If you missed ‘Gamification Parts 1 & 2, you can find them here:
How much will it cost to introduce gamification into my workplace?
Okay. Great question, even if I may say so myself. In a cost saving environment that we are in these days, it’s difficult to justify another cost. So, here is the justification and we’ll keep it simple. Please click here if you wish to read more about gamification in your workplace.
Average attrition in a call centre
The average attrition in a call centre is generally 25%. Some call centres are higher and some are lower.
What does that mean? So, for example, if the average number of employees is 100, and 25 leave to be replaced by 25, the average number of employees remains at 100. The number of leavers is 25 therefore, the average attrition rate is 25%.
Recruitment costs
Again, to keep this simple. If the average salary of a call centre agent is €25,000 per annum, and the average recruitment fee is 15% (very conservative fee) of annual salary, therefore the cost of replacing a current employee, who possibly only moves to another company for an extra €2,000 per annum, costs you €3,750. And that’s just to pay the recruitment agency. For this exercise, let’s just leave it at that. Let’s not get into the cost of internal recruitment, training, HR, disruption, knowledge gaps, etc…
So, for 25 leavers, it costs your business €93,750 recruitment fees to replace them. In my previous team, we experienced 11% attrition, which was a cost of €41,250. As a target, if you are currently experiencing 25% attrition and wish to achieve 11%, the immediate savings would be €52,500. How does that sound as a cost saving plan?
Most importantly, introducing gamification into your workplace won’t cost you close to those savings, but you must be willing to invest initially to achieve the results.
Culture
Gamification is about culture, and it’s about introducing fun into the workplace. What will fun give you? Perhaps the following;
- Employee retention – staff will stay longer if they enjoy themselves.
- Recommend a friend (avoid recruitment fees) – staff will sell your business to their friends and encourage them to join the team.
- Happy staff make harder workers – fact!! Higher productivity means higher return.
- Increased customer satisfaction – customers will experience the benefit of happier staff.
- Increased motivation – staff need to achieve a target to qualify for game play.
Cost
Culture doesn’t cost anything, but a few incentives do. But the incentives need to incentivise. Here are a few tips;
- Create an incentives committee – should only consist of a few staff, and no managers. A representative of the committee feeds back ideas to management. You need to know what incentivises your staff, and not just what you think will. Vary this responsibility so all committee members get an opportunity to engage with management.
- Find out what prizes they want. TVs are great, and really visible, which is important. But please remember, when buying a TV, don’t just spend your budget on ‘big’. That won’t work. Buy a smaller TV with a quality brand. Perception of a big cheap brand, is just cheap. Perception of a smaller quality brand, is quality. Don’t giveaway rubbish as it’ll reflect your own brand.
- Make the games relevant to what staff are interested in. Perhaps sporting events like the World Cup, the Premiership, or the Eurovision.
- If you wish to be careful with your costs, spread out the incentives. If an event like the World Cup lasts for a month, spend the previous month building anticipation with internal advertising – signs, posters, etc… Get people excited about it beforehand – it will give the impression that the incentive has been running for longer.
- Don’t just announce the incentive and then sit back down at your desk. Somebody needs to live it for the time it’s running. It doesn’t need to be every second of every day, but it needs to be consistent. If you don’t care about it, neither will your team.
Investing in the future
There are a number of technological solutions that you can buy. Noble Systems have specific gamification tools, as do many others, but unless you have already achieved a culture within your business that engages your staff, it’s probably too early for this kind of investment. However, if you’ve already achieved this, now’s the time to talk to somebody, and we can help. Click here for more information on gamification
Is it worth it?
Do you think you could do that with €52,500? And that’s just recruitment fees. How about retention, both staff & knowledge? How about the cost of continuously training new starters? It’s not like they all start together, so it’s continuous. That’s an induction training headcount. How about continuous coaching for the new starters?
I don’t think we need to continue.
In part 4, I will provide some simple games to liven up your call centre without costing a fortune. Until then, thank you for reading and if you need any advice about gamification, please reach out to