DSE Plus is a new health and safety package for contact centres produced by Inside Track Media. Neither computer-based training or health and safety are particularly sexy subjects, so it was difficult to see how this product was going to enthuse. However, Inside Track's attempt to generate pro-active attitudes from what they admit is quite dry subject matter is successful and really quite impressive.

The web-based software, which sadly only works with Internet Explorer at present, provides a virtual reality call centre, as well as text-based content. This is a refreshing idea, and provides verbal and visual cues to crystallise safety concepts in the minds of employees – as well as making it that little bit more fun to use. The delivery of the content is not tightly structured, leaving staff to work through their own agenda. This may be a disadvantage if you'd like more control – but thorough tests ensure that staff cannot proceed unless they've absorbed all the content correctly.

DSE Plus covers key areas within call centres, which are not usually catered for in a single health and safety programme. These areas, such as acoustic safety, voice health and hygiene signify that an employer is not only fulfilling their legal obligations, but is keen to make a statement to employees about their worth.

Whilst the crux of this system is the content itself, the administration side of the system is also up to scratch – with a paperless results system to ease workload. It's also easy to provide printouts of staff data, allowing easy compliance with employees' right of data access.

Prevent-IT! DSE Plus, Inside Track Media's new health and safety package for call centres, changes the way that computer-based training and assessment data management look and deliver.

With a mission to create proactive attitudes out of dry subject matter and availability on demand to fit in with work priorities, DSE Plus engages with users at several levels. Both its virtual reality call centre and the information sections offer verbal and visual cues to crystallise key safety concepts and help users keep them in mind. The text features nuggets of good practice guidance and safety issues are discussed in language free of the usual jargon, providing staff with the understanding and motivation to become involved and be pro-active.

Covering the areas, such as acoustic safety, voice health and hygiene, which office-orientated display screen equipment training packages do not, DSE Plus makes employers' expectations clear and keeps everyone's responsibilities in focus. While training and assessment data collection are delegated to users, Prevent-IT's paperless results system also eases the adminstrator's task of providing timely follow-up.

It provides instant diagnostic analysis across the organisation, at team or department level and for individuals. Its records act as proof of compliance with health and safety law. And with printouts available from the follow-up action log, Prevent-IT! also makes it convenient to comply with employees' right of access to data held on them.

Customer and staff retention in contact centres are linked. The drive for efficiency is essential but it can also be self-defeating. The OECD's global framework of corporate governance principles aims to improve performance by combining the most efficient allocation of scarce resources with an ethical regard for their value and rights. It might just be the recipe for contact centres, too.

As marketing professionals, we are probably involved in the growth of direct sales and distribution. It's a trend that distances customers from their suppliers, and it is clear that success can be vanishingly short unless we close the gap with effective customer service.

As consumers, subscribers and council tax payers, few of us are without some personal experience of service through contact centres.

Happy?

Is it a happy experience? Not enough to stick in the mind, according to Callmedia's survey in 2006. Just one in 25 of us claims to have had a good experience with any contact centre at all. And it does not appear that the experience of contact centres' potential employees is any different. In fact, guidance for the BTEC Introduction to Contact Centres course assumes that staff have negative experiences of contact centres as customers, as well as positive ones.

Last year, the writers of a cross-sector report for The Institute of Customer Service found high customer satisfaction reflected in high employee satisfaction. The reverse was also true – high employee satisfaction motivates them to give good service and produces high customer satisfaction. If this is contact centres' aim, what's the level of achievement?

Worrying

Worrying. Aston Business School's 2004 study found 84% of UK contact centres using management principles "more akin to manufacturing assembly lines than service operations designed to create positive interactions with customers." Loosely translated, it means that contact centres aren't treating properly one group of vital stakeholders, with the effect that another group of vital stakeholders isn't being treated properly either. It's no surprise that ORC International's Perspectives survey found that contact centre staff are the occupational group that least like the work they do.

Also, a significantly smaller proportion than in the working population as a whole believe they are making good use of their skills and abilities. And this from people who are recruited on the basis of their determination, empathy and intelligence to explore new opportunities, understand issues, listen to points of view and sustain and exploit customer loyalty. Applying such qualities in the context of budgeted wrap-up times and a variety of performance targets puts some pressure on every individual's moral and physical strength. Contact centre staff want to give great service. But they see barriers.

