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Disciplined action-planning drives employee engagement
Call centers throughout the world struggle with engagement and retention of skilled employees due to job stress, and lack of flexibility and career development opportunities. In 2003, the call center at Arbitron, an international media and marketing research firm, was facing similar employee engagement and talent retention issues.
Gantz Wiley Research has conducted Arbitron's employee survey for the past ten consecutive years. Arbitron's 2003 survey was administered to approximately 450 part-time employees and 800 full-time employees. The survey included 70 items (survey questions) categorized within 13 themes covering topics from working conditions to customer service and pay and benefits.
Arbitron was particularly concerned with the survey results from part-time employees. Nearly all of Arbitron’s part-time employees worked within the call center. Between 2002 and 2003, the number of staff at Arbitron’s call center had increased 29%. The growing pains were clear in the 2003 employee survey. The 2003 data showed declines in all but three of the thirteen theme scores from the previous survey administration. While seven of the call center theme scores showed up as strengths, two, Career development and Employee involvement, were clear opportunities. The rest were classified as mid-range scores.
Given the call center’s importance to the overall mission of Arbitron, and since the call center was often the first point of contact for Arbitron’s customers, employee engagement and retention of high-performing individuals was very important. Call center management was charged with leading a strategic feedback and action-planning process to boost survey scores, and more importantly, positively impact the work environment and culture within the call center.
The call center management team led highly focused feedback sessions within the management group and with the call center employees themselves. Based on the feedback of management and staff, Arbitron’s call center management team implemented a short list of very specific actions. Some actions were simple, inexpensive, and quick to fix. Other actions were involved, time consuming and expensive. Some action plans involved the entire call center organization. Others were specific to locations. Here are a couple examples of the feedback received from employees in regard to career development and involvement and the actions taken as a result:
Feedback: Hard to access information on career opportunities within the organization.
Action taken: Moved the job posting board to a more convenient and accessible location.
Feedback: Call center employees felt they could not advance because they lacked basic computer skills.
Action taken: Offer training in MS Office applications, taught by full-time staff with strong knowledge of these applications.
Feedback: Employees felt under-informed and less involved.
Action taken: Held regular town hall meetings to discuss current employee issues and monitor progress of action plan implementation.
The results of the action-planning initiatives focused on the call center were evident in the 2004 Arbitron employee survey. While favorability scores for the call center increased dramatically, in many cases scores for the rest of the company that did not undergo a focused action-planning process declined. Theme level results demonstrated the following:
- The two themes that had surfaced as priorities, Employee involvement and Career development, increased scores significantly for the call center but not for the rest of the organization.
- Employee involvement jumped 12 percentage points in favorability for call center employees and remained flat for the rest of the organization.
- Career development increased five percentage points in favorability for call center employees but decreased by three points for other employees.
- A ten percentage point increase occurred in favorability for the Training theme for call center employees, but there was no change in the Training theme for the rest of the organization.
- A seven percentage point increase in the Company overall theme occurred for call center employees, but scores for other employees declined by three points in this theme.
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