Evolving employee engagement with Workforce Management (WFM)

From experience Calabrio believes successful companies start with inspired people and here, Olle Dűring outlines 7 winning strategies to make your organization a great place to work.

At Calabrio we agree with the saying “to win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace ”. This is especially relevant as employees often spend more waking hours with their colleagues than they do with their own partners or families so keeping them happy and engaged should be a top priority. We have found to achieve this, people need to work in a positive environment where they can continue to grow, remain engaged and be productive. However, the reality is many companies are experiencing a crisis of employee engagement and are simply not aware of it.
It’s time to apply the principles of Workforce Management (WFM) and here is our 7-step guide:

7 ways to raise the bar for employee engagement

1. Change the leadership culture – good leaders instinctively know how to inspire their workforce and reward their efforts. They have a systematic way to measure the results of their actions and they are committed to making engagement not just a thing you do, but an intrinsic part of what it means to be a successful company. Larger organizations might even seek to hire a dedicated person with engagement written into their job description, a new form of CEO or “Chief Engagement Officer”.
2. Communicate the strategic value of the individual – engaged people go above and beyond what is expected of them because they feel part of a purpose larger than themselves. For example, today’s customer service departments have a powerful role to play in sharing best-practice principles with the rest of the organization. Communicate corporate goals or business changes and demonstrate the strategic value each individual can bring to the overall success of the company. Next, use automated WFM technology to allocate quiet time with team members to exchange ideas and explore innovative ways of working in a relaxed, collaborative environment away from the pressures of serving customers.
3. Re-consider the benefits of flexible working – flexible working has come a long way since traditional full-time and part-time contracts or job-sharing. Career breaks, sabbaticals, Pay-as-you-go arrangements in the form of zero-hour contracts, compressed, annualized working hours and even Time Off Without Pay (TOWP) – why not test some or all of these options? Then use advanced WFM technology to balance and schedule different contract types and see the difference flexible working makes to employee satisfaction.
4. Empower employees with self-service – allowing people to take control of their work-life balance boosts engagement levels by reducing stress and absences. Liberate employees with a greater sense of independence, involvement and satisfaction by way of self-service options for preferred shifts, holiday requests and time off for medical appointments.
5. Think about infusing AI into the employee experience – consider deploying artificial intelligence methods such as Chatbots to enhance internal communication and employee morale. Cut back on time-consuming staff monitoring and instead use bots that learn from existing data to help people manage their work-life balance. These bots can hold conversational chats to quickly notify staff of potential time off or overtime and create an easy balance between optimized customer service operations and greater employee freedom.
6. Introduce fairness and transparency – automation promotes consistency and greater visibility of all WFM processes. High degrees of transparency and openness create a sense of fairness that appeals to staff while satisfying organizations with a strong Union or Works Council presence. Managers have the information they need to ensure all employees take it in turns to do the more unpopular shifts and plan vacation time equitably while employees have total visibility of each other’s schedules and time off through self-service.
7. Effective Change Management – organizational change can be traumatic for employees but recently, Calabrio customers like Germany’s biggest online retailer OTTO, have cited the strategic impact that WFM technology has on actively advancing corporate Change Management programs. The flexibility, transparency and collaborative nature of WFM technology have helped OTTO to strike a good balance between achieving high productivity levels (1,600 agents working 2 million shifts and 4,500 shift rotations – handling over 24 million enquiries per year) and transferring the program’s core values of empowerment and fairness into 15 virtual contact centers.