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Atricle Dump - Coaching at Work
In the first quarter of 2006, the Chinese economy grew 10.2%. With the increase in growth in the Chinese market and the constant continued growth being forecast for the future, it's wise for western businesses to research what the Chinese market wants and needs before dipping their toe into the Chinese market. Here are the current trends in the Chinese marketplace:FoodWith such masses of people in China and a steadily growing population, it's no wonder that food and food service is one of the biggest markets in China. From fine dining to fast food to supermarkets and specialty food shops, pretty much every kind of food is available in China. The biggest western names in food have all delved into the Chinese market already, including Walmart, Pizza Hut, KFC and, of course, McDonald's. There is also a huge market for all types of food and even catering services.Banking & Financial ServicesMany foreign financial companies including Merrill Lynch and The Royal Bank Of Scotland have already bought stakes in Chinese banks. With the lifting of more restrictions on foreign financial companies in 2006, the banking industry should see even more foreign investment.Luxury Goods<
2. Make people feel valued Most people will do much more than is expected of them if they get recognition and feel valued by the people who are important to them. Sadly, often this recognition does not come from management. It is more likely that this comes from a peer group. When you ask a Call Centre employee what they like about the company they work for the answer is usually “the people”. If Call Centres are truly serious about becoming an ‘employer of choice’ their goal should be to change this answer to “I love working for this company”. Investing in coaching as a reward for internal customers is very powerful and will produce loyalty as well as motivate and encourage those concerned. This will lead to employees feeling that the contribution made to a company is visible and recognised. When this happens expectations will be surpassed.
3. Inclu
What can we learn about careers from watching Donald Trump and The Apprentice?1. Recognize that job tests don't always correspond to job realities.Hundreds of companies screen candidates through psychological tests, stress interviews, group interviews, role-playing and a whole lot more. Do these tests make sense?* Martin Seligman found that optimism often outweighed raw sales talent when he tested Metropolitan Life sales representatives.* Lawyers tell me that law school tests have little relation to what they do on a day-to-day basis, especially if they're litigating or negotiating.* And most of us would agree: The way we act during an interview or role play doesn't predict how we'll survive and thrive on a day-to-day basis.So we can't fault Donald Trump for creating elaborate scenarios that force candidates into roles they'll never need once they're safely inside real boardrooms.2. Prepare to confront sexism in the 21st century.Critics -- and Caroline --may raise their eyebrows when women use sex to sell. Season 1 brought overt flirting and short short skirts. Season 2 brought Ivana Ma, who will unfortunately be remembered for
An employer with a workforce of 180 (fte) earning an average of ?12,500 pa will lose ?112,478 per year if the absence level due to sickness is 5%.
For many employers the reality of failing to invest in their internal customers is much worse than the figure quoted above with some industries quoting absence as high as 18%, attrition at 43% and the cost of recruiting one junior member of staff being ?10,000 before the company gains a return on investment. In addition to this, the stark reality is that this is only the tip of the iceberg with businesses also losing money due to lack of motivation and no true feeling of value at all levels within organisations.
For example, it is now twenty years since the first Call Centre was established and during this period how companies do business with their customers has been revolutionised. It has become the norm to speak to someone in a Call Centre to buy anything from a holiday to a mortgage. Further to this, we have progressed into a new phase of off-shoring our Call Centres to places like India and Malaysia and yet one thing has not evolved and this is the image of a Call Centre.
Working in a Call Centre in the 21st century still has the image of a “poor career option”, with many Call Centres trapped in a cycle of reduced investment in coaching, training and development, with an increasing number of customers served poorly by burnt-out advisors, who lack loyalty to the company they work for. The result is apathy, absence, poor performance and high staff turnover, with internal customers moving from one call centre to another hoping that the next one will be better than the last.
In this environment career progression is limited, as the structure within the industry is very flat, with opportunities for supervisory or management roles being the only option. This contributes to high attrition rates with the average ‘shelf life’ of a telephone advisor being two years, unless their skills base is broadened to include variety in their role.
Sporadic sickness costs the industry millions of pounds each year and is a symptom of the anonymity and lack of value felt by employees. For telephony staff, the work can be hard, dealing with long queues of customers, all with important issues to be dealt with. Some customers are frustrated, and this can be taken out on the telephony advisor. Two or three calls like this in a day and stress levels begin to rise. At management level, stress levels rise when there is a risk of losing business when customers have to queue. Planned development activities for staff are usually the first thing to be sacrificed in order to support the customer. This results in a diluted service, delivered by tired and disillusioned staff.
