Improving attendance

[suary]

Hello..

I have recently been assigned the dubious task of attendance and adherence. The strange thing is that the cc I am responsible for should have great attendance as we work Mon to Fri 0800-1700. The problem is we consistently have over 20% absenteeism almost each and everyday. Please if anyone has any ideas as to how this can be improved, I am all ears.

Thanks
Suary

[DavesBabyD]

You could possibly set up some type of incentive program. We just recently started the following in our call center, and the attendance has improved. The program is for a 3 month period, and is as follows:

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS:

1.) MUST BE A FULL-TIME (40 HOURS WEEKLY) "HOURLY" EMPLOYEE -
NO SALARIED OR MANAGERS ARE ELIGIBLE.

2.) EMPLOYEE MUST WORK THEIR SCHEDULED SHIFT - NO VARIABLE
TIME IS ALLOWED UNLESS THEIR SCHEDULE HAS BEEN CHANGED IN
ADVANCE BY MANAGEMENT.

3.) EMPLOYEE MUST BE IN GOOD STANDING WITH THE COMPANY.

4.) VACATION AND PERSONAL DAYS CANNOT BE USED TO COUNT FOR A
WEEK UNLESS APPROVED THIRTY DAYS IN ADVANCE.

INCENTIVE:
----------
TWO HOURS BONUS PAY PAID OUT IN APRIL FOR EACH MONTH THE
EMPLOYEE HAD PERFECT ATTENDANCE. THIS COULD BE UP TO 6
HOURS BONUS PAY. THIS MAY BE PAID OUT IN THEIR CHECK OR
MAY BE USED FOR PAID TIME OFF IN INCREMENTS OF TWO HOURS.

If this is something that your company is willing to do, it would defenitly be worth looking in to.

Good luck!

[CallCenterJunky]

One thing you can try and do is make your Call Centre offer someting to it's agents. Remember, they are the heart of ANY call centre. At my CC we initiated a new scheme wherby we hand out forms and we ask the agents what they would like to see happen within the call center. We then take in the forms and base a report and forward all resonable ideas to the CCM.

Recently for valentines day we had one of our TL's dress up as cupid which entertained all of our agents a great deal. We also hold raffles whereby agents win prizes for having the best AHT (Average Handling Time) and the best stats.

Methods like these make the working enviroment in the CC a great place to work in. Ask your agents what they would like to see happen through out the call centre and try and implement the ideas, this may help with your abscentees as they may start to find working more enjoyable.

Hope this idea is off some use

Regards

[Rehan]

hello, I'va been assigned the task of making a tardy policy in a 24*7 call center. The staff is habbitual of taking off casually and not informing prior to leave or inform over the phone about not coming to work.
The tardy policy is to be made keeping in mind that those who show such behaviour should be asked to leave after certain verbal or written warnings.
PLease help

[anagram100]

Hmmm... sounds like you've got your work cut out.

From your message is a little confusing. Are you talking about people not phoning in to say they're going to be off work due to sickness? Or just randomnly taking holidays when they feel like it?

It seems from your message you're not talking about people coming in late to work but merely leaving early is this right? I would suggest you need some adherence targets put in place if this is the case.

It sounds like you need to have an absence policy which should include details of time to phone in sick by on the day they are due into work, an accepted level of percentage absence before disciplinary action commences and should include some procedure to monitor one off absences with in a specific time frame say 3 separate occassions within 3 months. If you have a HR department it would be wise to contact them regarding this.

Let me know a bit more and perhaps I can give you some better ideas.

