Energia’s Virtual Call Centre Teams
As part of our Elevate Pledge Inaugural report launch, we delve deeper into some of the successful diversity and inclusion initiatives highlighted in the report. In this piece, learn about Energia’s Virtual Call Centre Teams.
What was your diversity & inclusion goal?
| Diversity really matters to our organisation. It’s the right thing to strive for, and in addition research studies increasingly show that diversity and inclusion (D&I) can help increase business performance, drive innovation, attract talent and create more opportunities for growth. We see an inclusive culture as the way that we embrace and capitalise on diversity by creating an environment where differences are seen as a strength and where people feel valued and can realise their full potential,
To be meaningful and add value, we recognise D&I must be a company-wide mission where each employee within the organisation knows they are valued and, in return, is held accountable for their contribution to the culture. As leaders, we must focus on D&I in terms of talent acquisition, talent development and employee engagement, while at the same time helping our team’s foster inclusion in the workplace. |
Can you describe your diversity & inclusion initiative?
Like many other companies coming out of the pandemic we found ourselves struggling to recruit, we needed to find a way to stand out and attract more candidates in a competitive and over saturated market. Due to our office locations, we were quite limited to who we could attract, as one thing that came out of the pandemic for people was the importance of a work life balance and long commutes were something of the past.
We decided that it was time to create our first fully virtual teams, a Customer Care and a Sales and Retention virtual team. We quickly set up specific virtual recruitment campaigns and these roles became very popular, confirming that there is a real desire out there for people to work virtually. Having virtual teams allowed us to attract candidates from all over the country. We also realised that for us to be more inclusive and for the virtual teams to work, we needed to fully understand why someone wanted to work from home on a full-time basis, this became a very important question in our interviews and allowed us to identify the candidate’s needs. On the back of the feedback, we were able to offer out specific part time roles that would tie in with the candidate’s lifestyle, i.e., offering shifts that worked around school times, allowing parents to get back into the working world, but also be there to collect their children from school.
Can you share your top tips on running a similar initiative?
Our top tips for any other companies who are thinking of starting off on their virtual journey are:
- Communication from the beginning is key, check in with your team regularly and keep them in the loop with what is going on, ensure that they know you are there for them at any stage throughout the day.
- You will need to relook at your polices and ensure that they are relevant for the virtual team. You may also have to create new policies especially about technology issues and expectations regarding downtime.
We are delighted that we took the decision to do something different and create fully virtual teams, it has allowed us to resolve our recruitment struggles and we now have a range of different people working for us and being advocates for our brand throughout the country. We look forward to continuing to grow our virtual teams in the future.
Learn more about the Elevate Pledge.
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