We do not like talking about money. That’s one of the key findings of Wagestream’s State of Financial Wellbeing 2022 research. Over two-thirds (68%) of UK employees with money worries do not tell their employer about their concerns. We must tackle this issue if we’re to make progress on financial wellbeing – as employers, and as a society.

Why do 68% of UK employees not want to tell their employer about their money worries? Most cite feelings of shame and embarrassment, or a cultural belief that you shouldn’t talk about your finances with others. Some cited a lack of trust in their employer – or a fear of discrimination or job loss once their issues had been divulged.

Although there’s still some way to go, we’ve made good progress on tackling the mental health stigma as a society – and it’s no surprise that, as a result, people are much more likely to talk about their mental health in the workplace. If we want to open the conversation so people can improve their financial wellbeing, we need to do the same with money.

3 ways employers can tackle the money stigma at work

1. Train money champions to signpost and be visible

There’s been progress on the mental health stigma and one of the reasons is the success of the Mental Health First Aiders and similar schemes. Without training, it can be hard for managers and colleagues to know what should and shouldn’t be said, but this type of training gives confidence that makes people approachable but also more likely to open a conversation.

2. Never waste an opportunity to talk about money

At certain times, macro-economic trends put money in everyone’s minds – in 2022 there’s been a convergence of several, including Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis. This is happening at the societal level and, since people have money on the mind, they’re more open to conversation openers from their employer.

It’s not only societal trends that offer opportunities to talk about money. Internal changes, such as promotions, are good opportunities to encourage employees to review their short-term and long-term financial goals. The same is true of external changes in an employee’s life: for example when people apply for mortgages they often talk to their HR department.

Don’t waste these opportunities to start a dialogue – it’s a great way to build trust with employees. In fact, nothing says you’re more open to having a conversation than by clearly showing you’re interested in starting one. If you have money champions, using them to start conversations within their departments or cohorts can be an easy way to take action at scale.

3. Celebrate Talk Money Week throughout your organisation

Talk Money Week is a yearly campaign aimed at encouraging conversations about money – it’s not limited to the workplace, but it’s an ideal existing initiative that organisations can use as a catalyst for their own plans. In 2022, Talk Money Week begins on November 7th. Spearheaded by the Money and Pensions Service, Talk Money Week offers a participation pack for employers looking to take part, that includes various useful materials and insight so you can get off to a good start. It’s a great way to start a conversation internally and provides a yearly date for your diary.

Financial wellbeing strategies should not only look at new support, but existing policies to ensure you’re not unwittingly making it expensive to come to work. How else should you support your employees through the cost-of-living crisis?

If you’d like to find out how Wagestream can help your business, contact us and we’ll put you in touch.

The intention is that where the fit note is certified, such as a hospital or GP surgery, will remain the same – but who can do this will be expanded to relieve the administrative burden on doctors and GPs, as they aim to tackle the COVID backlog and deliver an extra 50 million appointments by 2024.

The changes – which apply across England, Scotland and Wales – follow the rollout of digital fit notes back in April and are intended to further simplify the process of certifying sickness-related absences.

What are fit notes and how do they work?

Employees can usually self-certify for the first seven days of illness. Beyond that, they will normally need what’s known as a fit note.
The fit note is a healthcare professional’s assessment of a patient’s fitness for work. It may say one of two things: either the employee is not fit to work, or they may be fit to work subject to certain adjustments. It is not open to GPs or other medical professionals to confirm that the employee is fit for the job they do. Employers seeking such confirmation would have to involve the services of Occupational Health to get further guidance. If following assessment, the patient is considered fit for work, they don’t need a fit note, even if it is asked for.

Once a fit note runs out, if no further fit note is sought/provided, the employer can take it as read that the employee is fit to return. At this stage, a return to work meeting should help the employer uncover if there are any risks of allowing the employee back to work or if temporary measures are required. Of note, the advice in the fit note pertains to an employee’s fitness for work in general, and not specifically their current job role. This gives employers maximum flexibility to discuss possible changes to help the employee return to work, which may include changing their duties for a while. Using the fit note to its full potential helps employers to reduce sickness absence costs – for example, in relation to sick pay, staff cover and lost productivity – and minimises the disruption caused by employees being off sick unnecessarily.

How might the new rules impact employers?

