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Most leaders agree that the satisfaction and engagement of their team is critical to success. Many of those same leaders haven't developed a specific plan and don’t know where to begin. This is one simple step that requires no financial investment and you can start implementing immediately!

Virtual suggestion box:

You can easily create a “virtual suggestion box” that allows team members to share their ideas, feedback, and questions with leaders. The mechanics of this virtual suggestion box aren't that important. The process and visibility you build around it is much more important. What's most important is creating a dedicated way of submitting questions and ideas, always closing the loop, and then sharing the ideas and outcomes with the rest of the team, no matter how small or large.

4 Critical Steps to Success:

Your senior leaders might have a “feeling” on creating a Return-to-Office (RTO) policy.

That’s why you need facts.

If remote and hybrid work has resulted in benefits and advantages for the business, you need to speak up. Use this checklist to guide the conversation and challenge assumptions before an RTO decision gets mandated.

As return-to-office (RTO) discussions continue to dominate headlines, contact center leaders need to be ready to articulate the strategic value of their remote/hybrid work program. RTO mandates assume that in-office work leads to better performance, ignoring the business benefits of a well-structured remote model.

If you want to gain support for your remote program and avoid RTO pressure, it needs to be clear that the program brings value to the business. If you don’t already have objective proof of this, you need to validate if it’s true and start sharing it with your senior leaders.

Below are some of the most common benefits of a well-run remote program.

We are starting to see some Workplace data points emerge that are interesting, and could be calls to action in WFH and hybrid environments both within and outside of contact centers. While the data is not at all specific to call centers (more the enterprise in its totality) we can safely draw some conclusions around the impact for CX functions.

Starbucks CEO Harold Schulz announced last week that they are “ordering” employees to return to the office a minimum of three days per week, after his earlier request fell short of 100% compliance. He also states that working from home is a “privilege.” Wow.

With 90%+ of contact center populations now working from home, the time has arrived to accurately assess what's working, what's not working so well, and where the opportunities sit for upgrades and tweaks to optimize WFH programs for the long haul. Michele Rowan, President of Customer Contact Strategies, conducts benchmarking surveys with Senior Leaders on their work from home programs several times per annum.

Here are a number of considerations for protecting employee safety and well being, and business health as restrictions start to lift, and we begin to return to the "new normal":

During this time of supreme health and safety measures for our employees, and rapid transitions for many teams going remote, here are some reminders that are the backbone of high functioning remote programs: