So, I was recently talking to a former staff member of mine
who moved on to another collection agency, and she was telling me about how her
company deducts a portion of all the staff members' paycheques to cover their
collection licenses. She was pretty
upset about this, and I told her that I knew of at least two other companies
that did the same thing.
This shouldn't surprise me after all these years, but there
are so many small ways that companies unthinkingly destroy the morale of their staff every
day, and shouldn't. Collections isn't an easy job -- the very
least an agency can do is make their staff as comfortable and
effective as possible. Morale is a
significant factor in productivity, attendance, and staff retention, yet many
companies think that scrimping and saving a couple of hundred dollars a year is
worth the risk and instability they bring to the company. Let's look at some of these questionable 'cost
saving measures':
1. Charge Staff
For Necessities
In the example above, the agency was deducting a portion of
the staff members' pay every pay period.
This, I don't agree with. Yes,
there is a cost to setting up a staff member, including licensing them in the
province(s) they will be collecting in, but the cost of the license pales in
comparison to the cost of the wages of that person, or their expected
revenue. In most provinces, it is the agency's responsibility to license their staff, so that responsibility and
cost should rest with the company.
If you must have a clawback on a staff member's initial
license fees if they fail to meet their probationary period expectations,
that's one thing, but to deduct something every month from your productive
staff is sending the message that your employees aren't worth what you are
paying them, and that the costs they incur to successfully fulfil their
collection role (licensing, telephone costs, internet, postage, etc) are
somehow their burden, not the company's.
2. Set Different Rules
For Staff and Managers
I kid you not -- I know many collectors that get a 30 minute
lunch break, but the supervisors and managers get an hour. What message does that send to the
employees? To me, it states that they
are not valued. If you are so pressed
for manpower that you can only spare your staff 30 minutes for lunch, don't you
think your supervisors and managers should be working just as hard as the
people they depend on to get the job done?
3. Fail to Provide
Decent Amenities
I worked in an office where the upper management, in their
infinite wisdom, decided to change the rules and start charging the staff for coffee. When the announcement came out, I heard my team
grumble about it for months. I really couldn't blame them, and I had to do
a lot of damage control to shore up team morale.
As a ballpark estimate, an average staff member costs their
salary, plus about $3,000 in postage, $800 in licenses, $3000 in telephone
service and internet, and is ideally returning 300% of their salary, and
receiving a bonus above and beyond that, and you think it's efficient to save
$250 a year in coffee?
4. Offer Ridiculous
Incentives
Early on in my career, I worked in an agency that had a contest to have the collectors go up to a
wall of balloons and pop one every time we got a PIF account. Inside the balloon was a slip of paper giving us a $1 to $5 bonus. This wasn't an incentive -- the staff joked about 'the competition' after hours, and that showed we felt belittled and insulted.
In a perfect world, you can offer your staff options for
profit-sharing, fringe benefits that are given to the whole team when their
hard work wins more business or the praise of clients. But not all companies are set up to do
that. If you need or want to give an
incentive, make it worthwhile. A DVD
player or $5 is not going to significantly benefit anyone -- a $50 gift
certificate to a restaurant, dinner out for the team, a laptop or a trip
somewhere are better options, if you rely on that sort of thing for motivation.
Do you know what also works?
Get rid of the balloons, and instead don't make the collectors pay for
their own licenses or coffee. You just
gave them money, as well as their dignity.
5. Negativity
This is the big one.
People need to feel appreciated and encouraged to be everything they can
be at work. If you yell at staff all day
because they are failing to meet expectations, all you are doing is
discouraging them from trying to do their job. It is the role of management to educate,
train, and develop their staff.
If your company environment is toxic, you need to know that
this costs the company money -- real, tangible amounts of revenue. Staff will leave, and discourage capable
acquaintances and friends from applying.
A negative environment breeds
additional negativity, creating collateral problems with absenteeism, office
politics, apathy over company policies or following work plans, and more.
For a collection agency, your staff is your greatest asset
-- it is also your greatest portion of your overhead. It is certainly worthwhile investing in your
team's wellbeing and peace of mind at work.
I read quite a bit on workforce morale -- the software
development industry has some remarkable ideas to foster the best environment
possible. I would encourage anyone who
is interested to read up on ValvE or Hubspot.
But for the more moderate managers and owners out there, I might start
with these articles:
If anyone has questions about work environment or the role
of morale in a collection agency environment, I'd be happy to share my opinions
-- I'm sure you can tell I feel strongly about this. Feel free to reach out to me at Kingston Data
and Credit by telephone at 226-946-1730 or by email at
bwettlaufer@kingstondc.com.
Thanks kindly,
Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer
Kingston Data and Credit
Cambridge, Ontario
226-946-1730
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