For employers, there are concerns that easier access to fit notes could lead to more people being signed off sick, resulting in higher levels of absence. Indeed, employees who may have previously put off going to their GP for a fit note due to difficulties in getting an appointment may now be inclined to take the easier route of going to a pharmacist or other healthcare professional, increasing the likelihood that they will take time off work. That said, it won’t be as simple as walking into your nearest pharmacy to get a fit note. The idea is that the HCP certifying the fit note can only do so if they are integral to the patient’s health management. They may be doing this in combination with other HCPs and it might be that there is a combined approach to the individual’s care, whereby they see multiple HCPs.

The government guidance is clear that fit notes should only be certified following a full assessment of an individual’s fitness for work, and therefore should be provided by a clinician with a holistic oversight of the individual’s condition. This will hopefully lessen any disruption to employers. The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, Chloe Smith MP, suggests the changes will be positive for both employees and their employers.
“The extension of fit note certification is fantastic news for patients, making it easier for them to get the support and advice they need from the right place, ensuring where possible that they can remain in work”, she said.

Another potential positive for employers is that by alleviating the practical difficulties in getting a fit note, employees should have less of a reason not to submit them. Sometimes, employees will use the excuse that they can’t provide a fit note because they are unable to get an appointment with their GP to get a fit note, and/or they don’t realise that fit notes are needed once SSP has stopped.

If an employee is past the stage of SSP, i.e. has been off work for longer than 28 weeks, employers will generally be in the realms of a capability process, but this does not mitigate the need for a fit note to evidence the genuineness of the employee’s continued sickness absence. The changes are a timely reminder that employers must continue to actively manage sickness absence, and gathering appropriate evidence plays a key part in that.

Ultimately, at this early stage, we can only speculate as to the impact of relaxed fit note rules. However, given ongoing staffing shortages and the numerous challenges businesses are currently experiencing around unexpected absences – due to factors such as COVID-19, flight delays, fuel costs and transport strikes – understandably employers may be concerned.

What should employers do now?

Going forward, the changes mean employers need to be aware that fit notes authorised by other healthcare professionals, not just doctors and GPs, will be accepted as evidence of incapacity. Organisations will need to update their absence policies to reflect this.
Additionally, employers must be aware that fit notes no longer need to be physically signed. They must, however, contain the name of the healthcare professional who has made the certification and their professional title, otherwise, they won’t be legally valid.

6 things to do when provided with a fit note:

  1. Check whether your employee’s healthcare professional has assessed that they are not fit for work or maybe fit for work.
  2. Check how long your employee’s fit note applies for, and whether they are expected to be fit for work when their fit note expires.
  3. If your employee may be fit for work, discuss their fit note with them and see if you can agree on any changes to help them come back to work while it lasts.
  4. If your employee is not fit for work, or if they may be fit for work but you can’t agree on any changes, use the fit note as evidence for your sick pay procedures.
  5. Consider taking a copy of the fit note for your records (the employee should keep the original).
  6. Take further advice from a workplace Occupational Health professional or your HR Team.

For advice on managing workplace sickness contact WorkNest at CCP@worknest.com

People have been so focused on whether they are working in the office or at home, that the ‘insource of partner operations’ as an industry concept seems to have gone quiet.

However, if client businesses have adopted a work from home model is there a missed opportunity here to utilise office space? To foster closer working relationships by having staff on-site provided and managed by organisations with specialist skills in the delivery of customer experience?

If both organisations work together to deliver hybrid models from a single site, then there are opportunities to create something really special. We have seen remote working delivered on an unprecedented scale throughout the pandemic and with the right systems and collaboration from IT teams to get the solution onto the agent desktop, then this could be an interesting way forward for some clients.

Savings on labour costs may not be as significant as they were in the past. However, for organisations looking to make a first step in getting support with servicing, whether that be sales or service based, there could be a golden opportunity here. Especially, if there is a lease on a site that means it would otherwise be practically empty, why not use that space as a hub for both an in-house and an insourced team?

What’s more, employees now have an all-around greater awareness of their employer’s responsibilities, as well as their own rights. And with the Great Resignation tipping the balance of power in their favour, employees may feel emboldened to take work issues further than they would have dared to previously.

With this in mind, here are five key policies all businesses should have in order to help them prevent and manage disputes effectively.

