Call Center Absenteeism....How to handle

[Sachin]

I have been reading views of Ops. Managers across the forum and the only solution they seem to be suggesting is warning( s) followed by termination.

However, I hold a different opinion. You all will agree that the pre-process and process training costs are very high for a company to bear . These are ever increasing with the advent of technology and more demanding service environment. Thus, dealing with absenteeism by 'termination' should not be the ideal way.

Absenteeism is often a result of disinterest in the work resulted most often by the monotony of the call taking job. Thus, to make it interesting and the employees motivated it is essential to keep on motivating the call taking agents more often than is required by any other type of job.

If your organisation follows the point system on appraisals , for each performance parameters ...NOT JUST THE NUMBER OF CALLS ANSWERED but the quality, proactiveness, login hours , Average Call handling time, listening / questioning skills and rapport building ...then the issue of absenteeism can be handled very effectively by giving higher weightage to the parameter on the appraisal scale. This can be even customised to an extent that it becomes effective for any specific chronic case.

Thus, the onus this way, will be on the agent to perform and acheive the turnarounds along with self inflicted discipline. Also, coupled with it should be incentives for >98% ( eg.) attendence over each quarter.

This has worked fine by me and has been very consistent as far as the results are concerned. Also important to consider is the profile of the agent at the time of recruitment. This can assume higher weightage for first 3 months of service and can diminish as the vintage intensifies.

What does the forum feel.....

[MHA1]

Please can you clarify what you mean by the points system!
You mention not using the dismissal theory and that motivation is key....I agree. But who has some news ideas on maintaining motivation!! I think this is the real issue.
I'm keen to hear from others....

[pjcase@swbell.net]

Through some fairly detailed research I have done over the past several months, absenteeism is one of the top 3 reasons for termination in our industry. Yes, this has everything to do with motivation but it also has to do with inadquate supervisor training. Supervisors are sometimes not adequately trained on how to motivate employees. If the job is not made fun, the employees are not going to be motivated.

One of the things I did in my call centers was to make it a part of their bonus program. For example, quarterly or monthly bonuses were derived for a supervisors overall team quality scores or revenue generated in a sales environement. The amount of the bonus was the maximum amount they could make but, there other factors that could reduce the overall bonus based on the following:

Attendance = 25% (team had to attain 92% attendance)
Attrition = 25% (team had to have annual turnover, calculated monthly, of no more than 35%)
Quality = 50% (quality score minimum of 90%)

Our quality fun ction reported directly to the president.

This type of bonus structure requires the supervisor to be more involved with their team and puts real value on their management of attendance, turnover and quality.

Within about three months of implementation, we realized an approximate 20% decline in absenteeism and tardiness and similar results in attrition and about a 25% increase in overall quality.

You must be careful though, changing compensation structures can also cause revolts among the supervisor staff. I would develop some training for the sups along with implementation.

Just some food for thought.

[pjcase@swbell.net]

Through some fairly detailed research I have done over the past several months, absenteeism is one of the top 3 reasons for termination in our industry. Yes, this has everything to do with motivation but it also has to do with inadquate supervisor training. Supervisors are sometimes not adequately trained on how to motivate employees. If the job is not made fun, the employees are not going to be motivated.

One of the things I did in my call centers was to make it a part of their bonus program. For example, quarterly or monthly bonuses were derived for a supervisors overall team quality scores or revenue generated in a sales environement. The amount of the bonus was the maximum amount they could make but, there other factors that could reduce the overall bonus based on the following:

Attendance = 25% (team had to attain 92% attendance)
Attrition = 25% (team had to have annual turnover, calculated monthly, of no more than 35%)
Quality = 50% (quality score minimum of 90%)

Our quality fun ction reported directly to the president.

This type of bonus structure requires the supervisor to be more involved with their team and puts real value on their management of attendance, turnover and quality.

Within about three months of implementation, we realized an approximate 20% decline in absenteeism and tardiness and similar results in attrition and about a 25% increase in overall quality.

You must be careful though, changing compensation structures can also cause revolts among the supervisor staff. I would develop some training for the sups along with implementation.

Just some food for thought.

[Samirr Burton]

You stated that Absenteeism was one of your top three for attrition What were you 2nd and 3rd reasons for attrition?

Also, do you back out positive attrition from the supervisor appraisals and also, how do you handle where there is no reason for attrition. Such as the case where HR has no significant documentation to support the attrited employee during the exit interview? I would love to invoke a plan of this nature but am afraid of the revoke and morale it would cause unless we can pin down the struture outside of the numbers but more in the detail of determining what is an attrition that my manager could not prevent and not penalized him/her for things outside of their control. I say this because, I am in an area that has a lot of call centers and watch employee go between companies for 2-3 dollars more an hour. The competition in my area is fierce and I would be hesitant to penalise managers but rather support them....

Please advise

[pjcase@swbell.net]

Hello Samir,

The other two reasons were: inability to meet quality or sales standards and inability to follow company policies. However, attendance and quality and sales standards representated more than 75% of all terminations.

You are probably not going to like this answer but, I impress on my folks that there is always an answer for turnover and we require our HR department to find out what the reason was, no matter what. The reason for this is that even if the employee wasn't terminated, it was still the responsibility of the supervisor to motivate any agent that leaves.

In the research I found, the following were the reasons for employees leaving voluntarily:

Lack of promotoion opportunity 29%
Unfairly paid for work performed 28%
Not recognized for hard work 20%
Bored and unchallenging duties 13%
Not enough training to do job 8%


Some of these could have clearly been alleviated by paying more attention to the employee.

Instead of saying there is no reason for the attrition, I would just give them a curve. In other words, take the average attrition rate you have had over the last several months and create a "curve" for your supervisors. In other words - your sups won't get penalized for attrition as long as it is under x%. Over time, you can lower this percentage until you are comfortable it is fair to the company and the supervisors.

[healani]

In response to the original post, I can appreciate your desire to look at the whole picture of the employee not just their attendance. However, my feeling is no matter how good of an employee they are, they're not doing any good for the company if they're not going to be at work. Our company has a very good short-term and long-term LOA plan plus the federal IFMLA that employees can utilize for those immediate and necessary situations. I have experienced far too many instances of employees who try to just get by with enough so that they can get their paycheck. They push the envelope as far as what they can get away with and it's unfortunately these people who ruin it for the group. Our company has had to re-evaluate our attendance policy numerous times to try to figure out what the balance is.