8 Best Practices to Improve Employee Engagement and Experience

Employee engagement is a valuable measure of how aligned employees are with their organisations and how connected they feel to an organisation’s objectives. However, whilst employee engagement is important, it’s merely an outcome of your overall employee experience, Gartner explains. As such, it’s the overall employee experience that organisations need to be focusing on. Here are some best practices to help you improve employee experience and engagement in your contact centre.

1. 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. Ensure your learning content is not only updated but is also appropriate for an employee’s knowledge and skill level. By personalising the learning experience from onboarding onward, you can help your employees to engage with the content and continuously improve in their roles.

2. Set and communicate a clear development plan

High-performing customer service teams use measurable targets to ensure success. To help their teams achieve these targets, managers need to clearly communicate performance objectives and provide the appropriate resources for employees to meet those objectives. Employees should understand their KPIs and how they’re tracking against them. They should also have easy access to learning paths, coaching opportunities, and other training to improve their performance.

Personalised hub for employee development (see it here)

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.

3. 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 just a one-person job. It’s important to have the right 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.

4. Coach and mentor thoughtfully

Strategically planned coaching sessions are known to significantly improve employee performance. Coaching an employee on specific areas of improvement supports their growth and establishes a positive environment of partnership within the team. Dedicating time to help individual employees enhance their skills shows them that you’re in it together. A shared sense of purpose and accomplishment can boost employee experience.

5. 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 move on from 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.

6. Empower employees with performance visibility

Employees can’t fix what they don’t know is broken. And the further 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 to that of 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.

Gamified performance scorecards

7. 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.

Leaderboards for employee recognition

8. Create a culture of open feedback

To boost 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 where 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 people to succeed. Not all teams or employees are alike; understanding differences allows you to design more effective performance management programs.

Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud helps power personalised experiences through the entire employee development journey, from onboarding through to rewards and recognition, all in the same customer experience platform your employees love to use. Request a call back to find out more.