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Improving Employee Performance by Putting People First

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With the warmer weather finally on its way and everything springing into life, I’ll be taking a look at how we can create the ‘Spring effect’ for employees and boost their productivity at the same time.

 

“I’m going to underperform today!”easy-to-do-great-work-note

Lets face it, no one comes into work and says “I’m going to underperform today!” most employees want to do a good job. As managers we’ve all heard the cry “People are your most important asset” and so know that we should be investing in them and yet many companies are still neglecting this fundamental truth.

It’s all too touchy feely!

If there was a new piece of software or technology that could improve  performance by up to *48% most managers would buy it without question, but if it involves investing in the actual employee it can still be perceived as a bit touchy feely… “it can’t have any real impact on performance …can it?” Smart managers know that you can have all the high tech gismos in the world but if the carbon based life form at the end of the process is unmotivated, stressed or feeling drained when they answer a call the customer knows it. All the expensive technology becomes instantly worthless.

Is there anybody there?

No need to hold a séance just yet but many employees will be IN work but not AT work, not truly present, they come in, ‘sit out’ their shift and then go home. For many, their presence and performance is often restricted by the very nature of the job. Commonly employees feel undervalued stressed or are just physically aching and tired.

The 3 major issues that effect employee performance

1. Lack of engagement
2. High levels of stress
3. High levels of muscular skeletal problems (aches and pains)

Tactical and relevant rewards

How many of your current reward or wellbeing programmes tackle these issues? While a box of chocolates, pizza or fruit will always go down well, a deep pan pepperoni or the occasional banana, with the best will in the world, is never going to relieve an aching neck, tight shoulders or reduce stress levels.
The rewards you implement need to be relevant so the employee knows that you appreciate that aspects of the role can be challenging and that you have addressed it. By investing in a tactical and relevant reward programme you can improve morale and engagement levels, reduce stress, boost energy and improve muscular aches and pains.

Engaged, comfortable and awake!

There are 3 fundamental things an employee should be to perform well. Simply put, they need to be engaged, comfortable and awake!

1. Engaged

An engaged workforce will drive business performance and have a direct impact on the bottom line. Engaged employees are people that are highly motivated and vested in the success of their organizations and are willing to make an extra, discretionary effort in their daily work. By incentivising staff with relevant rewards you make them feel valued, motivated and engaged.

2. Comfortable

Many agents (* typically 65% +) complain about muscular aches and pains as well as high levels of headaches affecting them. (How well does anyone work if they are in pain?) Employees frequently describe the level they feel they are working at when they have muscular aches and pains as around 70%. By reducing the impact of muscular skeletal problems and improving agent posture you can quickly and easily boost productivity.

3. Awake

One of the questions asked in our wellbeing survey is How do you feel at the end of an average shift? The word “tired”  is used on average in 75% of the answers, along with a variety of more colourful language. The obvious next question is At what point during the day did you lose them? One of the biggest drainers of energy is stress, and one of the main ways to reduce stress is to energise! The more energised, refreshed and focused someone feels the less stressed they are, it gives people the “ability to cope”. By boosting employee energy levels you can ensure that they remain refreshed .

Improve their day, Improve your numbers

By tackling the 3 major issues effecting an agents work life on a daily basis, the work becomes easier to perform. This will then substantially improve employee productivity.
To find out how much performance you’re loosing to low motivation stress and muscular skeletal problems ask about our employee wellbeing survey.

Donna Phillips MICHT MGPBT
Head of Happy Healthy Staff Dept
Therapy Solutions

* results from national wellbeing and engagement survey

Kick start the year and banish the January blues!

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We all know that January is a depressing month

but recent research has chosen the third Monday of January (which this year falls on the 20th) as the most depressing day of the year. More importantly for managers it also has the lowest morale levels and highest sickness absence causing staffing headaches in call centres up and down the UK.

This month we will uncover the best ways to beat the January blues and hear from the Admiral Group to find out what they do to boost morale and energy levels at their award winning contact centres.