Attrition Rates

In 2006, a Sanderson & Neale attitudinal survey found 72% of employees of Welsh Contact Centre Forum members having no commitment to their employer and nearly half of these expecting to leave. Other studies covering the UK as a whole showed 23 – 30% of contact centre staff remaining with their employer for one year or a shorter time, compared with a UK average of 18%. Contact centre employers stand to benefit less from the experience of their staff.

Staff attrition has a negative impact on brand reputation, day to day. Where a centre is working near capacity, the loss of even one operator seriously affects waiting times. It isn't a theoretical issue – unauthorised staff absence is at 5.8%, according to ContactBabel, and is understood as being much higher than that in some large centres.

Of course, not everyone leaves for negative reasons. But with its adverse impact on customer service and with recruitment costs which can be £5000 per person, staff attrition represents a significant business risk to be kept in check. Recruitment provides no easy answer. For more than half of contact centres, recruiting staff of the right calibre is a problem.

Is the right response operational or strategic? If the prime cause is strategic, then the operational efficiency of current staff can't make up the deficit, other than in the very short term. Dealing with the cause means having to achieve conditions which make it possible to maximise efficiency – a larger, stable and motivated resource pool.

The Northwest Contact Centres Project applied Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to structure an approach to maximising the impact of health, safety, welfare and other conditions of employment. Given that the most basic of motivations demand the most immediate response, it is easy to see the positive impact of getting employees' first year right – staff churn reduced by a minimum of one in five leavers.

Getting the Basics Right

At the most basic level, faced with a constant need to perform, staff have to feel physically comfortable and free of unreasonable stress.

It is a legal requirement, defined in health and safety law and in the good practice guidelines for work in contact centres. These require staff to be given an understanding of the issues and knowledge of what they ought to be doing to help themselves. In conjunction with a feedback loop for reporting problems, this understanding enables staff to share responsibility for compliance in the working environment with management. That, on its own, gives them a stake in the success of their organisation.

The next step up in terms of being in control of one's surroundings is knowing one's way around and "knowing the ropes" in what can be a very large workplace.

Formal communications fail because of their formality. Official guidelines, po-faced instructions and handbooks don't engage this generation of twenty somethings, any more than their parents. Finding the right tone of voice is essential if training materials' message is going to register, and "buddying" provides reassurance in a personal way that handbooks don't achieve. A multi-sector study by Crystal Interactive found that feeling part of a team was more important than pay and flexible working, in terms of its effect on morale.

Battle of the Giants

Nowhere is the competitive pressure for suitable, local staff greater than between regionally concentrated contact centres employing many hundreds of operators, often using converted warehousing on the edge of town. This puts the centres relatively close to each other, as far as prospective employees are concerned, but also far from local services.

Various initiatives are underway. Some extend conventional thinking to the task of increasing the resource pool.

Offshore outsourcing does this, and it lowers costs, too. But customers' response to the language gap has brought about some well-publicised policy reversals.

Bussing in people from outlying market towns has been tried for similar reasons. But tolerance of 40 minute commuter journeys varies across the country, and the anticipated influx of fresh staff has not always been there.

Flexibility in the deployment of existing staff actually increases the resource pool. Call blending increases call-time availability by enabling suitable inbound operators to make outbound calls when inbound volumes are lower.

Belonging to Each Other

Other initiatives address the motivations of Maslow's middle range – stability and belongingness. Their aim is to root employer and employee in each others' respective operational and family systems, to their mutual advantage.

They include teleworking, the progressive flipside of bussing. It is proving successful for the AA and others in terms of overhead reduction and makes it possible to call on additional staff with little notice. It is also a family-friendly policy – important in an industry, where many employees have young children.

Another example comes from one of the several telecoms centres in Warrington. During 2006, it ran monthly "open days". These gave local college students space in the central canteen area to provide staff with a variety of wellness-related services. While staff obtained greater value from their scheduled breaks, the initiative provided positive exposure for the contact centre's working environment among the student population.

There is a need for initiatives which challenge the idea that staff are there for the short-term only. It is done by demonstrating the employer's commitment to the staff's wellbeing over the longer term. A biodiversity scheme, for instance, can improve the contact centre's surroundings, and it will offer opportunities for involvement and competition, much as charitable schemes do.