Cheers
anagram :o)

[Les Hyde]

Rehan,

To echo anagram’s sound advice, you should partner with your HR (and possibly legal) department to formulate your attendance policy. This would ideally cover the requirements for contacting the appropriate person or group for absences as well as leaving work early. Depending on your location and local laws, it could be as simple as:

1 Leaving Early without permission = ½ Occurrence.

1 No Call No Show = 1 Occurrence.

1 Occurrences in a 90 Day timeframe would result in a verbal warning
2 Occurrences in a 90 Day timeframe would result in a written warning
3 Occurrences in a 90 Day timeframe would result in a final warning
4 Occurrences in a 90 Day timeframe would result in termination

Once you have an acceptable and legal policy the real work will begin, as you have to change some behaviors and attitudes in the workplace if you want the new policy to work. Communication, effective change management and coaching will be the key.

Some questions you might want to consider:

How will the attendance policy be tracked?

Who is responsible for enforcing the policy? And how will you ensure the policy is applied consistently and fairly?

What performance metrics are in place for attrition? You might drive attrition of agents, is your company prepared for this? (staffing, training and development of new people)

If you need specifics please drop me a note, and let us know how it goes.
Les

[Rehan]

Thanks for the suggestions, let me clarify a bit more, the tardy policy should cover:

Late comings.
early leaving.
off without informing.
off on sick leaves for one or two day casually.

The suggested point system is good enough but the tenure for occurance is too long, what if it is 22 days i,e one month.

Yes we do have a HR department and due to the fact that this is a newly launched company, HR is also in process of developing the policies and procedures.

[Les Hyde]

Originally Posted by Rehan

Thanks for the suggestions, let me clarify a bit more, the tardy policy should cover:

Late comings.
early leaving.
off without informing.
off on sick leaves for one or two day casually.

The suggested point system is good enough but the tenure for occurance is too long, what if it is 22 days i,e one month.

Yes we do have a HR department and due to the fact that this is a newly launched company, HR is also in process of developing the policies and procedures.

It sounds like you will need to draft your own policy with the guidelines needed for you to successfully operate your business. Using the criteria mention in my last post, you could adopt that easily to meet the specific time frames that work for you i.e. change 90 days to 30 days and you should have a good policy to implement. However, the reduced timeframe might not be as effective for an immediate and sustained improvement over the long run.

Late arrival and leaving early as equally as detrimental to your operation in that you do not have people in place when the calls come in. The employee did make it to work, however they either did not arrive when you needed them or they left before their scheduled hours of coverage. Either way it hurts your business, as you do not have needed staff. I’d suggest having late arrival and leaving early addressed in the same manner.

Depending on your business and culture, you could also use incentives and reward attendance, however I would really think this through as this could introduce the wrong behaviors into your center. I have seen this approach used successfully, however I have also witnessed this causing disruption to a center as well. I hope this helps.

Les

[LeeFred]

I have found a good way to boost attendance with out having a mass exodus is to have a positive and negative result for good and poor attendance respectively. I will use what we do here as an example. Keep in mind that we employ mostly college students so we are pretty lenient with the attendance policy. You may need to adjust the numbers if you decide to use this.

1. Attendance Bonus -- Any employee who does not miss a day of work in a pay period will receive a $30 bonus. (This comes out to almost a 1 dollar an hour raise.)

2. Poor attendance -- All employees must work atleast 70% of available hours (28hrs in a 40 hr pay period). If they fall below that they are written up. If they fall below it a second time they are terminated.

Now we do deal exclusively with part time college students, so we can not be too demanding but you get the jist of it. It has done wonders (absenteeism rate was about 45-50%, now it stays below 30%). Soon we are making the minimum attendance percentage 75%. You can alway adjsut it.)

[Nickyr]

I don't think the answer is to give out incentives for attendance. Thats the most basic KPI an agent has adhere too. That is why they are paid?

In my experience attendance problems normally run deeper than people just not pitching up for work. I think one needs to get to the root of the problem (and it might be something small), fix that and see what happens. Furthermore I think if you do not follow strict attendance process and oversee one or two instances, you are looking for trouble.

If you can't find the problem, follow your absenteeism process and get new blood in the door.

