Think fast: what does your contact center do to welcome a new hire after the company and department orientations have ended? Because hiring employees with great potential is only the first step to staffing a contact center and lowering turnover. Really, after finding a qualified, talented individual, you want to make that person stay. Onboarding helps with that. Onboarding is developing an individual’s potential by making the agent feel valued from day one.
Think about it from the new hire’s perspective. Starting a new job can be dizzying. There are so many new names, faces, systems, departments, and functions to learn. Feeling welcomed, feeling like your organization appreciates your presence and includes you in its greater culture experience makes a big difference when fostering loyalty to the company.
How can your contact center do this successfully? Start before day one. Yes, before. A welcome letter from the new manager, in addition to the offer letter, goes a long way to convey that “We’re excited to meet you!” Next, during that first day of mandatory company orientation, the new hire’s manager should pop in during a break to say hello and ask how things are going. Trust us, it makes a world of difference. Then, when the orientation is over and the new hire arrives in the contact center, leave a welcome note from an executive at the workspace that is all set up and ready. These small gestures make a world of difference to someone who is overwhelmed and nervous about starting a new job.
Traditionally, the entirety of onboarding has been handled by Human Resources, and they do it well. But there is a lot that needs to be done once HR has completed their tasks in order to transfer cultural knowledge and behavior, and it’s up to the manager to execute the rest of the process effectively. Honestly, the first month should be an intensive onboarding process, but the hustle and bustle of normal everyday operations in a contact center can move the new hire’s needs down on the list of priorities. To integrate the new tasks and keep onboarding as non-invasive as possible, our Ultimate Agent® Program helpfully takes what your organization already does well and combines it with industry best practices into one easy-to-use onboarding tasklist.
Employees leave people not companies, and using a tool like the Ultimate Agent® program will go a long way towards creating goodwill and forming a bond between hire and manager. This retains the good employees, lowers turnover, save an organization money, and improves the customer experience. Everyone wins.
Photo from Death to the Stock Photo.