Before developing a reward system, managers must look at the motivating forces that drive their call center employees to perform. According to some researchers, there are as many as fifteen different motivators that should be considered before finalizing a reward system.
Employees may be motivated by their need for affiliation, self-expression, achievement, security, career growth, excitement, status, purpose, competition, recognition, consideration, autonomy, rewards, responsibility, and personal needs *
Given the various possible motivators, call center managers should at the very least attempt to understand which motivators resonate most with their staff. As complicated as it would seem to try to develop a reward system capable of addressing the wide range of motivators, it would be foolish to waste time, effort and resources on rewards that do not.
Rewards work well when they stimulate high involvement from call center employees. Specifically, workers need to be engaged with the reward or recognition system rationally and emotionally. Reward or recognition methods that do not win employee involvement on either a rational or emotional level will not get any attention. Unfortunately, a lot of employees lack motivation at work because the see a weak relationship between their effort and performance, between performance and organizational rewards and between the rewards they receive and the ones they want.
According to Call Criteria, once a reward system that appeals to various types of employees is developed, it is crucial to identify negative behaviors that may be reinforced by the way in which performance is measured. Call center managers routinely reward employee behaviors they’re trying to discourage and fail to reward the behaviors they actually want. An example of such a situation may be a reward system where cash awards are given to call center representatives with the best average handle time. The idea behind the reward would usually be to encourage employees to increase the number of calls they handle in an hour by working more efficiently. In reality, the reward may encourage people to rush through calls so they can win, while neglecting the most important element of the interaction, the customer.
