Five Biggest Obstacles for Hiring Managers in Contact Centres
What are the biggest obstacles that hiring managers in contact centres are faced with in 2019? We recently completed our 2019 Talent Insights and Salary Survey which identifies the main obstacles that hiring managers have to tackle when recruiting for their contact centres.
Below are the five most common obstacles and what you can be doing in your contact centre to navigate them.
Candidate Quality
Our survey revealed that candidate quality is one of the most common obstacles for hiring managers recruiting in the contact centre sector. Hiring managers all recognise that this is a highly competitive space with many companies in contention to secure quality candidates.
While most contact centres surveyed are not expecting significant growth over the next 12 months (only 15% of contact centres surveyed are expecting their headcount numbers to increase in 2019), there is still a steady turnover rate which means there is a constant demand for quality candidates.
To attract this quality talent, hiring managers are having to look at the bigger picture of the employment offer. Salaries across contact centres have remained stable in 2018 and into 2019, candidates are therefore interested in the additional, non-monetary benefits such as flexible working conditions, business culture, social incentives and long-term career opportunities.
Attention to detail
Good contact centre candidates have solid interpersonal skills as well as relationship building, negotiation and influencing skills. However, hiring managers are finding that even some of the quality candidates can lack attention to the finer details in a stressful contact centre environment.
While not all of this can be identified during the interview process, a good recruiter will have measures they can take to identify those candidates who have an eye for detail and those who do not.
Alternatively, many contact centres are finding that attention to detail is an area that can be refined/managed through workplace processes and in-house training and mentorship.
Lack of experience
While the demand for quality contact centre staff is high, we are seeing a surplus of candidates without experience who want to enter the contact centre industry. There is also a high number of candidates with overseas experience but many are restricted to student visa limitations.
Stability in previous employment
While many candidates appear to have moved around from employer to employer, our survey revealed that the biggest contributor to high turnover of candidates in contact centres is wage and job security.
Therefore, while a candidate might be lacking in stability in previous roles, there is a clear opportunity for contact centres and hiring managers. They need to shift their focus into providing candidates with the desired security and focusing on employee engagement which in turn will increase staff retention. If a hiring manager and recruiter can understand what has driven a quality candidate to move from one role to another, they should be able to identify and put measures in place to increase candidate stability within their own contact centre.
Stay in the role for longer than 12 months
While retention is a very apparent obstacle for all hiring managers in contact centres, there is an opportunity for contact centres to increase retention through employee engagement. Our survey revealed there is a noticeable shift focusing on employee engagement and satisfaction. 82% of the contact centres we surveyed are now focusing on increasing employee engagement within their organisations in 2019.
This includes contact centres actively working towards moving away from strict, KPI and target driven environments. This shift is improving overall employee satisfaction, stress levels and ultimately their tenure in their roles.