External coaching in such environments can help to change this negative image, below are listed five key areas.
1. Change the Culture It is a well known fact that people do not remember what you say and will remember how you make them feel. Coaching can help managers at all levels create a culture where people enjoy coming to work and will tell others about their experience. A coach will work closely with managers and senior executives to handle stress in their own environment helping to facilitate the move away from the ‘parent-child’ model of communication. Coaching can help senior managers and executives feel more confident when dealing directly with staff. By helping the client to examine what they want to achieve, the coach allows the client to focus on a positive experience that will promote well-being for all.
2. Make people feel valued Most people will do much more than is expected of them if they get recognition and feel valued by the people who are important to them. Sadly, often this recognition does not come from management. It is more likely that this comes from a peer group. When you ask a Call Centre employee what they like about the company they work for the answer is usually “the people”. If Call Centres are truly serious about becoming an ‘employer of choice’ their goal should be to change this answer to “I love working for this company”. Investing in coaching as a reward for internal customers is very powerful and will produce loyalty as well as motivate and encourage those concerned. This will lead to employees feeling that the contribution made to a company is visible and recognised. When this happens expectations will be surpassed.
3. Includ
Competence, Behavioural or Situational Interviews are where the interviewer is looking for specific evidence of a particular set of abilities or competences. It may sound complicated or even daunting but these are actually the easiest interviews to prepare for.As with the standard interview the competence-based interview will often start with a "background review" to get things moving but after that the interviewers will move into a set of questions which will be the same for every candidate to determine whether you've got the level of competence or ability in the area they want. The situational aspect of the interview is to establish how you behave in certain situations.Many companies call this the 'STAR' routine and STAR stands for: Situation; Task; Action; Result.All they want is for you to outline a Situation where you used the particular ability or the Task that you had to do; describe the Action that you took and summarise the Results of your actions.This may sound complex, but it's actually a very straightforward interview to master, mainly because they always tell you beforehand what competences or abilities they intend to cov
For example, it is now twenty years since the first Call Centre was established and during this period how companies do business with their customers has been revolutionised. It has become the norm to speak to someone in a Call Centre to buy anything from a holiday to a mortgage. Further to this, we have progressed into a new phase of off-shoring our Call Centres to places like India and Malaysia and yet one thing has not evolved and this is the image of a Call Centre.
Working in a Call Centre in the 21st century still has the image of a “poor career option”, with many Call Centres trapped in a cycle of reduced investment in coaching, training and development, with an increasing number of customers served poorly by burnt-out advisors, who lack loyalty to the company they work for. The result is apathy, absence, poor performance and high staff turnover, with internal customers moving from one call centre to another hoping that the next one will be better than the last.
In this environment career progression is limited, as the structure within the industry is very flat, with opportunities for supervisory or management roles being the only option. This contributes to high attrition rates with the average ‘shelf life’ of a telephone advisor being two years, unless their skills base is broadened to include variety in their role.
Sporadic sickness costs the industry millions of pounds each year and is a symptom of the anonymity and lack of value felt by employees. For telephony staff, the work can be hard, dealing with long queues of customers, all with important issues to be dealt with. Some customers are frustrated, and this can be taken out on the telephony advisor. Two or three calls like this in a day and stress levels begin to rise. At management level, stress levels rise when there is a risk of losing business when customers have to queue. Planned development activities for staff are usually the first thing to be sacrificed in order to support the customer. This results in a diluted service, delivered by tired and disillusioned staff.
External coaching in such environments can help to change this negative image, below are listed five key areas.
1. Change the Culture It is a well known fact that people do not remember what you say and will remember how you make them feel. Coaching can help managers at all levels create a culture where people enjoy coming to work and will tell others about their experience. A coach will work closely with managers and senior executives to handle stress in their own environment helping to facilitate the move away from the ‘parent-child’ model of communication. Coaching can help senior managers and executives feel more confident when dealing directly with staff. By helping the client to examine what they want to achieve, the coach allows the client to focus on a positive experience that will promote well-being for all.
2. Make people feel valued Most people will do much more than is expected of them if they get recognition and feel valued by the people who are important to them. Sadly, often this recognition does not come from management. It is more likely that this comes from a peer group. When you ask a Call Centre employee what they like about the company they work for the answer is usually “the people”. If Call Centres are truly serious about becoming an ‘employer of choice’ their goal should be to change this answer to “I love working for this company”. Investing in coaching as a reward for internal customers is very powerful and will produce loyalty as well as motivate and encourage those concerned. This will lead to employees feeling that the contribution made to a company is visible and recognised. When this happens expectations will be surpassed.
