More Human or More Digital? A Question of Balance

It was great running a 90-minute breakout workshop at the Future of the Contact Centre Summit in February.

In my session we explored how the human and digital/technological need to be kept in balance by focusing on personal values and wellness as key drivers of business performance right up alongside the other more traditional business KPI’s.

This is especially important in a future where only 19% of Contact Centre staff will work solely in the office (ContactBabel). Of course, this is also happening in most areas in most companies too.

We unpacked what this will mean in practice.

Here are three of the many take-aways people came up with in the session. I’ll follow up with more in the coming weeks:

FOCUS ON THE REAL DRIVERS OF COMMITMENT

A person's commitment is most often driven by the clarity of their personal values (Posner and Schmidt). While there is evidence that clarifying organisational values may have some impact on retention, it's facilitating this deeper personal connection with your people that significantly drives up customer satisfaction scores and likelihood to remain in the longer term.

With organisational purpose, the essential criteria for success are personal connection with my purpose, and a perception that the leaders in the business personally champion it (McKinsey).

RECOGNISE THAT WE ARE SOCIAL BEINGS

Pre-COVID research (McKinsey) showed that regular day-to-day socialising with colleagues correlates with people feeling engaged and satisfied with their work. People in this category were 8.5 times more likely to stay than leave within a year. With the advent of hybrid, people are gaining other benefits (work-life balance, time etc.) - but fewer opportunities to socialise. So, there may well be a negative impact on engagement and satisfaction with work and the consequences that go with this.

The enlightened companies are adopting fresh culture building strategies to personally connect and engage people who spend time remote.

USE WELLNESS AS A POSITIVE FORCE TO CREATE GREAT EXPERIENCES

As a result of COVID, the concept of wellness is associated with 'not being ill' – and the primary focus for many efforts in this area is mental health. The enlightened companies will see wellness as the art and science of 'feeling good and functioning well'.

As a key enabler of business performance, development programmes such as The Mindful Communicator are being used to focus on helping people move their work-life experience from living 'average' to 'great' lives in the hybrid enterprise. Historically, these efforts have been more focused on helping people who are struggling get up to 'normal'. (With thanks to Rachel Mahon).

The Putting People First programmes that drove positive transformations and extraordinary results in the 80's and 90's for American Express, British Airways and Unipart Group were great examples of what is possible when people are put at the heart of a business strategy.

I was privileged to work on all these programmes. Do get in touch if you'd like to know more.

FIND OUT MORE...

Some of the ideas and tools used in this blog are covered in the new book from Soul Corporations® - The Mindful Communicator by Nicholas Brice (Amazon, Nov 2022). Order a copy for you and your team here.

To discuss your challenges and look at how to tackle them with some of these tools and methods, you can contact Nick directly at nick@soulcorporations.com or +44(0)7778-356954.

By Nicholas Brice, CEO of Soul Corporations