1. Grievance policy

All organisations should have a grievance policy and procedure, as this will help employees to understand the correct steps to follow when they have a concern, problem or complaint that they wish to raise with their employer that they feel they have been unable to resolve informally.

 2. Equality and diversity policy

Disputes are commonly raised around bullying and harassment, and issues of equality and fairness, especially in relation to employees with protected characteristics such as race, sex and disability. In order to show that equality and diversity are at the core of your business, it’s essential that you have a policy around it.

3. Pay and performance

Having a pay policy will help to ensure equal pay is given for work of equal value by setting out how you apply certain pay to certain roles. This in turn will reduce the potential for complaints of unfairness and potentially even equal pay claims. A pay policy will also help you to communicate pay principles, such as when you will pay overtime and how certain bonuses are awarded, thereby preventing disputes arising out of misunderstanding.

4. Disciplinary policy

A disciplinary policy is one of an organisation’s tools for managing disputes, and employers must not be afraid to use this policy in the right circumstances – in other words, once all informal problem-solving avenues have been explored, or where the performance or conduct warrants it.

5. COVID-19 policy

A lack of clear post-COVID policies emerged amongst the top three factors that would prompt an employee to raise a complaint or bring legal action, according to our Mind the Gap report. Simply put, people want to know how the organisation will deal with issues such as homeworking, vaccination and self-isolation, and this is best done through a COVID-19 policy. This list is not exhaustive, and it’s extremely valuable to have policies around all aspects of the employment relationship. After all, the number one factor that would prompt employees to bring a complaint according to our research? A lack of communication. The more employees understand the better; if things are communicated to them through policies and other means, the less likely you will be to end up with a dispute.

For advice on creating watertight HR policies or to enquire about fixed-fee support, contact WorkNest at CCP@worknest.com.

That’s a familiar piece of advice which is credited to John T Chambers, the former boss of Cisco. It’s a comforting mantra for your boss to repeat; it combines displaying respect for staff with a degree of humility.

In the old days, most leaders in the ‘customer world’ could not only say they would be ‘willing’ to do what they asked of their contact centre employees, they could do it too. Technically they might have been a bit slow, but when it came to understanding, empathy and the resolution of customer problems or commercial opportunities they would be confident of their ability to effectively engage with consumers.

That was then. What about now?

Last week a client shared with me some analysis they had done which showed that their frontline advisors were having to use 20 different systems, applications and third-party portals. 20.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1659441626817{padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]Just think about that for a moment. I’ll be honest, I’m not the world’s greatest multitasker – but even if I was, 20 applications would be about four times the number I’d be confident in using. So, in my client’s contact centre I know I couldn’t do an advisor’s job and if I was the boss I wouldn’t pretend that I’d be willing to either!

It’s a truism that contact centre agents’ jobs have steadily become more difficult over the years. The number of contact channels available and the range of activities undertaken have steadily increased. At the same time the emotional state of customers has often become more heightened either due to their frustration at failing to successfully self-serve or external environmental factors. We all know that the ‘cognitive load’ frontline staff work under seems to have steadily grown and the technology and processes they work with just make matters worse.

So, what can we do about it?

For one, we can start to acknowledge that our people are increasingly doing technically and emotionally challenging jobs that most of us couldn’t. Recognising this fact won’t change anyone’s reality, but it does show a degree of genuine understanding and empathy.

Secondly, we can ensure that the needs of the frontline are front and centre every time new tech, propositions and channels are being planned. There’s a direct line between employee experience and customer experience, so we need to start to make reinforcing that relationship – and helping our frontline people – a priority.

At the same time, Covid especially has driven significant growth in the demand for multilingual customer service as more and more firms have exploited to shift online to enter new overseas markets.

This is a trend which Contact Centre Panel has been acutely aware of over the past two years, both in the UK and globally. So, if you need to identify and recruit staff who can support customers in languages other than English what are the options available to you?

1. Employ people who are already here

Most multilingual contact centres are supporting European languages, so native language speakers originally from the EU are the most obvious candidates. EU residents who were in the UK by 2021 should have achieved Settled Status so can be employed just like any other resident. However, as nearly all contact centres are reporting massive recruitment and retention challenges, that’s far from easy.

2. Recruit new staff from the EU

This may help, but remember that to do so you will almost certainly have to take advantage of the Skilled Worker Visa Scheme which entails a lot of administration, being approved as an employer by the Home Office and meeting the minimum salary level of £25,600.

