L&D refers to enhancing employees’ knowledge, skills, and competencies through various training, coaching and other development activities. Contact centres can cultivate a highly skilled and motivated workforce by investing in their employee’s professional growth. This investment improves performance, job satisfaction, and high employee retention rates.
However, despite the clear benefits of L&D, many contact centres face a significant challenge – the lack of adequate opportunities for their employees to learn and grow. This challenge can lead to frustration, stagnation, and disengagement among agents, resulting in high turnover rates.
The impact of high turnover rates can be detrimental to an organisation’s overall success and lead to increased recruitment costs, lower morale among remaining employees and loss of institutional knowledge. Furthermore, it can impact customer service satisfaction as new agents may not be as experienced as their predecessors.
To address this challenge, contact centres can prioritise L&D with an employee retention strategy and create a recipe for success leading to more favourable retention rates. The recipe requires carefully selected ingredients and techniques to achieve the perfect outcome.
What would an organisation’s employee retention strategy look like if Learning & Development was a delicious recipe?
Maybe it would look like this:
INGREDIENTS
2kg of Investment – Invest in your employees from the very beginning. The investment is the foundation of your recipe and will pay off in the long run. It entails a robust onboarding process and opportunities for their professional development.
475g of Resources – It gives your employees the tools they need to succeed by providing access to relevant courses and training plans, e-learning resources, face-to-face learning opportunities, networking events, on-the-job training, and resource libraries.
1kg of Collaboration – This approach encourages knowledge-sharing and collaboration between teams and individuals.
225ml of Mentoring & Coaching – It fosters continuous learning of skills and knowledge by supporting your employees. It also enables them to reach their full potential.
230g of Assessments – The regular conduct of assessments helps to determine the skills and competencies required of your employees for each role and assists in identifying talent.
225g of Feedback – Your employees require feedback to grow and develop. Properly, it can also create a trusting environment where employees feel comfortable sharing ideas and asking for help.
127g of Flexibility – Personalised training ensures that your employees’ unique needs are met.
Three handfuls of Incentives – To foster employee engagement where everyone feels valued, recognition, rewards, and motivation go a long way.
11tsps. of Open-Mindedness – To create a platform where your employees can explore new ideas & perspectives and creative problem-solving within a trustful & respectful environment.
A sprig of Compassion & Empathy – By showing compassion and empathy, you can foster a culture of trust and support to help your team members thrive.
A pinch of Humour – To break down barriers, reduce stress, and an atmosphere of openness & trust, create an enjoyable training session with some humour.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Step 1: Preheat your investment by envisioning your goal.
Step 2: Mix resources, collaboration, mentoring & coaching, and feedback in a large bowl. Stir until evenly combined.
Step 3: Now it’s time to add some flavour! Slowly add flexibility and incentives, stirring consistently for 5min until everything is blended to perfection.
Step 4: Mix in the generous amount of open-mindedness until evenly incorporated.
Step 5: To give your investment a special touch, add the sprig of compassion & empathy and let it simmer for a bit.
Step 6: Sprinkle humour with ease over the other ingredients – it will keep things light and enjoyable.
Step 7: Now it is time to taste and season to your liking.
Step 8: Cook on medium heat until all the ingredients blend seamlessly.
Step 9: Once ready, serve warm and enjoy the taste of your successful employee retention strategy recipe.
Bon appetit!
At 24/7 Contact Solutions, we use this recipe for our employee retention strategy and had great reviews from our employees. However, like any recipe, sometimes it needs a little tweaking. The tweaking is based on training requirements, observations, interactions, and assessments to make it even more delicious. Sometimes it needs more collaboration, while other times, two additional pinches of humour need adding, or an increased volume of mentoring & coaching is required. Incorporating these tweaks helps us keep team members engaged, motivated and energised and provided us with a 92% retention rate in 2022.
