Building Profits Through Better Staffing Decisions
1 May, 2002
By: Jeff FurstChallenging economic times are forcing call center professionals to consider tough questions. Many professionals are facing downturns in their business because of the poor economy. But, many of these same professionals are looking at their call center as a profit savior. They realize that their call center has a unique ability to impact profit because it is a cost-effective means to support and contact their customers.
Demographics
Call center professionals are battling difficult labor market conditions. According to a report issued last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2006, the American economy will have created 10 million more jobs than workers. Additionally, the knowledge worker shortage is illustrated by the Department of Labor’s February Employment Report stating that unemployment within college graduates was 2.9 percent. Furthermore, with many call centers trying to migrate to multiple contact channels, like email and web chat, or changing the jobs in their call centers by adding up-selling or cross-selling, finding and hiring the right agent is becoming even more challenging.
Labor supply issues and changing job requirements are forcing contact center managers to examine their staffing and hiring systems. In our experience, business profit growth can be gained by focusing significant attention on hiring systems.
Better staffing decisions can build more profitable call centers by:
• Increasing agent productivity
• Reducing agent turnover and increasing retention
• Improving the effectiveness of training programs
• Increasing operational efficiency through reduced staffing cycle time
What kind of impact would you have on your call center organization if you could increase worker productivity by 5 percent or reduce turnover by 15 to 25 percent? Our experience would predict that your return on investment would be well into the six, if not seven, figures.
Staffing Process
In our view, staffing is made up of six areas: recruiting, sourcing, screening, selection, hiring, and on-boarding. This article will focus -mainly on the screening and selection elements since significant gains can be easily achieved in these areas.
To build a more profitable staffing system, call center professionals should focus on:
• More rigorous job definitions
• Using more predictive screening and selection tools
• More integration of recruiting and screening systems
The Job Definition
Are all call center jobs the same? No. Similar but different. Our experience has shown the more detailed and specific your understanding of your call center job, the more profitable impact you can make. One way to look at call center jobs is to break them into groups or families. Customer care, market research, collections, sales (inbound and outbound), and technical support are five major call center job families. But each of these groups, while similar, is very different.
In performance metrics, using averages can mask the important details that drive job performance. For example, in baseball, a .300 average hitter would seem to be the right person to employ in the bottom of the ninth with runners on base and the game on the line. However, if that hitter’s average with runners in scoring position is only .220 because he can’t handle the pressure, you will have a performance problem. Good managers will know they have an “employee” on the bench that hits .400 with runners in scoring position. As demonstrated in this baseball analogy, knowing the job details drives job performance.
By thoroughly defining the call center job, these details can be discovered. Through the job definition process, you’ll discover what factors drive job performance. These factors are usually grouped into four areas:
• Ability to learn, solve problems, and make decisions
• Ability to plan and organize activities
• Ability to get things done through people
• The desire to perform or attitudes, interests, and motivations associated with doing a job
Ability to learn, ability to plan, and the ability to get things done through others are the “can do” aspects of the job. The desire to perform or the attitudes and interests towards the job are the “will do” factors. Determining the job applicant’s “will do” level is crucial. How many people have you worked with that are smart, organized, and very persuasive? But, they don’t get to meetings, don’t work well, or miss a lot of work time. We have all seen the power of the “will do.”
The side graphic shows these four areas and factors (competencies) associated with each area that drive job performance. For example, both sales and collections require skills in getting things done through other people. But, they are not the same job. Collection centers may require the use of persuasion in a forceful manner while sales will require persuasion in a low-key manner.
But what about testing candidates’ typing skills or computer ability? Many call centers screen people on their typing skills or computer ability. Should we consider typing skills or computer ability to be factors that drive job performance? Maybe. The key question is whether someone can learn to type or learn the computer. If you hired people that have the ability to learn and apply new information, they should be trainable. In fact, selection tools should not measure information that the applicant could learn in a short period of time. Our experience has shown that some call centers are eliminating potentially excellent employees because their initial typing or computer ability is poor. What if you could revamp your on-boarding and training process to teach those potential new hires typing or basic computer skills before the business-specific training began? When we’re facing labor pool shortages, like we are now, this change in your hiring process might open a new recruiting segment for your call center.
