Best Practices to Improve Employee Engagement and Experience

Employee engagement is important. It’s a valuable measure of how aligned employees are with their organisations — and the level of effort taken to reach organisational objectives. And while employee engagement is important, you should strive to achieve a great employee experience. As Gartner explains, engagement is an outcome of the experience. As such, it’s part of a larger picture of employee experience that drives successful outcomes. Here are some best practices to help you improve employee experience and engagement in your contact centre.

Personalise Onboarding and Continuous Training

Contact centres experience higher-than-average turnover. Different onboarding periods — coupled with the evolving nature of company policies and procedures or the introduction of new products and services — can make it difficult to be sure your employees are appropriately trained. Make certain learning content is not only updated but also appropriate to an employee’s knowledge and skill level. Personalising the learning experience from onboarding onward will ensure your employees are engaged with the content and are continuously improving in their roles.

Set and Communicate a Clear Development Plan

All contact centre roles have targets they need to meet to ensure success. Managers need to clearly communicate performance objectives to their teams — and provide the appropriate resources for employees to meet those objectives. In the short term, employees should understand their KPIs and how they’re tracking against them. They should also have easy access to learning paths and keep track of coaching opportunities and other training to improve their performance.

It’s also important to ensure your employees understand career progression within and beyond their current roles. Results from a recent Gallup poll listed career growth opportunities as the number one reason people change jobs. By setting a clear and actionable growth plan, managers can help their employees stay focused on their professional development — and feel fulfilled in their roles.

Facilitate Team Collaboration

Michael Jordan once said, “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” The same applies to the contact centre, where meeting service levels day in and day out isn’t simply a one-person job. It’s important to work with smart tools and establish the right processes to facilitate team collaboration.

The onboarding process, learning and training initiatives, performance reviews, work schedule management, and other functions are interconnected and vital to running a successful contact centre. Regardless of where your employees are working from, it should be easy to share knowledge, learn from each other’s successes and work together effectively.

Coach and Mentor Thoughtfully

Strategically planned coaching sessions are known to significantly improve employee performance. Coaching an employee on specific areas of improvement not only supports their growth, it also establishes a positive environment of partnership with your teams. Dedicating time to help individual employees enhance their skills signals you’re in it together. A shared sense of purpose and accomplishment can boost employee experience.

Automate Tasks Where Possible

Your employees’ time is valuable — and limited. Whether an employee’s role is customer-facing or not, ensure they focus on higher-value functions and interactions. For example, automate how specific training is assigned based on specific rules. Or streamline how you schedule coaching sessions with team members from different areas of the organisation.

It’s time to say goodbye to complicated excel files, a never-ending stream of emails or subpar integrations. Automating some of the necessary but tedious processes in the contact centre will make your employees better engaged in the tasks that matter most.

Empower Employees with Performance Visibility

Employees can’t fix what they don’t know is broken. And the farther they are from understanding how they’re performing, the less engaged and concerned they’ll be to improve.

Create a culture of performance data transparency that enables your employees to own their development. Implement gamification concepts like awarding points for specific desired actions to help employees understand how their performance compares against their peers — and within their own development journeys. Allowing employees to see exactly where they stand in comparison to their goals motivates them to close gaps and meet their objectives. There’s a reason we say: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Recognise and Celebrate Accomplishments

Acknowledging and celebrating your employees’ achievements is important in fostering a sense of community and belonging. According to BetterUp Labs, a strong sense of belonging is associated with 50% lower turnover risk and 56% higher performance. Gamification tools like leaderboards or gamified performance scorecards can provide visibility into team performance and allow employees to congratulate each other on accomplishments. Creating this sense of community within teams is highly effective at improving employee engagement.

Create a Culture of Open Feedback

Your employees are experts in evaluating the employee experience. To raise engagement levels, encourage open feedback on your existing processes. For example, you could find out if training is effective or if there are any specific areas management can improve. You could also determine if employees are having issues getting the right resources to do their jobs.

Partnering with your employees to evaluate initiatives builds a sense of inclusion and empowerment. Better yet, it helps you deliver better experiences to your employees.

Employee feedback is also important to understand what motivates your employees to succeed. Not all teams or employees are alike. Understanding differences allows you to design more effective performance management programs.

Genesys powers personalised experiences through the entire employee development journey — from onboarding through rewards and recognition —  all in the same customer experience platform your employees love to use. Take an interactive tour to see what effective employee engagement and development can do for your teams.