We look at Millennials and Generation Z and see that their expectations from employers are changing. According to the Deloitte study “A Generation Disrupted: Highlights from the 2019 Deloitte Global Millennial Survey”, approximately 84% of millennials and 81% of Generation Z are considering joining the gig economy.
The Gig Economy is a free market system where temporary positions are common and companies hire freelancers for short-term projects/tasks.
Starting from these numbers, we wonder… what exactly attracts them to this economy? It’s simple: the opportunities to increase income quickly, the flexibility of the work schedule, and the possibility to achieve a better balance between professional life and private life. Not forgetting that younger generations now make up most of the workforce, contact centers need to offer similar flexibility benefits to attract and retain their agents.
Simple as 1+1=2, the generations that are now in the workforce are Generation Y and Z, and they place great value on work-life balance. We also said in a previous blog article, replacing an employee brings a major negative impact on the company’s costs, somewhere around 16% of their gross annual earnings.
Of course, attrition can vary greatly depending on the size of the business and the type of industry the call center is targeting.
How much is attrition impacting your Contact Center?
Let’s see, you have a contact center with 100 agents and you qualify in the industry standard with a 45% attrition rate. About how much would you spend? Somewhere between 2 and 5 billion dollars, every year. Uhm… that’s a bit (too) expensive.
Even if the strategies to maintain the happiness of the employees and also to develop them seem expensive, think about the sums above. So the return on investment in happiness may seem very small compared to the real cost of attrition, right?
Think about it.
How can contact centers maintain a work-life balance for agents?
Although the numbers may seem scary, luckily there are solutions that could help improve the balance between your team’s personal and professional life. Here’s what it’s all about:
The performance should be appreciated
Your agents need the certainty of a stable and solid future. Appreciation comes from the career opportunities they can have.
We encourage you to have open communication and bilateral feedback. Ask them often what they like, what they don’t like, what flexibility means to them, what the company and the management team need to improve, and so on.
Do not forget, at the same time, that what works for one generation is not necessarily valid for the other. Help them create their learning and professional development plans, reward your performance, and support them to set their career goals.
Offer your customers an omnichannel experience and flow
Happy customers mean happy employees. If your team is exposed to positive energies, and positive feedback from customers and contributes daily to providing an exceptional experience for customers, you will be able to see a state of well-being among the employees as well.
Use all the available tools to improve the customer journey. You will be able to gain a fruitful perspective and you will be able to improve the omnichannel experience, both for agents and customers.
Use the right technology
And the last solution, and perhaps among the most important – make sure that the right technology is used in your company.
Make sure you use technology solutions that allow more flexibility at work. For example, a cloud-based solution will be able to offer employees who work remotely or hybrid the opportunity to do this without too much hassle – say “Bye, bye” to the mountains of papers and infinite data.
Managers have the opportunity to evaluate each call and the performance of the agents through call reports, they can provide much more realistic feedback and build improvement plans together with the agents.
Yes, it is very possible to achieve a work-life balance for your company.
A better work-life balance for your agents is an industry-standard. Today is the best time to offer flexibility and put their needs first. All this will not only attract the right talents but will help you keep them in your team.
Embrace this reality and start making the necessary changes. Do you need help? The RepsMate team is here to help you with techy solutions for your company.
