Most supervisors have been promoted from within and are left to figure it out on their own.

According to Gallup’s research, the quality of supervision an employee receives has the most influence on whether they choose to be engaged. A recent study revealed that supervisors comprise the largest segment of under trained employees.

Even more troubling, is the fact that a small fraction of supervisors who work in call centers receive specialized training in how to motivate and engage their front line employees. As anyone who has worked in a call center knows, supervising a team in such a challenging environment requires a unique set of technical and people skills.

Want to create awesome supervisors? Follow these 4 steps

1. Clear the decks.

• It does no good to train supervisors to be better coaches and mentors if they don’t have the time to actually do it.
• If supervisors don’t have the time they need to coach, it is up to the manager to re-align their job duties.
• If you can’t clear the decks to make time for your supervisors to focus on what really matters, spend your money someplace else.

2. Start with measuring the engagement level of the supervisors.

• It is ludicrous to expect a supervisor who is disengaged to build enthusiasm and engagement in their employees.
• Just as supervisors should be accountable for their reps’ level of engagement (using survey scores), managers should be accountable for insuring that every supervisor is engaged.

3. Focus training on “in the moment” coaching skills.

• One-size-fits-nobody. Customize the training content so that it addresses skill gaps identified in the initial engagement survey.
• Focus on building “real time” coaching skills. Teach supervisors how to capitalize on the hundreds of teachable moments their team has in a typical day.
• Give your supervisors a step-by-step process for making their interactions with their reps a positive, affirming experience.
• Focus on coaching activities that increase employee’s confidence and sense of “self-efficacy.”

4. Consider training a process — not a destination.

• Remember that the majority of learning happens after the classroom training.
• Managers can reinforce your supervisors’ skill building process by celebrating early successes and hosting regular “coach-the-coach” sessions.
• Create a positive team building and skill building opportunity for supervisors by encouraging them to meet regularly to critique and coach each other.

Make it a great week!

Our next Monday Aha! (June 6) will focus on the 4th Requisite: Tools that
build trust and boost morale.

Barbara Burke

Copyright 2011 Barbara Burke. All Rights Reserved.

Related Resources: Intentional Coaching: What is it?

“What gets measured gets done.”

Typically, when I work with a client we evaluate the success of our engagement-building initiative (a phased-in supervisor development process that includes live classroom training, a series of coach-the-coach tele-sessions, employee team meetings, etc.) on whether key indicators such as customer satisfaction ratings, first call resolution, quality scores, absenteeism or employee retention showed improvement.

While these data points are certainly important, what really matters is what the employees who report to the supervisor think. Does their supervisor interact with them in a way that makes them feel valued? Does their supervisor give them the right blend of coaching and support?

A good way to capture employee opinions about whether they are getting their needs met is by using an engagement survey. Establish a baseline using the initial survey (completed before the supervisors receive training). Use subsequent surveys to gauge improvement and evaluate supervisors’ progress.

5 Tips for Getting Engagement Surveys Right

1. Ask yourself what you plan to do with the survey results.

Implicit in any survey is the expectation by employees that management will act on the information. If that’s not your plan, do not do the survey.

2. Keep the survey short.

My surveys have between 10 and 12 simple questions.

3. Mine the comments.

The real gold is in what employees write in the comment box after each question. Look for patterns.

4. Develop a plan of action — 3 + 3s

Using the survey results in combination with the supervisors’ own observations on what’s working and what’s not. Ask them to create two lists: 3 things that are working well and you intend to continue to do and 3 things you intend to do better, begin to do (or do less).

5. Supervisors should share survey results and ask for their team’s support.

Each supervisor should hold a meeting with their team for the sole purpose of sharing what they learned from the surveys. They should thank their employees for their willingness to share their opinions and ask them to give them feedback on how they are doing in their implementation of their “3 + 3″s.

My last bit of advice: don’t lose sight of the purpose of the survey.

It’s easy to get so enamored with the data that you lose sight of the reason you were doing the survey in the first place; which was to use the information from the survey to help your supervisors help their employees do the best job they can for your customers. In the end employee engagement is about employees feeling valued and appreciated by their supervisor. The more valued your employees feel, the more willing they will be to go above and beyond for your customers.

Make it a great week!

Barbara Burke

Copyright 2011 Barbara Burke. All Rights Reserved.

Discover Your Own Workplace Wisdom

Discussion questions related to this week’s topic.

1. If you could create your own employee engagement survey, what questions would you want to make sure are included?

2. What do you think is the difference between employee engagement and employee satisfaction?

3. Do you think it’s possible to measure employee morale?

4. In what way are low morale and low engagement related?

The key to high customer satisfaction is highly engaged front line employees. To be successful drivers of engagement, supervisors require 4 things. Requisite #1: TIME to coach, meet & lead.

8 Timely Tips for Supervisors

1. Be there. Spend 50% to 70% of your day out on the floor coaching and developing your team. If you spend most of your time in your office tending to administrivia, or going to and from meetings or rushing around putting out fires, it’s time to take a serious look at your priorities.

2. Invest 80% of your time reinforcing what’s right about what they do. If you do that, I guarantee you’ll get more of the right behavior.

3. Use the remaining 20% of your time asking not telling. Each time you tell a rep what they did wrong instead of asking them what they could have done differently, you are depriving them of the opportunity to take responsibility for honing their craft.

4. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Focus less on nit-picky details of the call and more on behaviors that influence the quality of the customer experience.

5. Model the right behavior. For example, if you don’t want your people to talk negatively about your customers, don’t do it yourself.

6. Build in time for regular team meetings. If you don’t meet regularly with your team to talk about what matters to them, you don’t have a real team. You have a collection of boxes on an org chart.

7. Acknowledge each individual every day. Make it a practice to greet each person at the beginning of the shift and say “thank you” before they go home.

8. Keep it real. Take a genuine interest in each employee. Stop by regularly to visit about life outside work.

Make it a great week!