Self Sustaining Development

At the top of Maslow's hierarchy are requirements which relate to individuals' ability to achieve their ambitions and recognition of their capabilities. The industry's established system of vocational and professional qualifications facilitates both, and multi-site operations can offer greater development potential. Building the team's skills is an essential part of motivation. Without it, sustaining a service proposition as the foundation of competitive advantage isn't possible.

Argos' multi-brand centre at Widnes interprets the call blending approach dynamically, designing variety into the staff's workflow and giving them the authority to see many issues through to resolution. By maintaining staff skills across process areas, Argos is developing management potential.

The application of corporate governance principles is developing, as in every other business sector. They may appear to be a diversion from the industry's traditional focus on efficiency. By reducing attrition and increasing call-time availability, they are ingredients in a recipe for success. But how many contact centres apply them in a structured fashion from the bottom to the top of a hierarchy of needs?

Max Klein
Director, Inside Track Media

In terms of what this means for individual employers and employees, the picture seems much clearer. Employees were absent for 7.8 days, on average; the impact on employers’ direct and indirect costs was nearly £900 for each employee. Is it credible, though? You can regard significant absenteeism and attrition as characteristic of the public sector and in some traditional occupations, but working in modern service industry surely gives rise to fewer health issues, doesn’t it? Not so. The more focused and intensive the work, the greater the likelihood. For instance, sickness absenteeism in call centres is over 50% higher than that of employees generally, concluded the Call Centre Association.

And here's the next insight from the HSE. Musculoskeletal disorders contribute more days lost due to work-related illness than any other category - over one third. Nearly half of these affect the hands, arms and neck - a frequent problem with office staff who sit incorrectly at their workstations. So is that an unavoidable cost of being in business? No Sir / Madam, says the Law. As a director, you are responsible for making sure it simply does not happen.

The Display Screen Equipment Regulations, for instance, concern every regular office computer user. A claim made against you under the Regulations can result in substantial damages - £240,000 has been recorded. Then you can add the fines, legal expenses and the killer cost of management time spent on defending the action, instead of on the business. Plus, to summarise section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, any negligence on the part of a company director or manager can result in their being prosecuted, as well as the company. That's the scale of the downside risk. By contrast, the scale of any savings made through not training and assessing the staff is nowadays of the order of two hours' pay for each computer user – probably no more, possibly much less.

Even where health or stress related absence are providing an employee with cover for a job search, in this tight labour market a temporary replacement, recruitment fees and the new employee’s initial unfamiliarity with the work will add significantly to your costs. And the former employee’s departure does not mean that your liability to them, as employer, has ceased in all respects.

What are the chances of the downside risk materialising? Your defence can be successful only if you have met certain conditions.

First, you cannot be sure, so goes the logic, of having dealt with every problem unless you know about it in the first place.

Second, you cannot be sure that you know whether the health and safety issues have all been reported to you unless whoever tells you is regarded as competent to do so - i.e. they have been properly trained, so that they know how to do their work safely.

Third, you cannot be sure that issues can be reported to you unless you have set up a suitable feedback channel for that purpose (if the channel is in place, then a properly trained employee who fails to report the issue will share in your responsibility for the situation).

Finally, you must deal with the issues raised as official guidance to the regulations prescribes.

This is red tape that actually works in your favour, particularly in a tight employment market where your best staff are difficult to replace. Dealing with the issues it raises, though, is impossible unless you provide proper training and assessment.

Traditional training for safe working deals with the Display Screen Equipment Regulations only in passing. It does not reflect how specialist work has become. And its cost does not bear comparison with that of two hours’ work.

Another means of ensuring compliance with the DSE Regulations is trainer or video-based training delivered away from the workstation and expert assessment of employees at the workstation, together with problem-solving - or a combination of the two.

The strain that DSE training and the appreciable volume of data generated put on traditional approaches to training and assessment is recognised by the HSE / Local Authorities Enforcement Liaison Committee, which declared that records of DSE assessments can be held electronically.

The strain can put employers at risk from non-compliance. Frequency of assessment has to meet the requirements of the situation - a once a year schedule may limit the cost of personally administered training and assessment incurred, but it will not keep you compliant.