3. Recruit Remote Workers in the Country

With the widespread adoption of contact centre homeworking, employing foreign-language speakers to work for you remotely in their own country is now entirely technically feasible. However, the costs and complexity of doing so – especially if you don’t currently employ any staff outside of the EU – can be considerable.

4. Outsource

Outsourcing contact centre customer service isn’t always the right solution for every organisation. But as many of our clients have found, done the right way outsourcing can be a sustainable, affordable solution to the multilingual resourcing challenge.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss any of these options.

From vaccination to workplace safety measures, the pandemic has introduced plenty of new potential sources of conflict, and in many cases, employers’ COVID response and their handling of COVID-related issues continue to be a source of resentment, which could lead to disputes in the workplace.

What’s more, employees now have an all-around greater awareness of their employer’s responsibilities, as well as their own rights. And with the Great Resignation tipping the balance of power in their favour, employees may feel emboldened to take work issues further than they would have dared to previously.

With this in mind, here are five key policies all businesses should have in order to help them prevent and manage disputes effectively.

1. Grievance policy

All organisations should have a grievance policy and procedure, as this will help employees to understand the correct steps to follow when they have a concern, problem or complaint that they wish to raise with their employer that they feel they have been unable to resolve informally.

 2. Equality and diversity policy

Disputes are commonly raised around bullying and harassment, and issues of equality and fairness, especially in relation to employees with protected characteristics such as race, sex and disability. In order to show that equality and diversity are at the core of your business, it’s essential that you have a policy around it.

3. Pay and performance

Having a pay policy will help to ensure equal pay is given for work of equal value by setting out how you apply certain pay to certain roles. This in turn will reduce the potential for complaints of unfairness and potentially even equal pay claims. A pay policy will also help you to communicate pay principles, such as when you will pay overtime and how certain bonuses are awarded, thereby preventing disputes arising out of misunderstanding.

4. Disciplinary policy

A disciplinary policy is one of an organisation’s tools for managing disputes, and employers must not be afraid to use this policy in the right circumstances – in other words, once all informal problem-solving avenues have been explored, or where the performance or conduct warrants it.

5. COVID-19 policy

A lack of clear post-COVID policies emerged amongst the top three factors that would prompt an employee to raise a complaint or bring legal action, according to our Mind the Gap report. Simply put, people want to know how the organisation will deal with issues such as homeworking, vaccination and self-isolation, and this is best done through a COVID-19 policy.

This list is not exhaustive, and it’s extremely valuable to have policies around all aspects of the employment relationship.

After all, the number one factor that would prompt employees to bring a complaint according to our research? A lack of communication. The more employees understand the better; if things are communicated to them through policies and other means, the less likely you will be to end up with a dispute.

For advice on creating watertight HR policies or to enquire about fixed-fee support, contact WorkNest at CCP@worknest.com.

The recruitment crisis has made headline news in recent times, with businesses being affected by labour shortages brought on by changes to both local and global economic conditions caused by the post-pandemic recovery and for UK based organisations, the aftereffects of Brexit.

In one sense it’s great that economies are experiencing a period of rapid growth after such a difficult 16 months but this has its challenges for many business owners, with recruitment and wage inflation becoming two of the biggest hurdles to expansion or in some cases survival.

According to figures recently released by Reed Recruitment, customer service has seen the highest overall salary increase of any sector (in the UK) with employee wages in 2021 up 32% compared with 2019. This wage inflation is adding huge pressure to both the ability to recruit and retain existing staff, within customer service and sales operations.

Add to this the increase in customer demand for query resolution and a return to business as usual from the consumer’s point of view, then the reality for many contact centres is that staffing is going to be difficult just as a period of peak demand, for many businesses, begins.

Challenges faced include:

What can you do to cope with staff shortages?

There are two alternatives to recruitment, which may work better for your business helping to save time and money, whilst improving your customer experience as well as increasing sales conversion and revenues.

These alternatives can both help to fix your short and longer-term resourcing issues and enable you to build a more sustainable business in the future, that can handle both foreseen and unforeseen demand fluctuations.

