THE LABOUR MARKET AND CALL CENTRES

All organizations operate in the labour market and both external factors and internal ones impact on their ability to recruit, motivate and retain employees. If this equation is balanced properly organizations will be able to hold onto desirable employees; if they get it wrong then it will leak employees to other call centres or outside the industry.

The turnover of employees in the contact centre industry is approximately 20 per cent and is relatively high compared with other industries. Worryingly, although official figures are relatively high they may under-represent the true picture. One source suggested a median tenure of 15 months ; and some managers reported that the average period of employment was 18 months, which translates into a harsh 67 per cent turnover. This discrepancy is also described by the TUC, which reported that many employers publicly state that turnover is 20–30 per cent but privately state it is double that figure.

Part of the reason for this variability in turnover figures may lie in the way they are calculated, eg people leaving during induction or a probationary period may not be included in some measures. Not only do 5.3 per cent of those offered a job not turn up, but 6.7 per cent of agents leave during induction. This increases to over 10 per cent in the finance, retail and distribution, and outsourcing sectors. Furthermore, 17.8 per cent of new agents had le within six months. In one case, 80 per cent of trainees who graduated from a pre-employment training programme and then a ended a six-week induction programme had dropped out before its completion.

In some cases the level of attrition is extraordinary; one centre experienced over 50 per cent per month for a significant time. This turnover is indicative of an unsuitable recruitment process or ‘poor management’. The main reasons for attrition are:

• agents do not like the type of work they are being asked to do;
• the shi pa ern does not suit them;
• they do not feel as though they can do the work;
• they get a job elsewhere;
• there are personality or management issues at work;
• they are using the contact centre as a stop-gap.

The turnover in some call centres is a result of employee burnout. A few call centres have a ‘sacrificial HR policy’ in which employees are worked hard and high emotional demands are made of them. When they run out of motivation and energy they are encouraged to move on.

This revolving door strategy is only sustainable when it is possible to draw from a large pool of available labour that ensures recruitment and replacement costs will be relatively low. However, it can be more difficult to recruit suitable employees during buoyant economic periods when there are more attractive employment opportunities with better conditions and remuneration. In employer-led markets there are plenty of applications for jobs; in candidate-led markets employers may have no choice but to employ staff who may not fully match person specifications and job descriptions.

The average turnover figures for call centres do not always present a sufficiently detailed and accurate picture of what is really happening. It would appear that there are two groups of employees. The first move on rather quickly, ‘Young, middle-class, well-educated and single people of both sexes – particularly university graduates – were generally perceived to be the most likely to move out of call centre work quickly’.

The second group were more long-serving employees. Fortunately, there is a ‘substantial core’ of long-serving employees who provide a valuable ‘stability’ for organizations. One manager said that the best employees were not the high flyers but the ones in the middle who were content to stay in their role as agents. Indeed, there are organizations that actively target women and some women admit that they are content in not being promotion-minded because they have other responsibilities at home which they prioritize.

Yet, these levels of attrition do not need to happen. One call centre in the north of Sweden had only two people leave in two years, and these were for maternity leave and the women were planning to return. It is clear that if the work is structured well, reward is satisfactory, and other conditions are amenable there will be low levels of employee turnover. Organizations that make excuses for high turnover are actually revealing that they are content to live with these levels; otherwise there are things they could do about it!

A vicious circle: the cost of employee turnover

The impact of high levels of attrition has caused some centres to closely examine their training and development policies. If people leave relatively quickly after induction the rate of return on investment in recruitment, training and development may influence the extent to which organizations are prepared to commit spending. Dimension Data  warned:

Managers may well ask, ‘If agents are leaving at such a rate, why spend time and money training them to work in competitor contact centres?’ Of course, attrition may well be influenced by agents’ frustration or stress about their ability to effectively carry out their job due to insufficient training which creates a vicious circle.

The cost of recruiting an employee has been reported as being £500  yet this is only part of the expense. The cost of employee turnover can be surprisingly high if all the costs of recruitment, induction, reduced productivity and departure are added together. One ‘rule of thumb’ is that ‘The average cost of turnover is o en calculated at time and half of the lost employee’s annual salary’.

One significant impact of high turnover is that many advisers have only been with their organization for a short time. This means that they do not have fully developed knowledge and skills, which results in lower levels of productivity. The CCA Research Institute referred to case studies conducted by Tele-users Action Group and Saville Holdsworth which calculated that inexperienced employees may be four times less productive than experienced ones.

Employee turnover at lower levels is not necessarily bad for an organization and a level of 10 per cent is probably healthy because it helps to introduce new life into an organization. However, three-quarters of employees who leave a call centre also leave the industry altogether, taking knowledge with them and thus denuding the whole industry of those skills.

One solution to this problem would be to use the call centre as a proving ground from which staff could transfer to the parent organization; however, the responsibility for losing 75 per cent of departing employees must lie with the contact centre and the parent organization.

Freedom or control?

The labour market cannot be blamed for all the current problems the contact centre industry is facing. In an article entitled ‘Call centres: battery farming or free range’ Crome made the case that advisers should be freed from rote delivery and given more opportunities to act independently. He argued that:

Historically. . . training for call centre operators has focused upon product and procedures rather than how to build effective relationships with customers. Many call centres invest the bare minimum in customer service training because, with an annual 30 per cent staff turnover rate and low training budgets, development training is seen to be a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘must have’. It is a vicious circle: staff who are not given the training support to maximize their potential are more likely to leave and, with constant churn, achieving consistently high levels of service becomes a greater challenge as the company constantly struggles to train new recruits in basic procedures and standards.