Don’t we just love a conundrum? Even though the world of work is a place where rational thinking, solutions and objectivity rules, it is also a place of riddles, paradoxes and immense subjectivity.

There are rare moments when real world events illustrate perfectly the elements that underpin how we perform as people and how we apply that in business. This morning was one of those moments, a single radio report..

How often are engagement and incentive programmes run that primarily address the top and mid performers?

How many times is the basis of a corporate engagement strategy “one size fits all”?

A lot of time and money spent improving sales and customer service is focused on employees who are deemed “engaged”. Those sitting outside this definition will no doubt attract the label of ‘poor performers’, ‘laggards’, ‘disinterested’ and be viewed as a “cost”.

Employee recognition programmes are key to engagement and motivation. In fact, a well developed programme, with the correct communications to support it, will help employees feel valued by the business, improving productivity and reducing attrition – implementing one is a no brainer surely?

But what constitutes a good employee reward programme? How do you engage employees and, more importantly, keep them engaged with the scheme…

Call centres are typically characterised by the highly repetitive work undertaken by the operators, be it sales or customer service focused, the job is the same day-to-day.  Heavily operational and process driven, staff are there to deliver results.

The initial challenge when delivering a motivation programme to an audience of this nature is to consider their level of engagement, in most cases engagement is very low due to high attrition rates and seasonal workers, more often than not call centre staff are there because they need the income, not because they love their job. In many cases, a period of time spent working in a call centre can be just an interim phase where employees want to get in, do the work, and get out as quickly as possible. The job can therefore become too systematic at the expense of customer service.