Outsource to cope with peak demand and recruitment transition periods

There is a wide choice of outsource contact centres, who provide a highly professional service, which presents itself to your customers as a seamless extension of your business. Choosing an outsourced partner to cope with your peak periods or to handle your less complex frequently dealt with enquiries, will free up your core teams to focus on areas that require higher levels of expertise such as complaint resolution and more complex sales conversion. This will enable your business to focus on the development of its higher skilled advisors and salespeople, resulting in greater loyalty, increased retention rates, higher customer satisfaction and increased revenues.

Outsourcing can also be used to meet customer contact requirements whilst your business is in recruitment mode. Measuring your recruitment needs can be difficult, as consumer demands fluctuate, and finding the ‘right’ people for your business can take time when the labour market has become so limited. Working with a partner while you rebuild your teams can help you to maintain customer satisfaction, reduce customer churn and protect revenues.

Identifying the right outsourcer for your business can be difficult if you do not have full visibility of the market or the skills to vet each outsourcer against your requirements. Working with the Contact Centre Panel team takes the pain away, making the process much simpler and ensuring you find the right match for your business.

Implement new technology to reduce demand on your teams

Implementing the ‘right’ technology solution can help your business to cope with demand fluctuations and improve how you handle enquiries in a more consistent and controlled way. Improvements in technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Bots are enabling contact centres to massively reduce the demand on agents by channelling low level enquiries away from expert advisors and resolving them. The cost of implementing new technologies is covered by a reduction in resourcing expenditure, improvements to working and process efficiency and increased sales revenues.

The key to implementing technologies successfully is to identify a solution that fits your current and future business requirements. With such a large choice of potential systems and providers, it can be difficult to make the right choice, particularly if you do not have full visibility of what is available and the appropriate level of technology expertise needed to accurately assess each solution.

Many businesses have, so far, chosen to wait in fear of making the wrong choice, either retaining dated legacy systems or delaying the adoption of new. When adopting new technologies mistakes can indeed be costly in terms of wasted time and expense, but if done correctly this can be the reverse. Successful businesses are now embracing the opportunity to streamline their operations and improve customer service delivery by implementing the latest contact centre technologies, guided by the right level of expertise.

Working alongside a trusted partner, such as Contact Centre Panel, to help you narrow down your options will help your business to adopt a measured, managed process to selecting the right technical solutions to improve and future-proof your operations.

Who can you talk to about the options?

Contact Centre Panel has built a network of over 140 contact centres and 50 technology providers. We’ve done this to find solutions to the greatest challenges facing the customer contact sector. Whether it’s staff resourcing to meet fluctuations in demand or to cover recruitment periods, or it’s choosing and implementing tools to improve customer interaction/experience and agent reliance, we can help.

We work closely with clients to understand their specific requirements before helping them to source the appropriate contact centre outsourcer or technology provider. We are entirely independent, so you know our recommendations are not driven by self-interest. Our selection process is managed by industry experts, so you will always be in safe hands.

Are there any major pitfalls of switching to a permanent hybrid working model?

With many businesses now accepting that a full-time office workforce isn’t always necessary, more flexible ways of working are being kept in place after more than a year of homeworking arrangements. At first, working from home was viewed as a temporary emergency situation, but time and technology have proved that goals can still be achieved if things are done correctly. Alexandra explained some of the issues businesses are facing, after the period of change we’ve all experienced:

Alexandra responded: “Many businesses have decided that working from home has a place in their operational model moving forwards. They are looking to make the once temporary emergency situations, permanent solutions and there are many benefits of this. First and foremost, businesses need to consider what version of hybrid working their organisation is adopting. If they’ll be offering a fully flexible working environment where staff can choose whether to work from home or not on a day-to-day basis? Or will there be a more structured hybrid working model with a mix of pre-agreed time in and out of the office. Businesses have needed to find ways to keep operations running through the pandemic, but now they need to consider how to optimise work. This means that having people in the office for meetings and training might be preferable to working via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Also, spending time in the office as a team or department can be hugely beneficial and is a way of maintaining bonds within your workforce.”

Alexandra explained: “Technology and equipment will be a big issue for some businesses. In March last year, many people simply had to take equipment home to allow work to continue. So now, businesses need to think about what their team members need to make flexibility possible. Certain roles might use specialist technology that can only be provided in one place. Heavy data processing might need to be supported by high-specification computers or multiple screen set-ups, for example.”

