‘Phone rage’ training grows in popularity

UK: Impressive results, regarding the training of telephone operators to deal effectively with ‘phone rage’, has led to major British organisations, such as London’s Metropolitan Police, the Scottish Government and the NHS, to consider this novel training programme.

The Student Loans Company (SLC), which employs 1,400 people, has pioneered the technique and it says customer service complaints have fallen by 10 per cent, since it introduced the psychological approach to handling calls.

Alexis Farndell, the SLC trainer who developed the course, says: ‘We have taken recognised techniques and added another layer – the “why”. We change the mindset of the operator from victim to controller; get them to recognise the signs of anger and accept it is not their fault.’

‘We are talking about emotional intelligence,’ she adds. ‘This training helps our staff deal with the small proportion of calls that are difficult to handle; when a caller becomes aggressive and makes a personal attack on the operator. That is when anger, which may be perfectly acceptable, becomes rage and is unacceptable.’
 

Leading insurer selects e-learning solution

Latin America: BUPA Worldwide Corporation has assigned American e-learning solutions provider Learn.com the task of delivering product training to its employees and agents in Latin America.

A provider of e-learning to more than 50 million end users around the globe, Learn.com will utilise the talent management suite LearnCenter to deliver the training.

’To better train our international agents on our new line of insurance products, we will utilise the LearnCenter platform as a product knowledge tool that will provide on-demand information to our employees and agents whenever they need it, regardless of their location,’ said Rossana Tabares, HR Director with BUPA Worldwide Corporation.

’It is our goal that each of our agents will be certified after receiving LearnCenter administered training, which will allow them to attend and participate in international conferences. We will use LearnCenter’s built-in course editor to create our custom courses and will also offer classroom training, workshops and the latest, most up-to-date information on our international insurance products,’ added Tabares.

Survey reveals weakening economy having no effect on HR recruitment

UK: A survey, conducted jointly by the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) and KPMG, has found that despite a recent economic downturn which has led to 40 per cent of employers planning to cut staff over the next three months, there is an increase in demand for HR staff. 21 per cent of the 1,553 employers surveyed intend to hire HR staff, compared with 15 per cent that indicated the same intention in the previous quarter.

John Philpott, chief economist with the CIPD, speculated that firms could be taking on the extra HR expertise ‘because they are anticipating greater demands in terms of dealing with redundancies and the consequences’.

However, he also warned that in the long term an economic downturn had the potential to hit HR departments too; for example, public sector HR departments can expect to be squeezed as the government focuses on efficiencies, and company training budgets are also often reduced in a poor economic climate.

Duncan Brown, Director of HR Services with PricewaterhouseCoopers, said a downturn in the economy often ‘means a shift in the emphasis of HR work rather than a decline in HR numbers’. He said that it would ‘probably accelerate trends that are already there in terms of more efficiency and downsizing HR admin in large organisations’, but that demand for technical specialists and high-level business partners would continue to be high.