3. Inclu
The gatekeeper is the best person to get to know, they are the ones that will determine whether you can speak to the appropriate person, and they are also a goldmine of information. If this person does not like you, your messages are not likely to get through to the right person. I currently work with a medium sized company and the CEO has an email address but does not use a computer. He has his administrator read all the emails and print out the ones she feels are important. Unless she knows who you are, they are not likely to be read. You must have an excellent relationship with the gatekeeper because the CEO will not take direct calls. Be courteous at all times, let them know why you are calling and always ask if this is the correct person for you to call. Gatekeepers can be very helpful when giving you information and directing you to the right department. They can also smell a rat when you are not being truthful or you do not know what you are talking about.If you are going to call a CEO, make sure you call before the gatekeeper arrives, this may be the only time the CEO will be answering the phone. If they do not, then leave a voice mail message and clearly state what it is you want to speak
In this environment career progression is limited, as the structure within the industry is very flat, with opportunities for supervisory or management roles being the only option. This contributes to high attrition rates with the average ‘shelf life’ of a telephone advisor being two years, unless their skills base is broadened to include variety in their role.
Sporadic sickness costs the industry millions of pounds each year and is a symptom of the anonymity and lack of value felt by employees. For telephony staff, the work can be hard, dealing with long queues of customers, all with important issues to be dealt with. Some customers are frustrated, and this can be taken out on the telephony advisor. Two or three calls like this in a day and stress levels begin to rise. At management level, stress levels rise when there is a risk of losing business when customers have to queue. Planned development activities for staff are usually the first thing to be sacrificed in order to support the customer. This results in a diluted service, delivered by tired and disillusioned staff.
External coaching in such environments can help to change this negative image, below are listed five key areas.
1. Change the Culture It is a well known fact that people do not remember what you say and will remember how you make them feel. Coaching can help managers at all levels create a culture where people enjoy coming to work and will tell others about their experience. A coach will work closely with managers and senior executives to handle stress in their own environment helping to facilitate the move away from the ‘parent-child’ model of communication. Coaching can help senior managers and executives feel more confident when dealing directly with staff. By helping the client to examine what they want to achieve, the coach allows the client to focus on a positive experience that will promote well-being for all.
2. Make people feel valued Most people will do much more than is expected of them if they get recognition and feel valued by the people who are important to them. Sadly, often this recognition does not come from management. It is more likely that this comes from a peer group. When you ask a Call Centre employee what they like about the company they work for the answer is usually “the people”. If Call Centres are truly serious about becoming an ‘employer of choice’ their goal should be to change this answer to “I love working for this company”. Investing in coaching as a reward for internal customers is very powerful and will produce loyalty as well as motivate and encourage those concerned. This will lead to employees feeling that the contribution made to a company is visible and recognised. When this happens expectations will be surpassed.
3. Inclu
There are so many cash back portals on the web now that making a choice becomes extremely difficult. The only thing you can do to select the best one for you is to compare the cash back deals of the portals you visit to make a purchase.If you put the cash back offers of different portals side by side, you will realize that there are different cash backs on the same product on them. Suppose you want to buy a mobile of a major manufacturer, and visit a cash back portal which offers you 5 percent cash back on the mobile purchase you make from a particular merchant listed on that site. Now if you visit another cash back portal and find that for the same product, there is 7 per cent cash back, what will you do? The answer is obvious: you will go for the latter deal.The comparison helps especially in loan and insurance products purchase. Since huge amounts of referral commission is paid by the lenders and the insurance companies for the leads generated by a cash back portal, your chances of getting maximum cash back increases if you compare the cash back offers on loans and insurances. On some of the loan and insurance products you may get up to thirty percent cash back. Is not that amazing
External coaching in such environments can help to change this negative image, below are listed five key areas.
1. Change the Culture It is a well known fact that people do not remember what you say and will remember how you make them feel. Coaching can help managers at all levels create a culture where people enjoy coming to work and will tell others about their experience. A coach will work closely with managers and senior executives to handle stress in their own environment helping to facilitate the move away from the ‘parent-child’ model of communication. Coaching can help senior managers and executives feel more confident when dealing directly with staff. By helping the client to examine what they want to achieve, the coach allows the client to focus on a positive experience that will promote well-being for all.
