Author: Asam

Companies today understand the importance of having an efficient and productive team. They trust workforce management experts to help them plan and execute a human resources strategy that helps them achieve their business goals. 

So if you’re considering outsourcing your human resources management, how do you gain buy-in from your senior leadership team? Here are a few tips on how to sell your idea internally:

Tip #1: Identify why you need a workforce management solution
Everyone within your organization may recognize that the business has workforce and operational challenges, but putting it on paper can help to illuminate the issue. 

If you can, quantify the issue with reporting around worker overtime, reductions in service levels to customers, employee overtime or gaps in coverage. All of these types of workforce issues have an impact on revenue.

Engaging a workforce management solution provider such as The West Egg Group can help you address these challenges with strategic operations and human resources solutions.

Workforce management solutions experts are often called upon to onboard, train, and develop call centre talent — talent that is critical to the organization’s success. 

One important factor of success is the level of service your call centre teams are able to provide to customers. Here are 3 reasons your call centre service levels may be suffering and what you can do to address it:

1. Calls aren’t answered fast enough
   We know that for inbound sales and retention centres, there is a negative impact on revenue if calls are abandoned.

    

   Additionally, customer satisfaction is at risk of decreasing significantly if callers struggle to access assistance, especially if they have an urgent issue. This of course often leads to increased customer churn, a reduction in customer recommendations, and reduced revenue.

   Employing the expertise of a workforce management solution provider can help alleviate these concerns through improved onboarding, ongoing training, and strategic and frequent performance measures to ensure your team is fulfilling your service level agreement to customers.

2. You have too many calls coming in
   This could be a contributing factor to why inbound calls are going unanswered, but it isn’t an excuse for a diminished level of service to customers.
   
   

   Inbound calls may mean that your business is a success — customers can’t wait to sign up for, or upgrade their services with you. Of course this could also mean that there is a fundamental problem with the product or service that you are providing, or how you are providing it.
   
   Call on workforce solutions experts to analyze your operations and flow of work, to diagnose the problem, and implement a solution — before it negatively impacts your business. 
   
   

3. Your scheduling doesn’t match your customer demand
   Having too few or too many staff on-hand will negatively impact your business. Either your workforce will be sitting idle, or they won’t be able to keep up with the demand.
   
   Solve this problem with expert human resources management provided by a reputable workforce management solution provider like The West Egg Group, experts on managing on-demand, ongoing, and custom workforce projects.

Leadership is a rare skill set, but fortunately, it’s one that can be learned and nurtured. Part of a strong workforce management solution is the training and development of people leaders. 

Here are some tips on how to train your team-leads to be stellar leaders:

Tip #1: Define core competencies
Before you can have expectations of your people leaders, you have to establish them. Be clear about the roles, responsibilities, and attributes you desire. Having them written and repeated often help to reinforce them among your team.

For instance, at The West Egg Group, we use every opportunity to remind our leaders of our core values:

Above & beyond — exceeding the expected, being dependable, willing to sacrifice, and always hustling

Ownership — Being accountable, no excuses, being solutions-focused

Professionalism — How you act, how you show up, your mindset

There are a lot of important attributes that make for a successful workforce management consultant. Here we’re highlighting the three that we believe will be break-through characteristics for the year ahead.

Attribute #1: Resilience

We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that 2020 was a hard year and that it took resilience on all fronts to get through what was a highly unusual year for most individuals both professionally and personally.

Successful workforce management leaders will carry this attribute forward and use the lessons learned to find innovative and productive ways to manage complex workforce challenges.

Attribute #2: An advocate for employees

Managing people requires careful consideration for their experience. Employee engagement is critical to an organization’s success, and workforce managers are at the forefront of ensuring a positive company culture. Success in this realm requires great listening, mediation, and advocacy skills — something that top workforce solutions experts excel at. 

Attribute #3: Driving change management
New projects and initiatives invariably bring about change within an organization. Setting and managing expectations is the job of the workforce solutions manager. With a year of massive change behind us and a year of continued adaptation ahead, this skill set is no doubt going to be paramount.

At The West Egg Group, we are experts in on-demand, ongoing, and custom workforce solutions. Talk to us about how to bring resiliency, employee advocacy, and change management into your workforce solution.

If the thought of conflict in the workplace makes you cringe, here’s a fresh perspective for your consideration.

Organizations today are heavily focused on employee engagement, recognition and rewards, and so on. Somehow, the establishment of these company culture norms has also created a conflict-avoidant culture within many organizations. But what if a healthy dose of conflict could actually strengthen employee engagement? 

By avoiding conflict, some organizations inadvertently create a culture without communication which has cascading effects: 

• Without discussion, prioritization and delegation become unmanageable and workloads can become overwhelming
  
  
• Underperformance goes unchecked, causing some employees to pick up the slack, resulting in added stress, reduced productivity, and burnout
  
  
• Employees do not feel free to express their displeasure or frustration, causing siloed work that is less inclusive and diverse

Tips to manage healthy conflict (and resolution):

• Encourage open and honest communication