When call centre work becomes traumatic – LifeLine Corporate teaches appropriate skills
Do your clients phone in with shocking stories? A hijacking, an armed robbery or a horrific motor vehicle accident? Are your call centre agents upset by what they hear?
This might be the case if you are operating an emergency services, insurance or medical aid call centre. Are your workers equipped to deal with such calls?
One way a person might deal with unpleasant information is to try and cut a call short. But imagine if you are the client. You will find the agent’s response to be cold or heartless. Your impression of the company will be negative.
It is not the call centre agent’s fault. He or she has not received the appropriate training in dealing with traumatic calls. Listening to someone’s pain is a skill. The agent needs to be able to empathise with the caller. The agent needs to listen to what the caller says, and reflect the caller’s communication back in a caring way. The agent needs to intuit what the caller needs, both in terms of emotional and practical support. That is where LifeLine Corporate training comes in.
BY Ivan Israelstam, Chief Executive of Labour Law Management Consulting. He may be contacted on 0828522973 or on e-mail address:
Employers frequently know for certain that serious misconduct has occurred but are unable to prove which employee or employees are responsible.
Employers are often tempted in such cases to discipline everyone who could possibly have been involved in such misconduct.
In the case of NUSFRAW obo Gomez & others vs Score Supermarkets (2003, 8 BALR 925) a group of managers were dismissed as a result of stock losses amounting to six million rand. While there was no proof that these managers had stolen the missing stock they were held responsible for the losses and disputed their dismissals at the CCMA. The arbitrator found that the markedly poor management of the business by the dismissed employees (and others) had led to the losses and that this justified the dismissal.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
Business leaders face a continuous barrage of research outlining breakthroughs in human capital trends, psychological trends and general developments around the world. For the most part, these articles act as hooks to lure one in with the intention of pushing some product or service down the line. However, each year I look forward to the Deloitte report on the top ten human capital trends globally and in South Africa. The encouraging thing is that the survey is done across multiple industries, geographies and disciplines in the workplace (not just HR), so it does seem to reflect some of the interesting challenges that organisations are facing in an increasingly competitive world.
This year’s report, however, is slightly different. Instead of redefining and perfecting traditional HR practices and processes (which has been the flavour of some of the previous reports) there is
"The speed at which a company's HR function efficiently reacts to the changing needs of its actual and potential employees." - CELESTE SIRIN
“Responsiveness” within organisations may be defined as being consistently effective in making appropriate and timely decisions – about individual customer requests, about short term fluctuations in operating conditions, about changes in the overall business environment – and then implementing faithfully on those decisions. This means not only reacting quickly, but routinely applying all of the relevant available information to make the best possible decisions.
The South African economy is beleaguered by inequality in a number of different forms. Unfortunately, South Africa’s apartheid past has played a significant role in the creation of these inequalities; however, legislation and policies have been put in place to address these issues. A central piece of legislation is that of Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value.
The essence of this legislation is that it seeks to ensure that individuals that perform substantially the same (sufficiently similar) level of work are remunerated in a consistent manner so that the level of work and level of pay correlate to one another. This legislation requires monitoring pay practices within singular organisations rather than across industries or the national market .As a result the legislation focusses on internal relativity between employees’ remuneration. . The legislation is designed to support pay equity through
Read more: What is Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value and How Can We Defend it?
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