Pay.

I hope everyone is enjoying the May Bank Holiday weekend. Shame the lovely sunshine of the past couple of weeks hasn't really continued.

The pay is in for April and the observant among you will notice that your basic pay is exactly the same as it was in March. For those of you who have been with the company on the same payscale for long enough then it's the same basic pay as would have been on your payslip over three years ago. Despite running around 10% inflation in the UK over those three years the company is still pleading poverty and refusing to increase our salaries. This means effectively we are taking a pay cut for the third year in a row. Without question this is hitting some people fairly hard.

I want to look at something that might help those who do feel the pinch and also benefit the company. Performance related pay. As contact centre employees we all have a long list of metrics that we're supposed to conform to. AHT, call quality scores, absence and lateness targets, etc.

As things stand at present there is no differential in pay or rewards between the best and the worst performing agents. This means you can come in to work every day on time and do an excellent job exceeding all your targets and you still get paid the same as a rubbish agent. They may fail every call and be late or sick a lot. Maybe they have a warning or two on their record but don't do enough to get fired. They still get what you get. There is the possibility for a bottle of wine or something similar for great performance but a lot of that depends on blind luck.

Some might argue that a poor record would exclude you from advancement in the company to senior agent and management positions. This is not true. Sitel have recently promoted a few people with serious questions over their attendance but that's a discussion for a another blog. Likewise some people don't want advancement. I know of an excellent agent who has repeatedly refused advancement on the first floor. They simply want to come in to work and be a good agent.

Bringing in performance related pay is a simple way to give a boost to the efficiency of most agents. It would allow the company to target what matters to it the most. The agents benefit with a few extra pounds in their pay and the company can make savings in time off and late or boast about improved quality to the clients. There must be a caveat though. If the company doesn't measure your performance then you get the benefit of the doubt. i.e. There are lots of examples of agents not getting call quality monitored for months so it would be unfair to not pay them for any quality based incentive just because they weren't monitored.

Do as I say.

... not as I do.

Now here's a subject that may appeal to one or two of you. Double standards. I was reminded of this a short while ago when I was the lucky recipient of a late form. Let not make any bones about it. I was late and I couldn't really put my finger on why I was late so I  made up something vague about transport issues. If I fail to turn up to work on time just a handful of times in six months my manager will probably invite me to a disciplinary hearing where I run the risk of a verbal warning. This is all very well and good and I must say that in general I approve of the companies late policy.

What rankles is the way it's not enforced across all employees. I have personally observed a team manager being late around 10 days in a month and this was by no means an exceptional month for him. Thus if this lateness persists (and it did) then he should find himself up for dismissal in less than six months. Actually what I suspect would have happened is that on receipt of his first written warning he would have started setting his alarm clock fifteen minutes earlier and thus the disciplinary process would have achieved it's aim.

Similar stories can be told about absence and quality/quantity of work etc. right down to the mundane questions like 'just how many smoke breaks have you been out for today?'

Some people might like to jump to their defence and say management deserve a bit of slack because of the extra responsibility they have. That doesn't wash with me I'm afraid. They take the extra pay and thus they should be expected to live up to the same standards they set for us. Leading by example is one of the first principles of management in my opinion.

It's Saturday and I have a hangover.

Well not me personally but as all employers do Sitel Exeter from time to time has a lot of people call in sick on a Saturday morning. Usually just after pay day. You employ a lot of 20-somethings and this is all but inevitable. The problem is that Sitel do not make this any easier for themselves when some of the management are out in the same bar as the agents and are partying as hard as anyone.

Take Keith for example. Keith is getting quite a reputation as the biggest party animal in the building. This is an eyebrow raising revelation when you consider in the office he is a pretty quietly spoken person. I can personally vouch for Keith being a hard drinker. A good example is when the company attended the South West Contact Centre Awards and he had been far too hungover the next day to work. To be fair to Keith almost all the Sitel attendees got pretty well smashed the last two years.

Stories that persist around the office:

• Keith getting falling down drunk regularly.
• Keith vomiting on an agent on account of how much booze he had drunk.
• Keith missing buses back home
• Keith taking a female agent to the Jurys Inn for sex.
• Keith spending huge amounts of money (I heard around £300 in one night once) in the watering holes of Exeter. 

Keith you're my new hero :-) I hope your woman doesn't mind your drunken antics.

Back to the original point then i.e. Agents calling in sick after going out and drinking. It's a bit hard for the company to call foul and take an agent into a disciplinary hearing when one or two of the rising stars in management are showing less restraint than the people they are trying to straighten out. This is not what management experts like to refer to as leading by example.