Employee Wellness
Stress, the Call Centre environment and Employee turnover
10-DEC-07

I was recently chatting to a colleague over lunch and she was bemoaning the fact that once again she had gone through the training program for a fresh bunch of recruits and once again she had been let down by 2 out of 10 of them leaving when they decided "this isn't really for me..."

Her argument is always the same - for every batch of recruits she takes on, she incurs the following costs:

A) Paying an agency to find candidates
B) Interviews and contracts

C) Time and resources spent on training these new recruits

For 20% of this investment to be written off each time she has an influx of staff, it become expensive.

HR and Recruitment Managers are constantly seeking tools to help themselves pre-screen employees to ensure they are the most suitable candidates for the jobs they are filling. Do they have the right aptitude? Are they team players? Will they fit into the existing working environment?

Despite all the existing tests and tools available to the Call Centre industry, there remains a high level of staff turnover coupled with heavy training costs.

So what do the numbers say?

Statistics are like accounting - they can be interpreted in different ways but I'd like to maybe put these statistics in front of you for consideration. They were obtained from the Integra (2000) survey and the NIOSH report:

• 40% of job turnover is due to stress

• Studies show that keyboard entry operators who are under stress (because they are uncertain as to whether their activities are being monitored for performance evaluation), have a significantly higher incidence of such complaints and injuries.

• 29% had yelled at co-workers because of workplace stress, 14% said they work where machinery or equipment has been damaged because of workplace rage

• 62% routinely find that they end the day with work-related neck pain, 44% reported stressed-out eyes, 38% complained of hurting hands and 34% reported difficulty in sleeping because they were too stressed-out

Combating stress

Numbers and reports have been thrown around with regard to the effectiveness of Corporate Wellness programs and their roles in creating a happy, healthy workplace - I am not going to rehash this ground.

Instead I am going to focus on the Sensory intensive environments - specifically the Call Centre environment - and making sure you get the right staff in the first place and then manage their workplace stress in the most appropriate manner to produce cost savings. This is a series of articles that aim to assist and educate both Recruiters and HR Managers to not only assess candidates more accurately, but to also retain these staff.

1. Tools for recruiters

A key tool that HR Managers and recruiters can add to their arsenal is the introduction of Standardised Testing and Assessments of potential employees to handle the sensory pressures of the proposed job environment? Can the candidate handle the sensory input of the Call Centre environment such as noise, flickering screens, voices of other consultants etc.

Part 2 of this article series will delve into more technical details around the tests and assessments available – suffice to say these tests do exist, there are qualified professionals in South Africa to administer them and there is a business benefit to such tools.

If, you as a recruiter, can eliminate unsuitable candidates early on you may incur a few extra costs up front, however the downstream costs, most notably training, time and replacement costs can be significantly reduced.

2. Retaining and Managing employee health risk

A trained employee is an asset to the business. Unfortunately many business owners fail to see this point and they fail to protect their investment in these assets.

I could use the analogy of purchasing a Mercedes CLS 55 AMG for three quarters of a million Rand and then failing to send it for the prescribed services! It astounds me that a business owner won’t fail to send their car for a tune up but will fail to manage the tuning up of their employees on an annual basis.

Every time you lose a trained employee you lose the Intellectual Capital and skills they have developed over time. You lose their experience in dealing with clients and this can negatively impact on your ability to produce a quality service to your client.

Part 3 of this article series will outline practical guidelines relating to how you can integrate your Wellness program to assist you. However when planning to layout a Call Centre, pay attention the layout of employee workstations and the ability to receive maintain stimulation such as stretching and movement. By gaining an understanding of how areas such as Workplace Ergonomics, Sensory input and Movement can combine to improve employee health risk management you will be able to create and retain a happy workforce.

Conclusion:

The intention behind these articles is to educate those professionals involved in the staffing and staff management of Call Centre and BPO operations. With South Africa’s strict labour legislation and increasing emphasis on employee Safety and Health, the role of Recruiter and HR Manager has become far more complex.

You are no longer simply marrying a person to a job. You are making an investment in the Intellectual Capital of the business – how that investment performs depends on how well you researched their suitability and how well you maintain it.

About Rival Industrial

Rival Industrial (www.rival.co.za) is a Gauteng based Corporate Wellness and Publishing house. The company is one of only 2 organisations in South Africa currently providing Sensory Wellness solutions using Sensory Integration techniques in the workplace environment.

The company is a member of ContactInGauteng - a membership-based non-profit section 21 company, supported by Gauteng Economic Development Agency (GEDA) and local Metro - City of Joburg. Mandated by the province, local government and member stakeholders to represent the BPO & call / contact centre industry across the province.

If you believe your organization is being negatively affected by the lack of an integrated Corporate Wellness plan, or you would like to investigate the introduction of Sensory Wellness into your business environment, please contact Rival Industrial to discuss further:

Contacts: Paula Barnard or Marc Ashton
Tel: +27 11 673-4421
E-mail: paula@rival.co.zaor marc@rival.co.za www.rival.co.za

Author: Rival Industrial cc