Contact centers can be especially stressful for employees, who are speaking to customers and helping to solve their problems on a daily basis. These environments can be intense and emotionally draining, and many advisors deal with customers experiencing distressing personal circumstances.

It’s clear that the mental well-being of our people needs to be a business priority in 2022. But if your contact center has never had a well-being plan in place, it can be difficult to know where to start.

With this in mind, here are some of Kura’s top tips on supporting the mental health of employees in your contact center.

Hold regular check-ins with your employees. Sometimes, it can be hard to spot a struggling employee – this is especially true if you have a remote or hybrid workforce, which many businesses now do. Your  people may not feel confident enough to approach you, especially about personal matters, so it’s important to check in with them regularly to see how they’re doing.

At KURA, we hold weekly catch-ups with our team members to check on their well-being. Our employees report finding this really helpful because they can work with their manager to address their well-being without having to be the one to bring it up.

You could implement regular check-ins in a number of ways to make it a no-pressure situation for your people. Video-calling your remote employees will help to make the experience more personable. For office-based employees or remote workers who live nearby, arranging to meet at a café outside of the office can provide a more relaxing setting. Speak to your people to find out which environment they’ll feel most comfortable in (following whatever Covid guidelines are in place, of course).

Host well-being sessions. It’s important to check in personally with your people on a regular basis. But now more than ever, we need each other to get through hard times. At Kura, we started hosting live meditation classes via Zoom during the first 2020 lockdown, and it’s something we’ve continued as we’ve gone through periods of home and office working.

PREMIUM CONTENT: The Talent Platform Workforce: 2021 Update

In these sessions, we practice meditation and breathing techniques – focusing on the breath is one of the most powerful ways to pause during our busy lives, and it can dramatically reduce feelings of stress and anxiety. Bringing people together to do these kinds of exercises can help your team to bond and make one another feel more comfortable. Strong camaraderie among your team is important because it makes them feel less alone.

Invest in an employee assistance program. It’s important to foster an open environment where your people feel comfortable confiding in you if they’re struggling with their mental health. But investing in an employee assistance program will also give them access to expert advice, support services, and counselling. Having access to professional counselling is important at a time when NHS mental health services are stretched thinly and waiting lists are long.

KURA has partnered with Pam Assist, which offers a huge range of well-being and mental health support to our employees. Our people can speak to mental health professionals confidentially, giving them the confidence to communicate openly and honestly with a trained expert. As well as telephone support services, our employees have access to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and eye movement and desensitization reprocessing therapy (EMDR) for a range of mental health conditions without having to wait for a referral from their GP or doctor.

Give your employees some flexibility. Talking to customers on the phone all day, especially if it’s on serious topics, can be mentally and emotionally draining. Allowing your advisors to rotate between your different customer service channels can help them to relax and recalibrate.

Have a discussion with your advisors to find out how best to implement this. You might find that an even split, with phone calls in the morning and live chat in the afternoon, is most suitable, or you could allow your employees shorter periods of working through emails or chats throughout the day to give them a break from the exhaustion of back-to-back phone calls.

MORE: Workforce trends to consider

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“People want flexibility now. Even if you can return to normal, your employees aren’t going to return to normal with you,” said Brian Welle from Google, a guest speaker at Thursday’s online panel discussion to mark the launch of Adecco’s global study: ‘Resetting Normal.’ The event also featured Adecco Group CEO Alain Dehaze, Jean-Claude Le Grand, CHRO, L’Oreal, and Mary-Clare Race, Chief Innovation and Product Officer, LHH.

Below find three key takeaways from Thursday’s webinar:

1. Work is still getting done

“Hybrid work is the new normal,” said Dehaze in his opening remarks. The report found that the pandemic has changed work tremendously, both as a place and an activity. But the last 18 months have proved that remote work doesn’t come with a loss of productivity and that a more inclusive and flexible way of working is possible. This presents both an amazing opportunity and a challenge for business leaders: “There are many positives in terms of flexibility, productivity. But there are also major pitfalls around wellbeing and burnout,” said Dehaze. “You must upskill and reskill yourself, not just in hard skills and digital skills, but especially in soft skills.”

2. Not every employee wants to be remote (or can be)

Le Grand said that the new hybrid world of work is a “new way of life” and “a fantastic moment of differentiation” for companies with vision and a sense of purpose. But he also spoke of an urgency to ensure fairness: “Between young and old. Between rich and poor. Between blue-collar and white-collar. Because at Loreal, for example, it’s clear that 50% of the people are unable to work remotely.”

3. Managers need more support.

Welle, Google’s VP of People Analytics, Performance Management and Job Architecture, called the shift to hybrid working a “transformative moment” in the way we work and manage talent. He stressed the importance of setting “new norms of communication” and making them explicit in the hybrid context.

He also spoke of the tremendous stress on managers, who are facing their own upskilling challenges, and he called on HR leaders to better support them. “Now, on top of doing the job that they are required to do, they are shouldering more responsibility for team health.” Welle’s view was backed up by our research: Nearly half of managers said they have not found the overall experience of managing other people easy over the past 12 months, while less than half of survey respondents said their managers meet or exceed expectations for creating good team morale and a good working culture.

Resetting Normal 2021 surveyed 14,800 knowledge workers across 25 countries on working practices, behaviors, and attitudes towards work. It is an essential read for leaders and companies as they continue to evolve and adapt for the next normal.

Watch the recording of the Adecco Group’s Resetting Normal webinar to learn more about the pitfalls of remote management, the importance of a sense of purpose, and Welle’s insights on Google’s experience shifting to a hybrid workforce. Or dig deep into our findings on your own and download the report today.

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