Working in a contact centre can be especially stressful for employees, who are speaking to customers and helping to solve their problems on a daily basis. These environments can be intense and emotionally draining, and many advisors deal with customers experiencing distressing personal circumstances.
It’s clear that the mental well-being of our people needs to be a business priority in 2022. But if your contact centre has never had a well-being plan in place, it can be difficult to know where to start.
With this in mind, Julie McIntosh, Chief Culture Officer at Kura, shares their top tips on supporting the mental health of employees in your contact centre.
Hold regular check-ins with your employees
Sometimes, it can be hard to spot a struggling employee – this is especially true if you have a remote or hybrid workforce, which many businesses now do. Your people may not feel confident enough to approach you, especially about personal matters, so it’s important to check in with them regularly to see how they’re doing.
Employers should hold weekly catch-ups with team members to check on their well-being. Employees will find this really helpful because they can work with their manager to address their well-being without having to be the one to bring it up.
You could implement regular check-ins in a number of ways to make it a no-pressure situation for your people. Video-calling your remote employees will help to make the experience more personable.
For office-based employees or remote workers who live nearby, arranging to meet at a café outside of the office can provide a more relaxing setting. Speak to your people to find out which environment they’ll feel most comfortable in.
Host well-being sessions
It’s important to check in personally with your people on a regular basis. But now more than ever, we need each other to get through hard times. At Kura, we started hosting live meditation classes via Zoom during the first 2020 lockdown, and it’s something we’ve continued as we’ve gone through periods of home and office working.
In meditation sessions, employees can practise mindfulness and breathing techniques – focusing on the breath is one of the most powerful ways to pause during our busy lives, and it can dramatically reduce feelings of stress and anxiety. Bringing people together to do these kinds of exercises can help your team to bond and make one another feel more comfortable. Strong camaraderie among your team is important because it makes them feel less alone.
Invest in an employee assistance programme
It’s important to foster an open environment where your people feel comfortable confiding in you if they’re struggling with their mental health. But investing in an employee assistance programme will also give them access to expert advice, support services, and counselling. Having access to professional counselling is important at a time when NHS mental health services are stretched thinly and waiting lists are long.
EAP’s allow employees a multitude of benefits, such as speaking with mental health professionals, access to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and eye movement and desensitisation reprocessing therapy (EMDR).
Give your employees some flexibility
Talking to customers on the phone all day, especially if it’s on serious topics, can be mentally and emotionally draining. Allowing your advisors to rotate between your different customer service channels can help them to relax and recalibrate.
Have a discussion with your advisors to find out how best to implement this. You might find that an even split, with phone calls in the morning and live chat in the afternoon, is most suitable, or you could allow your employees shorter periods of working through emails or chats throughout the day to give them a break from the exhaustion of back-to-back phone calls.
Joanne is the editor for Workplace Wellbeing Professional and has a keen interest in promoting the safety and wellbeing of the global workforce. After earning a bachelor's degree in English literature and media studies, she taught English in China and Vietnam for two years. Before joining Work Well Pro, Joanne worked as a marketing coordinator for luxury property, where her responsibilities included blog writing, photography, and video creation.
