Employer of selection: Differentiate your BPO firm to recruit top talent

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The BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry is getting increasingly competitive with evolving technology and shifting client priorities. 

Within the midst of all of it, the driving force behind a BPO’s success is its human resource. An extended-term and experienced workforce can overcome even essentially the most difficult adversities!

But how will you attract top talent to construct a top quality workforce?

Easy – by being an employer of selection.

Achieving the status of an ‘employer of selection’ puts you in the motive force’s seat for recruiting, hiring, and retaining one of the best people!

Table of Contents

Let’s begin.

Who’s an employer of selection?

An employer of selection is a sought-after employer brand that one of the best candidates wish to work for.

Think Google, Cisco, Microsoft, etc.

Individually, these firms have different characteristics and work profiles. Yet each of them will be described as an employer of selection with a powerful employer branding. 

Their employer brand helps hire and retain superior employees through an incredible work culture, competitive advantages, work life balance, and worker satisfaction. 

As a BPO company, probably the most difficult hurdles you face is increased worker attrition rates. The 2022 NICE WEM Global Survey states that within the wake of the Great Resignation, BPOs have experienced higher than average attrition. While firms with as much as 1,000 agents have a 34% attrition rate, this number goes as much as 50% with workforces larger than 5,000.

The job market is competitive. That’s why having talented candidates, and passive job seekers pursue you as a prospective employer is a desirable position to be in. 

And being an employer of selection isn’t only for the large conglomerates! Any employer—even a small one—can develop into an employer of selection.

Let’s learn the way.

9 steps to make sure your BPO is an employer of selection

Here’s a breakdown of how you may differentiate your BPO and develop into an employer of selection:

1. Provide a versatile work schedule

Giving employees the choice of labor flexibility is certainly one of the primary steps to becoming an employer of selection.

A versatile work schedule allows employees to start out and end their workday every time they need, so long as they deliver services during their core working hours. Distant working, compressed workweeks, hybrid working, etc., are several types of flexible work schedules. 

While the pandemic can have played a task in bringing flexible working to the forefront, these arrangements are fast becoming needed for top talent. 

A 2021 Flex Job survey revealed that 58% of employees want full-time distant roles, while 39% desire a hybrid work environment. 

The identical trend is clear within the BPO industry. 62% of the BPO employees surveyed by Better Teem in 2021 expect their firms and future employers to permit distant work.

With leading BPO work models involving cloud technology and virtual assistants, flexible working is the necessity of the hour for each employees and employers. 

Take a look at our article on the 8 Varieties of Flexible Work Schedules for the Modern Workplace.

2. Provide profession growth opportunity

As your employees grow, are their responsibilities growing with them? 

There’s nothing worse than employees feeling like their profession growth in your BPO is stagnant. An absence of a transparent image of profession advancement can severely hamper agent performance. 

While working with a BPO that’s an employer of selection, an worker has profession paths that facilitate:

• Vertical growth: Upskilling on skills relevant to a job role. 
• Horizontal growth: Wearing different hats by working on latest functional roles. 

Try these steps to create more profession advancement opportunities in your BPO:

• Provide personalized training and upskilling opportunities like agent etiquette training, data evaluation courses, etc.
• Ensure employees do meaningful work and have mentoring opportunities.
• Ensure agent empowerment through constant evaluation and feedback. Evaluation metrics can include Net Promoter Rating (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), First Contact Resolution (FCR), etc.
• Present a transparent profession progression path, including promotions and company mission.

3. Deal with pay communications

Offering Competitive salary packages are effective tools for attracting top talent. Paying BPO employees well could make them feel seen and valued. 

But is paying your employees fairly enough?

Unfortunately, no. 

In accordance with PayScale’s 2021 Fair Pay Impact Report, 42% of employees who’re paid “above market standard” consider they’re being paid “below market rate.” 

What does this result in? 

The identical research reveals that individuals who consider they’re underpaid are 50% more more likely to seek latest opportunities!

The “perception of unfair pay” is as bad as an actual “unfair pay scale.”

That is why BPOs have to deal with pay communications. Try these steps to enhance your BPO’s pay communications:

• Include pay scales in job descriptions.
• Train your managers beforehand to handle pay discussions.
• Have a transparent answer to key pay questions like “What does my position receives a commission?” or “How do you establish salaries?”.
• Don’t wait for annual appraisal cycles to speak about pay.

4. Offer competitive worker Advantages

Employers of selection provide the proper worker advantages to appeal to their ideal employees. 

Think of advantages as a double investment. On the one hand, an amazing advantages package directly invests in attracting and retaining talent. Then again, the private advantages that agents gain from skilled development support can ultimately be a bonus in your BPO. 

Here’s a take a look at some perks leading BPOs include of their recruitment strategies:

• Home office setups that include software requirements.
• Paid vacation and sick leaves.
• Medical insurance and private healthcare packages.
• Educational advantages that reimburse the cash spent on degrees and upskilling.
• Frequent performance-based incentives.
• Worker referral schemes and more.

Be sure that you don’t keep your worker advantages package a secret. Sharing these details front-and-center in your job descriptions might help attract one of the best talent and ease the hiring process.

5. Maintain complete transparency

One other common factor amongst employers of selection is that they share information openly and steadily with employees. This information includes every thing concerning the company’s decision making process. 

Consequently, employees never feel like they’re the “last to know,” encouraging them to be more engaged.  