Beating the January Blues

Once the tinsel is packed away and the Christmas festivities are a distant memory the January dip kicks in. Motivating and engaging staff can be especially challenging, with the whole country in the grip of the winter blues. With a combination of dark nights, cold winter weather, Christmas credit card bills and failed new year’s resolutions its little wonder employees can feel a little down in the dumps.

Recognising the energy drain

Staff can feel unusually tired, moody, stressed, unfit, achy and in some cases downright irritable. Not the best qualities to have when you are answering calls (often made by customers who are feeling exactly the same!) Combine this with working in artificial lighting, air conditioning systems and seasonally affected disorder (SAD) and you have employees who feel disengaged, unmotivated and generally worn -out.

Boost Performance

This has a big impact on employee performance so take some simple steps to boost energy levels and morale. By generating a positive and optimistic atmosphere in the workplace employees will develop positive and optimistic attitudes and it is ultimately attitude that drives performance and engagement.

 

 

 

Whats rowing a boat got to do with call centre team building?

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"Everyone else got the glory, but we got the gold!"

I was recently lucky enough to meet Olympian Ben Hunt Davies and hear him explain how his team of 8 men became rowing gold medal winners at the Sydney Olympics by adopting the focus of a simple mantra… “will it make the boat go faster?” Their response was just as simple.  If the answer was yes they did it, if it was no they didn’t. This included attending the opening ceremony …  “will spending 5 hrs marching around waving a flag in a hot stadium, missing scheduled meals when training  for the biggest race of your life make the boat go faster?” The answer was No!…so they didn’t go, (they watched it on TV) Was it the right decision?  Ben will tell you…“everyone else got the glory but we got the gold!”

 

 Ben has listed his 5 top Olympic winning team building strategies

1.Clarity of Goals Ben and his crew were absolutely clear on their goal, Olympic gold, and they translated this into yearly, monthly and daily goals. How often in the corporate world do we have an ill-defined sense of where we’re going  and how often is this confusion multiplied by different  interpretations amongst managers and staff? When  everyone signs up to a clear, compelling goal we can make sure every ounce of effort is directed in the same direction. Clear goals are like magnets, pulling teams together.

2.Strong Belief  They diarised belief building sessions in the same way they scheduled weights or endurance training. Why? Because they realised beliefs were just as important. There is a huge raft of evidence to show that strong belief breeds positive       behaviours. The crew created a list of reasons why they were becoming a great team and why they would win, this might translate into a list of reasons why the product and service is fantastic, or why the sales target is achievable.

3.Controlling the Controllables They focused purely on the things they could control and let go of factors that they could not.  This meant, for example, not worrying about weather conditions – even though the weather has a huge impact on rowing performance –because it was completely outside their control. We could reap huge dividends if we focussed our  attention in the corporate sector more stringently on controlling the controllables.

Finally got my hands on a gold! (No, he’s not proposing he’s signing my copy of his book!)

4.Bouncebackability A high jumper who fails at their first attempt needs to pull themselves together to nail the   second attempt in a matter of minutes  Sport psychology pays significant attention to how to perform under pressure and bounce back from defeat. When disaster strikes Do we get caught up in analysis paralysis or do we dust ourselves off and take that all important first step forward?

 5.BS Filters Ben and his crew had countless  people telling them their dream was impossible. The crew learnt not to confuse other people’s negative  opinions with facts . If their detractors were annoying they used this as      emotional rocket fuel to spur themselves on. It is a powerful lesson, treat fact as fact and opinion as opinion.  They would never shied away from painful facts, but were careful to challenge unhelpful  opinions. Sport is more than just a    powerful metaphor for business.  Many of the sporting philosophies that underpin Gold can be transferred directly into the   corporate sector.

Ben has teamed up with  corporate performance coach Harriet Beveridge to write the book “Will it make the boat go faster?  Olympic-winning strategies for everyday success”