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Genuine Work-life Balance Makes HBOS A Winner
The prestigious Call Centre Innovation of the Year Award 2005 was presented to HBOS for their fabulous work on developing a genuine work-life balance for over 5,000 front-line colleagues in centres throughout the UK.  Accepting the Award at Call Centre Planning 2005, the Professional Planning Forum's fourth annual conference in Birmingham, Nick Flowers, Head of Planning, explained how the Flextra project was developed with HR and operations to make their centres a "great place to work and great place to call". In an industry where sickness and attrition are considered key management problems, this initiative shows the huge positive impact that a determined management team can make on the everyday working life of call centre colleagues. The Planning Forum's 2005 Benchmark Research showed that over a quarter of resource planners now believe that they have made a significant impact on improving sickness and attrition in the last year. This innovation by HBOS is a striking example of this new trend. Sickness reduced by 5% points and, with the full support of the unions, 70% of those on fixed shifts volunteered for the new flexible patterns because of the benefits it offered them as well as the business. This is a huge operation and HBOS have a small internal call-centre specifically to handle call from front-line colleagues wanting to adjust their hours or take time off. The project improved schedule fit by 30% - improving service and reducing costs without making individual agents work harder - but the greatest success was the way that it was communicated and accepted by front-line teams as an 'employee win' because of the flexibility benefits offered to individuals. The project was part of a wider initiative to centralise and re-engineer the planning processes. The presentation at Call Centre Planning 2005 was one of seven innovation awards offered to contact centres who delivered fundamental resourcing changes in order to achieve real, measurable impact on call centre life and performance. Call Centre Planning 2005 was the fourth annual conference of the Professional Planning Forum. Innovation Awards were also presented to AXA PPP Healthcare, Liverpool Direct, Prudential, RIAS Insurance for the Over 50s, and Royal and Sun Alliance. "These are all centres that have seen what they need to do, risen to the challenge and have demonstrated huge improvements in service, productivity or attrition", comments Paul Smedley. "We run these Innovation Awards because we want to show the huge progress that is being made in call centres to improve life for both the customers and the employees – and to demonstrate that planning analysts are often critical to making these improvements happen", explains Paul Smedley, Executive Director. "In 2005 the standard of entries was so high, that we selected a record 13 finalists, each of whom demonstrated that they can turn things around and make their call centre a better place to be." These innovations cover a huge variety of areas in both the public and private sectors, showing the widening appeal of the Planning Forum's Awards. Areas are as diverse as planning with marketing, introducing lifestyle schedule choices, planning outbound, managing performance, and improving service consistency.
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Congratulations to: To view the full list of winners click here |