Building a better job definition begins with defining the key factors that drive job performance, understanding how to measure a job candidate’s ability around these factors, and making sure that what you’re measuring does in fact predict job performance.
How do you screen and select candidates?
The good news is that contact center professionals have many tools available to screen and select potential call center agents. The bad news is that picking which tool makes sense for your organization can be challenging. Our experience has taught us that no “silver bullet” exists. In other words, no single tool can accurately predict a job candidate’s potential job performance. Your organization will have better success combining tools together. Keep in mind that the traditional interview is a screening and selection tool. In addition, what may work for one organization may not work for another.
Separating screening and selection into different elements allows us to focus on the key differences between them. Screening is about quickly and economically identifying potential high performers. When creating screening systems, we want to understand what skills and behaviors drive job performance. Then, we want to know which of those skills and behaviors we can easily screen for.
Linking your screening with recruiting is a key component of a more profitable staffing system. For example, if your screening system is readily available to potential candidates you will increase your candidate pool. Web-based screening tools or interactive voice response systems (IVRs), are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even when you’re not working, your screening system is. You can also eliminate your organization’s reliance on resumes. Our view is that many organizations will benefit if they “retired” the use of resumes. A good screening system will tell you more about a candidate’s potential job performance than most resumes can.
Selection is about answering the question: “Who should I hire?” Again, we go back to our job definition to understand what skills and behaviors will drive job performance. We then want to understand how we will measure the job applicant’s skills and behaviors based on our job details. Assessments, or tests, allow us to measure these factors. Selection tests are more involved and more predictive than screening tools. Typically, assessments are administered to the job applicant during an on-site visit to your call center.
We can match our four areas of job performance with selection tests that do a good job at measuring those factors. For purposes of the article, we’ll combine the ability to learn with the ability plan and organize.
Skill Area Types of Assessments What to Measure
Ability to learn, solve problems, make decisions, plan and organize activities Customized problem solving simulations; ability–to-learn tests; behavioral event interviews Ability to learn quickly; ability to apply information; ability to assess problems and recommend solutions
Ability to get things done through people Simulations focused on teamwork, coaching, customer service, or sales; behavioral event interviews Ability to work effectively with co-workers; ability to present ideas effectively; ability to empathize and probe for information
The desire to perform or specific attitudes, interests, and motivations Behavioral event interviews; Personality tests designed specifically for predicting job performance; Specific attitudes, interests, and motivations General attitude towards work and customers; attitude toward learning; wanting to serve the customer within the guidelines set by the company
Now that we’ve identified the factors that drive job performance and an appropriate screening and selection tool, we need to think about validating that tool for your job and organization. In Industrial Organizational Psychology, validation is very important. Without getting into detail on the various types of validation, the main point is to make sure that what you’re measuring does in fact predict job performance. Additionally, a thorough validation process provides a legally-defensible hiring model.
Integrating recruiting and selection
Integrating your recruiting and selection system will further enhance your call center’s profitability. For example, two call centers doing the same job are located in separate geographic markets. One location is able to attract job candidate after job candidate that fit the job success factor model. The other struggles to generate any significant applicant flow. Because the organization is able to determine quantity and quality through their selection system, they are able to send work to the call center that can meet its needs. In our experience, you will make trade-offs between employee quality and number of hires. Which way you trade depends on your business.
Final Thoughts
The goal of the screening and selection process is to optimize the hiring teams’ time. Whether that is human resources, operations, supervisors, or executives, the goal is to put the best possible job applicants in line for the jobs.
In short, your hiring system can increase long-term profits. By understanding what factors drive job performance, you can define the call center job. When you can measure each job applicant’s competency level, you can get away from averages. Then, the validation process confirms that what you measure is predicting job performance. Finally, by integrating screening and selection with the rest of the staffing process, you can optimize your hiring managers’ time. Doing so will allow your call center to hire more productive people that stay longer. These employees will bring the profit with them.