[rgrajagiri]

i don't think so

[ragsy]

Few suggestions here

1 The attendance should be a KPI on the agent score card, play around on the weightages on quarterly basis.
2 Introduce stack ranking with definitions of super, mediocre and non performers. This can be done for overall and also KPI Wise
3 Sign off from all the agents on the job description and KPI to make sure they are aware of the job requirements and that they sign off the acceptance
4 Involve HR policies for non adherance
5 A part of the CTC can be made as an attendance variable
6 The Team lead/supervisor and upto the CC Manager should have the attendance as a KPI
7 Attack the problem on a team wise basis to understand and synergize the focus towards the problamatic TL's
8 Regular reviews with the agents/TL/AM's/Manager on the monthly performance and sign off the score cards
9 Chronic cases can be put on Performance Improvement Plan
10 Introduce a leave calendar and prompt agents to plan their leaves. This will allow you to plan your resources and hiring.
10 If all else fails, HR process will follow.

I had similar problems only on weekends where the absenteeism used to shoot up to 25%, after all the work around...now its down to 10% which by the industry standards is truly amazing.

[clintfoot]

I believe that the first step is always to orient new-hires properly. If you have done proper orientation regarding schedule and attendance adherence, then reorient them each year.

I also believe that once employees (and in most call centers these are young people) are not taking their attendance seriously and are starting not to care about warnings and punishments, it shows their dissatisfaction in the company. That is why it is best if you solicit their opinions and feedback. Is it the people behind management they don't like? Is it their shift schedules they find hard to adhere to? Is it their salaries? Is it the aura of stress that surround the office? Take what they say into consideration and make plans on how to make things better for them. Firing 20% of your manpower won't solve the problem. I believe that even if you hire new people but haven't addressed the core issues, the same problem will take place. It's a cycle. You will just be wasting time and effort training new-hires, when you could have done something to save the old ones.

And I agree that there's nothing better than good incentives to motivate the employees.

[abd1]

we've struggled with attendance over the years and I know this is a major issue in the call center industry. We've tried many of the policies listed here. What I've learned is that no matter what the policy is the folks that struggle with attendance will almost always struggle with attendance and the folks that have no problems with attendance will never have problems with attendance. If you can create a policy that increases attendance performance any amount than its a good policy. We've developed an attendance incentive and policy that has been pretty effective.

First, we have a perfect attendance bonus. Basically, all employees that have perfect attendance for a quarter receive $100 cash. Employees can still take PTO days as long as they're approved in advance, but any tardies, absences, or early-outs disqualify them.

Second, we use a point system. Everyone starts with 100 points. On the first of every month you are given 5 points. You can earn up to 120 points, they stop accumulating after that. Every tardie or early-out of less than 2 hours deducts 5 points. Every unexcused absence or tardy/early-out of 2 hours or more deducts 10 points. Any unexcused absence that is unpaid because the employee doesn't have the PTO to cover it and doesn't make it up in the same week loses another 10 points. Keep in mind 10 points are deducted for an occurrence not per day, so if someone is sick and out for 2 days its one occurrence and costs 10 points. We want them to stay home and get healthy before returning to work.

The points are important because about 30% of our reps pay is based on a monthly performance bonus. The points determine what % of their bonus they get. If they have 100-120 points they get 100% of their bonus. They can't get more than 100%. The extra 20 points are there in case something happens like an illness, car breakdown, personal emergency, etc. We feel that employee has earned extra attendance points with perfect attendance, so they have 20 extra points in case something happens and their bonus isn't affected. However, if they have 90 points they get 90% of their bonus, 85 points = 85%, etc. And if they hit 75 or below they lose the bonus and are placed on probation. We also can place someone on probation if they spend too many consecutive months below 100 and their points aren't increasing.

This policy has been our most effective. It allows employees to build up extra points and goodwill with perfect attendance. That way your top agents who are always there don't get penalized if something truly happpens that prevents them from coming to work. It also has a direct impact on their compensation. Every month I have reps who lose $100-$200 just for attendance, and sometimes they lose their entire bonus which really hurts. Hope that helps.