2. Make people feel valued Most people will do much more than is expected of them if they get recognition and feel valued by the people who are important to them. Sadly, often this recognition does not come from management. It is more likely that this comes from a peer group. When you ask a Call Centre employee what they like about the company they work for the answer is usually “the people”. If Call Centres are truly serious about becoming an ‘employer of choice’ their goal should be to change this answer to “I love working for this company”. Investing in coaching as a reward for internal customers is very powerful and will produce loyalty as well as motivate and encourage those concerned. This will lead to employees feeling that the contribution made to a company is visible and recognised. When this happens expectations will be surpassed.
3. Inclu
There is a lot of consideration when being burdened with the complex tasks of creating and designing a logo, which not only reflects the image of the company, but will catch the attention of the consumer and client population. Logos need to be eye catching, and can be considered as tools which give positive first-time impressions of the industries or organizations they’re representing. Prior to a business promoting its major products and services in the market, its entrepreneur needs to be creative and design a logo, which is both innovative and creative.For the purpose of his/her business making a ground-breaking presence in the market, it is very necessary for him/her to create a logo design which possesses originality, and has a mesmerizing effect on the consumers. Imaginative logos help in characterizing the nature of the business involved. In designing logos for accounting firms one need to pay close attention to both detail and creativity. Accounting is basically related to finance, so the inclusion of suitable accounting symbols such as ‘@’, ‘$’ into the logo design could help define the company name. However, they should be altered a bit to add that touch of individuality and creativity.oach allows the client to focus on a positive experience that will promote well-being for all.
2. Make people feel valued Most people will do much more than is expected of them if they get recognition and feel valued by the people who are important to them. Sadly, often this recognition does not come from management. It is more likely that this comes from a peer group. When you ask a Call Centre employee what they like about the company they work for the answer is usually “the people”. If Call Centres are truly serious about becoming an ‘employer of choice’ their goal should be to change this answer to “I love working for this company”. Investing in coaching as a reward for internal customers is very powerful and will produce loyalty as well as motivate and encourage those concerned. This will lead to employees feeling that the contribution made to a company is visible and recognised. When this happens expectations will be surpassed.
3. Include coaching in the training programme There are very few of us who would like to do the same tasks day in and day out. If a company wants to attract the type of employee who will provide value for the business and positively enhance the working environment, a structured training and development programme is crucial. To invest thousands of pounds to train people to deliver the company brand and not embed the changes with coaching is not economically sound. Having said this, there are many companies out there who will feel that they provide adequate internal coaching for their staff. The reality is a line manager with little knowledge of how to coach, there is focus on areas of underperformance and the session is in fact a “feedback or tell session” which provides little or no value. According to the CIPD’s Training and Development Survey 2004 “only 6% of organisations using coaching have a written strategy on coaching for all staff”. Coaching can deliver real benefits for organisations which can have a positive effect on the bottom line, specifically in reduction of employee costs.
4. Recognise and Reward Employers who are prepared to identify the skills base of internal customers can introduce a fast track coaching programme which will help to, unleash potential, realise career goals and visual a clear development path. This will bring motivation and enthusiasm to the working environment.
5. Promote Successes Investing in the internal image by an employer is crucial if the negative image of the Call Centre is to change. This is long overdue, and is essential if companies want to deliver quality to internal and external customers. A company committed to coaching all members of staff will significantly change its culture, to one of a progressive forward-thinking company that people will want to work for. External coaching can provide motivation and enthusiasm for internal customers at all levels, including providing support for senior executives. The impact on investing in the well-being of an organisation’s internal customers will not only reduce cost, it will also improve the company’s image in the external market-place.
A recent article in Coaching at Work published by the CIPD mentions that after introducing coaching to the BUPA call centres they have entered for the first time the Times Best 100 Companies to Work For. This is a fantastic achievement and is a clear indication that coaching does work and can help to change the image of the call centre as a poor career choice.
By using Call Centres as an example, I have described the benefits that can be obtained from external coaching if applied to any workplace. For those companies who deliver their own internal coaching this may be perfectly adequate depending on what they wish to achieve. On the other hand the CIPD’s Training and Development Survey 2005 found that when asked about the effectiveness of coaching, businesses felt that 84% of coaching by line managers was effective, while 92% believed that external coaching was effective and a more effective way to bring tangible results to the business.
There is a word of caution to any company who may believe that employing an external coach will resolve all their issues. This will not happen unless there is real internal senior-level support, and a belief that an investment in coaching is right for the company. A ‘one size fits all’ will not be successful as each coaching programme is unique to each organisation and will only produce the desired results if coaching is made available at all levels within the workplace.
A key advantage of coaching in the way it allows support to be ‘customised’ for the different staff members, with personal development tailored to the individual needs, talents, strengths and weaknesses - and, not least, the personal preferences - of individual staff memb
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