her leadership spans 36 countries, where she’s renowned for her practical solutions to enhancing contact center operations and training.