Here’s how leaders can introduce a powerful culture of transparency in BPOs:

• Organize all-hands meetings as commonly as possible, especially when announcing essential company-wide news.
• Share industry news, trends, and organizational updates through a periodic newsletter. 
• Publish annual reports detailing your BPO’s growth and clientele over the yr.
• Be transparent with company financials and client satisfaction to make sure employees know what to anticipate within the near future. 

6. Recognize and reward

The BPO industry bears the stigma of being a sector stripped of job satisfaction. A primary cause for that is that almost all BPO jobs focus solely on numbers. And since the worker attrition rate is high, employers don’t feel the necessity to speculate of their agents. 

Unfortunately, this creates a vicious cycle that may only be broken if BPO leaders start recognizing their employees for his or her exertions. 

Besides constructing a positive workplace culture, specializing in worker recognition can directly help reduce turnover rates. 

In a 2019 survey conducted by Bonusly, 63% of employees who felt recognized at work reported being less more likely to search for a brand new job in the subsequent three to 6 months.

Listed below are a couple of worker recognition ideas on how you may appreciate a current worker:

• Rejoice work anniversaries and birthdays.
• Give away award prizes for meeting work goals.
• Share worker success stories on LinkedIn.
• Give out thank-you notes.

Take a look at our 10 Easy Ways to Boost Worker Recognition at Your Company article for more.

7. Engage in social responsibility

Employers of selection have missions beyond profitability and are centered around giving back to the community. These corporate citizenship missions will be the proper cultural fit for potential employees.

In addition they appear to contribute towards increased worker engagement in these organizations. 

In a 2018 O.C Tanner survey, 1,000 employees were surveyed on being given the chance to take part in charitable events. 57% of employees said that charitable events on the workplace made for happier teams, and 37% felt more connected to their company culture.

Moreover, corporate citizenship can increase worker engagement because it goes beyond social responsibility and includes simpler things like ethical business practices and sustainability initiatives on the workplace. 

So regardless of the dimensions of your BPO is, you may:

• Develop a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) plan that’s consistent together with your values and budget.
• Support causes that the vast majority of existing employees are already attached to. 
• Involve your team in CSR activities that require extensive teamwork. These can double up as team-building activities!

8. Ensure job security

Job security refers to a way of assurance employees feel once they’re certain that their jobs are secure so long as they proceed to fulfill their goals. 

That is currently a critical issue across industries. For example, as of mid-June 2022, over 21,000 workers have been laid off within the U.S. tech sector alone. 

Potential employees are actually greater than ever in search of jobs with financially sound employers. Plus, a way of job security allows them to totally deal with meeting their goals. 

For this reason, employers of selection go the additional mile to make sure that their employees feel secure about their jobs. 

While at all times remaining profitable will be difficult, especially for BPOs, it’s essential that your managers proactively assure employees that their jobs are secure. 

9. Construct and measure your EVP

Employee Value Proposition or EVP is a combined measure of all employee-friendly activities organizations do to make sure worker retention and engagement. 

It encompasses what makes your BPO an amazing place to work. 

Previously mentioned aspects like pay, advantages, and work culture are integral elements of your EVP. That is why most firms have already got a rough EVP in place. 

So what differentiates an Employer of selection from regular organizations?

Besides constructing an EVP, employers of selection also repeatedly measure its impact. 

But how?

Probably the most popular technique of measuring EVP is thru an worker survey. These surveys are anonymous and provide you with a gist of how your team members feel about your work culture and advantages.

Let’s say you provide your BPO employees with a telephone etiquette training program. But your employees think the course is superficial. With the assistance of a couple of questions in an worker survey, you’ll have the opportunity to find out your employees’ thoughts concerning the course. 

Let’s now take a look at a tool that may assist you to sail through the difficult strategy of becoming an employer of selection. 

Navigating the varied aspects contributing to your BPO becoming a preferred employer can seem intimidating and almost inconceivable. 

What’s Time Doctor?

But how does the tool assist you to develop into an employer of selection?

Here’s how:

• Provide flexibility: With Time Doctor’s real-time productivity reports, you don’t must worry about being unable to trace your agents’ work hours. You may give your agents a much-desired flexible work schedule, including a 100% distant working option.

• Manage workloads: Use the tool’s real-time dashboards to regulate the workloads of employees with essentially the most worklife balance issues. Analyze once they work late hours, work too many hours, etc.

• Recognize and reward: Get detailed insights into worker productivity levels using customized productivity rankings for various web sites and apps. Determine who’s performing exceedingly well and reward them. 

• Retain clients: Use the client login feature to take care of transparency with clients and gain their trust. This may assist you to retain them and increase profitability. Which then helps you provide much-needed job security to your employees. 

• Boost productivity: Providing a versatile work schedule has been shown to spice up worker productivity. For example, A significant Asian outsourcing company used Time Doctor to grasp how working from home impacted agent productivity. Time Doctor’s data revealed a 56% decrease in unproductive time when working at home vs. on-site. 

Wrap up

Whether you’re a small BPO company seeking to hire some professionals or a giant organization looking to transform your hiring process, adopting an employer of selection strategy is the technique to go!

An employer of selection is empowered to draw and retain their desired prospective worker with no hiccups. Their deal with worker experience and robust employment brand lets them easily navigate through the hard times of their industries.