Accredited Learning Improves Attrition

“It’s amazing that a company is happy to start developing you from the start of your career with them. I am hoping to work my way into the management team through the program they have on offer.”

After a year’s work with a mid-sized local insurance company, great opportunities for career enhancement and progression within the business became available for many employees. This allowed individuals to progress into roles as the business expanded specifically, management, business development and training and coaching roles.

Giving individuals access to the Accreditation Scheme; initially a Level 2 Award in Contact Centre Operations in the Financial Services Sector; a bespoke qualification registered by Ofqual and awarded by the ATHE (Awards for Training and Higher Education), meant that individuals weren’t chained to a job that was going know-where, but opened doors into a world of prospect inside and outside of the business.

The aims initially, were to improve the employee’s financial services knowledge, as well as providing an accredited qualification.

The Challenge

• To focus on improving the employee attrition rate and to encourage people to want to stay within the business.
• To encourage people to want to learn and progress within the business.
• To focus on delivering learning and development that was not only encouraging for the employees, but also acted as a catalyst to provide other businesses to want to work with the company directly.

Being in the financial services sector it was important for the organisation to show their partners how dedicated their employees were at providing a quality service, that was compliant with the FSA/FCA and that all employees were qualified in what they do and the service they provided.

The Story

As a starting point it was important for us to identify the learning that was already taking place and link this directly to the qualification standards we were writing. A TNA and look at employee competencies at this point was important as it gave us a great understanding for the requirement for the learning and the standards we needed to write.

Once we had a good idea of the type of learning that was being carried out, Switch Direction, wrote the standards for the Level 2 Award in conjunction with the ATHE and set about having those standards awarded and registered onto the Ofqual register.

Within the year, the client had their first set of learners working towards qualifications using an online portal, powered by Google and completely web based, enabling them the opportunity to work on their coursework from home too, should they wish to.

This type of qualification development can be a process made for any industry and the qualifications can be applied generally to any other call centre business.

By developing a series of qualifications to enhance and motivate people at work, it meant that the attrition rate rose from 34% to 73% within the first year. This was a fantastic achievement for both the organisation and Switch Direction Ltd.

‘It meant that people were working for us not only for the money like bonus etc, but because they could see the advantages of developing themselves year by year’.

Over a period of two further years, the qualifications grew, and the employees were able to work towards the Level 5 Certificate in Business Operations Management. They decided either to stay within the business or move on away from the business knowing that they were qualified in the Financial Services sector or with a management qualification.

In Conclusion

For businesses trying to enhance their organisational culture and retain people, it can be a challenge. Especially when some longer standing employees are switched off, unmotivated and feel lost due to the neglect their business has given to their own intrinsic development.

The mid-sized insurance organisation at the time had a huge wave of people leaving due to the nature of the work and were spending a huge amount of time and money resourcing new employees, sifting through masses of interviews and recruitment with inconsistent results.

With the introduction of the qualifications we provided an opportunity for their in-house training team to help people focus on personal and professional training. The qualifications allowed their people to develop in their roles and progress into management roles when available within the business, allowing them a different focus in-between calls and during their working day.

Analysis and training of this type would be beneficial to any companies struggling with attrition rates.