From commercial real estate and geographical location to recruitment, professional development and ongoing employee engagement, the white paper from Foundever® analyzes every aspect of business and outsourcing that is set to play a defining role in reshaping the way we work.
Written in partnership with Ryan Strategic Advisory, “The future of work & employee experience: How CX Everywhere delivers benefits everywhere” identifies the physical, cultural and technological challenges that, at a macro level, organizations must address now in order to attract and retain talent, close skills gaps and enhance employee experience and engagement, in the pursuit of greater productivity, innovation and business agility in the future.
A new BPO blueprint
At a micro level, the whitepaper puts forward a blueprint for the future of the business process outsourcing (BPO) Industry. This new approach to delivering customer experience empowers agents, removes traditional barriers to both recruitment and entry to new markets and reimagines the traditional contact center as an engagement hub focused on distilling organizational culture and business values and providing support for employees in terms of health and wellbeing.
Three years ago, it would have been impossible to predict that a temporary move to remote working could deliver so many business benefits, nor that the move would become a catalyst for the discussion on the future of work currently taking place in boardrooms around the world.
The employee experience is the customer experience
The fact is that through providing employees with greater flexibility and control over their personal and professional lives, organizations improve the employee experience. This, in turn, increases engagement — the key to improved productivity — and reduces absenteeism and attrition. At the same time, because operations are no longer tied to a fixed geographical location, organizations also benefit from greater business continuity and resilience.
This is particularly true within business process outsourcing where, following the transition to remote working, in many cases, KPIs relating to customer experience delivery actually rose, even as customer expectations and client demands increased.
A business dilemma
Businesses clearly want to maintain and ideally build on these benefits, but therein lies the dilemma. In a future of work geared towards the employee experience, what role does the traditional office play? If workforces are dispersed as a virtual network, working form their homes, how can organizations recruit and onboard new hires or transmit their business culture? Can technology alone deliver on training and development needs, or will face-to-face support and tuition still play a role in building employee skills?
Within the BPO space, the dilemma and potential benefits are greater still. With access to the right technology and tools, organizations that deliver customer experience have the potential to recruit globally to fill local positions and provide specialist language support without the need to open a physical site. What’s more, through advantages focused on flexibility, empowerment, work-life balance, health and wellbeing, they can also continue to attract the best and brightest to the industry as the war for talent intensifies.
The future of the contact center
Issues surrounding physical and digital security and data protection, plus ongoing recruitment and training needs, mean that BPO organizations will have to develop a future of work where physical contact centers persist. Nevertheless, there is a huge opportunity to completely reimagine the role of the contact center as an embodiment of business culture and values, and as an engagement hub where employees can interact and receive support in terms of health and wellbeing, as well as career development.
Recent events have highlighted how working from home can improve business continuity, performance and, crucially, the employee experience. However, to build on these benefits, this ability to work from anywhere needs to be established as part of a wider, holistic approach to the future of work that balances all business needs and client demands.
To discover more about the issues that are shaping the future of work and to understand how an increased focus on employee experience is destined to increase organizations’ ability to deliver a differentiated customer experience, download the whitepaper.