She questioned: “Do your people have the right communications technology at home, supported by reliable software at the office or in the cloud? Do they need one laptop or separate workstation setups for the home and the office? Are home connections, such as broadband, suitable for the systems in place?”

Alexandra concluded: “Once the physical equipment is taken care of, the reality of managing teams remotely needs to be addressed. Your managers and team leaders may be doing a fantastic job, but it‘ll be beneficial to make sure that they’re given opportunities to obtain and hone the skills required to manage teams remotely.”

How will organisations be able to bring new starters on board in hybrid working set-ups?”

Alexandra provided her thoughts: “Onboarding new starters is something which has definitely needed to change. However, the changes might not be as difficult to achieve as you might think. It is a good idea to base new starters from the office for a short time for several reasons. First, making sure that equipment and technology is available and set up correctly is usually easier to do on-site. Then giving your new starters the best chance of fitting into their teams and getting used to the systems is important. While not everyone will be in the office, making sure that guidance is available from people in the workplace is essential if you’re going to get the most out of your new hires.

She continued: “Some time spent in the office is the ideal opportunity to see how new starters are fitting in. Early issues can be dealt with more quickly and questions or concerns can be addressed before your workers are expected to work from home. It’s also a good opportunity to set expectations about how the hybrid working arrangements work in your organisation, as every workplace will be slightly different.”

Alexandra finished by saying: “Finally, make sure time is set aside to check in with new starters after their first few weeks or month. It’s not only a great opportunity to make sure that their new role is going ok for them, but new starters can be a useful source of new ideas and suggestions, especially in relation to their onboarding experience.

Alexandra not only advises her clients about their HR and Employment Law issues but also manages her own teams remotely.

She offered us some practical advice: “For many people, managing teams remotely is a skill set that requires learning and practising. Businesses should check whether their managers and team leaders are trained and experienced, putting training in place where it’s needed.”

Alexandra added: “Consider how you will perform your regular management tasks in future. How will assessments be done? How often will you have team meetings and individual feedback sessions? Will you have these in the office or via Zoom/Teams/phone calls? Also consider your data reporting routines, to keep the right people in the loop about performance statistics: it’s a well-known fact that allowing your people to own their performance can help them to deliver better results. Do your reporting systems allow this to happen?”

She concluded: “When it comes to managing people in any situation, it’s too easy to overlook the quiet and focus on easily identifiable issues. When remote and hybrid workers make up your team, it’s even more important to make sure that you are devoting enough time to everyone, not just those with obvious needs.”

How can you bring about a positive change in your business as you implement hybrid working?

Alexandra explained: “Hybrid working is not an emergency response to the pandemic any longer. To make this a permanent option for staff there are some things that all businesses need to consider:

  1. Your staff may need contractual amendments to suit their new working arrangements. Their place of work will be changing so contracts of employment will need to take account of this. There are also a number of other clauses advised for those hybrid working such as confidentiality and security.
  2. Have a ‘hybrid working policy’ in place. Not only will this make it easier for your teams to understand their new working situation, it will provide a consistent set of guidelines across the organisation. Writing this policy will also force your management team to consider the important issues and develop a common understanding of how they are being addressed in your company.
  3. Set acceptable professional and personal standards. These will vary from business to business, making it important to communicate clearly what is expected of your people. The realities of working from home, whether some or all of the time, mean that making it clear how much privacy is needed for calls, whether interruptions from the household are ok, the level of acceptable background noise and other factors are important to set expectations for your team members. In some cases, this might make it impossible for individuals to work from home, which enables a constructive conversation to happen before problems occur.
  4. Prepare for formal Flexible Working Requests. With over a year of working from home being a reality for many people, it may be difficult to refuse a new request, but each case should be taken on its own merits. Not all roles in your company may be genuinely possible to work flexibly in the long term.”

Alexandra summarised: “Hybrid working, hot-desking and working from home are not new. In some businesses, they have been used successfully for years already. What’s new is the volume of flexible and hybrid working arrangements, and they are new in some environments. With the right help, changes to some arrangements and focused new policies, hybrid working can bring about successful change for a better workplace.”

What final thoughts do you have as we enter this exciting phase of contact centre and customer service working?

Alexandra replied: “Recent surveys have shown us that the impact on work output has not been severe. There have been some minimal reductions in performance in some businesses, but in many cases performance has positively improved.

