I read today that Admiral Insurance has appointed vocal coaches to provide vocal health sessions aimed at “motivating staff, team-building and reducing sickness and absenteeism”.
What a waste of money!! Maybe they should actually trust their staff to get on and do their work – that would surely be more motivating than someone teaching them how to sing!!!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at Admiral – just call centres in general! This is because how staff do their work is decided by senior management that aren’t close enough to the front-line and team leaders monitor and control their staff, and measure individuals’ performance against arbitrary targets that have been derived from the annual financial plan.
The use of targets like this suggests that managers think staff are holding something back from their performance when they come to work… which is odd, when you think about it. After all, most people want to do a good day’s work each day, so why might managers assume they don’t?
However, since companies manage people in this way, they have to use competitions or incentives and nonsense like “vocal health sessions” to “motivate” staff to meet their targets. Unfortunately, since meeting targets is often outside of staff members’ control, winning becomes more of a lottery. This whole situation puts staff under stress, de-motivates them and has an adverse effect on staff turnover, sickness and absenteeism.
We need to see a bit more common sense in call centre management to improve this situation: surely it’s better to trust people and allow them to take the time to just get on and do their jobs and do things “right first time” every time?
Then companies like Admiral could offer better service from happier staff at a lower cost – how neat a solution to the effects of the “credit crunch” would that be…?
