Is The Great Resignation a Myth?

I have a theory to share with you.? And it might be a little bit controversial.

What if there is no such thing as ‘The Great Resignation’ in the Contact Centre world?? What if it’s a myth, a fallacy?? A misrepresentation of the facts at hand???

Has that got you thinking?

It’s an inescapable truth that businesses everywhere took their foot off the recruitment pedal and their eye off the recruitment ball during the pandemic.? Attrition rates were lower, and so less back-fill recruitment was needed.? Precious few businesses were looking to grow - so growth recruitment wasn’t needed.? At the same time, the pay gap between contact centre work and other types of work (fulfilment, warehousing, retail) shrunk and gave people alternatives to the normal Contact Centre career entry point. So, when we needed to get people back in place, it suddenly became apparent how difficult it was to re-establish a recruitment pipeline quickly enough.? And so, as a result, the gap between the number of staff we needed versus the number of staff we were able to get grew alarmingly.

If other work options are now more appealing to people than working in contact centres, we must take action to change those perceptions.

Could it also be true that ‘The Great Resignation’ is just a huge oversimplification? If so, the danger is to think that there is some huge, unopposable global cultural shift taking place and it isn’t something we can fix. It’s easy to think, therefore, there’s no point in changing the way we operate to try to address it.? But that may not be correct.

If other work options are now more appealing to people than working in contact centres, we must take action to change those perceptions.? As Contact Centre professionals in the post-pandemic world, we should be looking to make cultural and operational changes to make Contact Centres into the most awesome and incredible places to work and grow.? Places where you play an active part in the achievement of the company’s most important goals and objectives; places where your worth is measured through your contribution to the business, not by some farcical set of trumped-up KPIs; places where your wellbeing and work-life balance are fundamental to the success of you and your business.? Places, in short, where you are valued as a human being first and a worker second.

QStory’s unique Intraday Automation software helps you to enable cultural change and developing a colleague-centric approach to Contact Centre life.

Ask yourself if you are providing such a workplace to your colleagues.? No matter what your answer is, now ask yourself how you can go about making a better job of it.? It’s difficult and can require some radical re-thinking in your business - but it is absolutely vital that you do it if you are to succeed.

It may be that the radical re-thinking in your business needs to be centred on Intraday Automation.

QStory’s unique Intraday Automation software helps you to engage with your workforce like never before, enabling cultural change and developing a colleague-centric approach to Contact Centre life.? Our solution provides flexibility, agility, communication and engagement - all at the touch of a button.? It allows your agents to take control over shift swaps, offering break swap and move functionality that is easy to use and quick to respond whilst still protecting the customer experience.? We can help your agents to get the schedules that they would prefer so that they feel a real part of the team. ? And QStory can ensure that more development time is given to each and every agent, every single week, helping them to make Contact Centre work into a career of choice.

So drop me a line and talk to me about how QStory can help you to attract and retain the best staff for your business.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what your business can do / is doing to attract and retain the best staff.