 She added: “If your business is going to implement permanent hybrid working policies, there are long term considerations beyond getting your set up legally and organisationally correct.”

 Alexandra continued: “Think about the long-term welfare of your staff. How is your organisation going to ensure that your team members are not over or underworked? This might be down to your managers and team leaders but should be supported by your reporting regimes.”

 She said: “How are you going to keep a successful team ethos going? This applies equally to new starters and old hands. With less social interaction inside the workplace, how will you maintain strong bonds in your business? You might need to think about more structured team events, days together inside or outside the office, team social lunches or other ideas to forge relationships and encourage idea sharing. Don’t restrict your team building to just your senior teams.”

 Alexandra concluded: “We’re already seeing that it’s possible to have a successful business using hybrid working. With a few steps taken carefully while you’re reforming your business after the Covid impact, a strong foundation can be used to build high performing teams with a common understanding and shared goals. The coming years are likely to be exciting for customer service operations who embrace the change.”

We’d like to thank Alexandra for her time and her insights. If your business is facing the challenges of making hybrid working successful, contact us.

In this joint webinar with The UK Contact Centre Forum, we will be asking leading contact centre experts how can businesses create a secure, productive, flexible, low risk working environment for their teams to flourish and achieve wherever they work. Jonathan Billing, Marketing Director, Contact Centre Panel, will chair an ‘around the coffee table’ style debate to hear the views of our expert panelists.

The panel will include Thomas Doran, Head of Remote Working at Bupa, Alexandra Farmer, Head of Team & Solicitor at Ellis Whittam, John Greenwood, Head of Technology & Payments at Contact Centre Panel, Eileen Donnelly,  Director at Ripple & Co and former Head of Values & Ethics at The Co-operative Bank Plc and Julie Goddard, Expert Resilience and Business Continuity Specialist at Humanex Resilience.

At the end of the webinar, we’ll hold an in-depth Q&A to help you with any questions or queries you may have on the content and guide you on specific outsourcing challenge.

Topic overview

With Covid restrictions relaxing and employees pushing for greater working flexibility – businesses are under increased pressure to run a hybrid working model. Although there are benefits to operating a hybrid operation, it opens organisations up to new risks and employee management challenges. These include:

Expert panel

Thomas Doran: Head of Remote Working, Bupa

As the head of remote working at Bupa, Thomas has extensive knowledge of homeworking having been involved in managing homeworking teams since 2014. He has led the implementation of a hybrid working model for Bupa’s frontline customer contact centre operation before homeworking became the new normal. Currently leads and a number of customer contact teams and manages partnership with 100% homebased outsourcer Sensee.

Alexandra Farmer: Head of Team & Solicitor, Ellis Whittam

Qualified solicitor and employment law expert. Prior to joining Ellis Whittam in 2013, Alexandra worked as head of employment law for a legal practice – gaining a wealth of experience supporting clients over a range of sectors including retail, beauty, pharmaceutical and charities. She heads up the Partnerships team at Ellis Whittam and her team support over 30,000 employers across 14 partnerships with employment law and HR issues.

John Greenwood: Head of Technology & Payments, Contact Centre Panel

A payments specialist and leading authority in PCI DSS compliance and how this applies to customer contact centres and 3rd party service providers. John was the driver and lead content contributor to the official PCI SSC Information Supplement, published in late 2018. John is a technology subject matter expert with over 30 years’ experience working with and within the industry, he has a deep understanding of the technology vendor landscape.

Eileen Donnelly: Director, Ripple & Co and former Head of Values & Ethics, The Co-operative Bank Plc

Senior leader with experience at Director level within FTSE 250 businesses. Eileen’s career has focused on supporting companies to build purpose-driven business strategies and workplace cultures. She is a Mental Health First Aid England Licensed Trainer and set up Ripple & Co to help organisations to recognise their responsibility to maintain and improve wellbeing in the workplace.

Julie Goddard: Expert Resilience and Business Continuity Specialist,
Humanex Resilience

A business continuity expert with over 15 years experience. Julie is a professional member of the Business Continuity Institute (FBCI). She has operated within a multi-agency response environment, including arranging counter-terrorism training and trauma training for hundreds of staff and management. She is currently an ‘industry Sector Leader’ on the ‘Cross-Sector Safety and Security Communications’ (CSSC) hub, which is a NaCTSO initiative.

Topics for discussion