For organisations that provide professional services, their greatest resource is their staff. Keeping employees happy and overcoming employee attrition is crucial to their success. Adam Spurr explains why CRM is not just a tool to help firms give a great customer experience but can also be used to help them retain staff.
One of the major challenges for professional services organisations is the recruitment and retention of talented employees. But overcoming employee attrition is not just a case of making sure you offer an enticing salary and a good package of perks. It is also about enhancing the employees’ day-to-day experience. After all, if the salary is amazing but your job is awful, most people will stick it out only until they can afford to leave.
Research has found that employees who are invested in what they do and who enjoy their work are less likely to take sick days and are generally more productive.
Empowering employees to enable them to do their work to the best of their ability is more likely to make them enjoy their job than if they struggle daily to get the information they need to be able to perform at all.
This is where a good Customer Relationship Management solution can really help. The real-time flow of information and data about customers and prospects, and the full visibility of the pipeline that a CRM system can offer, will make life much easier for those who are customer-facing or whose job entails handling customer data.
Employees will no longer experience the frustration of having to waste time searching around to get the details they need, as data will be fully accessible from all departments who link up to the system. They will be more productive as they can really focus on the areas of their job that are important as the CRM system will be on hand to supply them with what they need.
A good CRM solution should include task allocation, task monitoring and management functionality. At the touch of a button, it is easy to assess the current state of each project and who is working on which aspect. A manager can spot when and where employees are struggling, and extra help or support can be allocated.
Employees will not only have the information they need to do their job, but they will also have the management support needed to ensure that they can do it to the best of their ability.
Finally, the demands of the modern workforce are changing. It is no longer the case that people expect to have to work in an office from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Many people today are looking for flexible work, whether that is the ability to work from home, to work flexible hours or to work on a project-by-project basis. Cloud-based CRM enables businesses to offer this kind of flexibility to staff, as it can be accessed from any mobile device at any time.
Investing in a good CRM system will not only improve employee experience, but it will also help with recruitment and retention, and boost productivity. It can save organisations money too. According to a recent UK analysis, recruiting an additional new employee on an average salary of £27,600 could mean that you would need to budget somewhere closer to £50,000 to cover their first year of employment. This figure includes the recruitment costs, salary, NI, pension costs, training, office space, sick days and bonuses but also costs such as the HR costs involved in onboarding new starters, new equipment, company cars and changes to software licences. Retaining good staff rather than having to recruit new staff will obviously reduce costs.
So, for professional services firms that are currently struggling with high employee attrition rates across their industry, CRM can help by offering a better employee experience and by reducing recruitment costs.
