3 easy ways to engage with your team

“Employees don’t leave companies, they leave their managers.” 

While there is a lot of truth in that, managers may not be able to overcome what could be a negative company or lousy leadership practices. Managers can still create engagement and improve retention by controlling how they approach their team. Here’s how:

1. Create metrics that matter and focus on what the employee can control. Think adherence, quality or interaction scores, availability and compliance to your processes. Each of those an agent has within their control. If use handle time, talk time or similar as a direct agent metric vs. as an operational measure (i.e. why is handle time up?), you are creating a stopwatch effect for agents.
2. Conduct virtual team huddles. When agents were in the office, we didn’t shy away from an impromptu or scheduled weekly team stand up huddle. Ask yourself: What’s changed? Nothing, other than a virtual meeting takes more coordination. Easy fix: Most workforce management systems can suggest the best time for a meeting. Agents need connection, even if it’s virtual. It drives up community spirit, promotes a “buddy” system and provides the best method to deliver relevant information to the team.
3. Champion fun ways to engage with your team. Do you have a group chat for work where they can ask questions? Do you have a group chat where they can share (monitored of course) personal things maybe about their families, achievements or activities outside the office they’d like their work-family to know?Do you create a game-like atmosphere to have some fun and improve their work knowledge and reinforce training? You could also celebrate birthday months or do a holiday huddle with a virtual “gift” exchange.

What idea do you like the best? Join the conversation on LinkedIn.