The impact of every significant change needs to be assessed - immediately a new member of staff joins, or temporary staff or contractors, when staff change between workstations, other than temporarily, when the office furniture is changed or re-arranged, or following changes to other functional aspects of the office environment, such as the lighting. Using conventional methods of training and assessment, risk assessors do not always catch up with their backlog. This leaves their employers vulnerable, unable to demonstrate compliance.

It need not be so. The use of specialist software has given computers an unmatched ability to deliver DSE training and collect assessment data fast, exactly where and when required, as well as to analyse it instantly. Enabling staff to train and assess themselves generates all-round time and cost savings. It also shows a proactive management attitude and acceptance of a key principle in the Health and Safety Commission’s Code for Directors’ Responsibilities for Health and Safety: "Worker involvement supports a positive health and safety culture where health and safety is everyone’s business. The best form of participation is a partnership for prevention...".

One or two hours' pay is the cost of using well-designed software that delegates training and self assessment to the employees, motivates them, tests their knowledge of the regulations and offers unlimited frequency of use within the licence period. The software should also be able to provide departmental – as well as health and safety - management with timely, action-orientated information based on the latest records to prioritise and deal with new risks that arise in their own area. And, providing the evidence that will deal with possible future claims, an archive of former employees’ records is another essential part of the package.

Quick off the mark, the publishers of Prevent-IT! have won their first client - Stockport-based Adidas (UK) Ltd - for this fresh approach to Health and Safety training software for office workers.

With the trend in office workers' RSI and back injuries pointing upwards, Prevent-IT! uses a creative approach to get computer users to think constructively about their own routine and overturn ingrained habits.

Three North-West companies have teamed-up to develop Prevent-IT! They are Liverpool-based Mersey Fire and Safety, the Health and Safety training consultancy, Inside Track of Warrington, software publishers and 3D web design pioneers and the Formby-based IT consultancy, Ashurst Ward Associates.

Inside Track's Max Klein sees Prevent-IT! as providing a thorough, enjoyable training experience, along with a means of protecting management in case of a Health and Safety inspection and against unjustified claims. He says, "The Display Screen Equipment Regulations guidelines have been carefully structured and explained to make them easy to remember. We use a computer games technology - on-screen interactivity in 3D - so that users enjoy the serious task of training. And there's performance analysis based on a comprehensive, transparent audit trail of test and workstation assessment results. Employers also benefit from the cost savings and flexibility that consistent, high quality, self-administered training on demand brings them."

There probably isn't a practice in the country that has spare resource to start mucking about with non-essential staff training. We all have our hands full with the new contract. Nevertheless, our obligations as employers mean that routine human resource issues such as staff training and health and safety issues cannot be ignored.

How then can a practice train and assess all its staff in terms of workplace-related IT work without affecting our other responsibilities?

The answer may lie in computer based training. In this context, staff can use PCs to access an interactive learning environment, assimilate knowledge and test their new-found skills in any spare moment of the day.

Prevent IT! is the catchy name for a computer-based unit on the health and safety aspects of computers in the workplace. It is both educational and remedial and, as such, is worth considering as a way of delivering our responsibilities as employers. We have been testing the program in our practice over the summer.

Installation
The software was installed by the supplier, and on our server there appeared to be no problem with this, nor has it had any impact on the rest of our applications.

Once installed, the staff can log into the system and enter a virtual environment, which allows them to navigate around an office and click on the various desks and computers. This office lacks any humans, so don't expect David Brent to greet you. Alternatively. you can read through a text-based menu-driven system.

The interactive virtual office entertained some of the staff members while providing useful information in the familiar environment of a workstation.

I liked the text menu approach particularly because it was reminiscent of the online professional educational resources that many of us have used for RCGP learning.

Working steadily and without the 'game environment', the study, module and questions can be completed in a matter of 30 minutes. If 30 minutes are not available in one chunk, then the module can be exited and returned to at the next convenient time.

On completing the learning environment, the testing begins, with the easy multiple choice questions available to be completed at any time after the module has been finished. The 'student' is then given a mark when they complete the test.

From a practice management sitting, the system can track who has completed the assessment and to what level. The display is graphical in nature and can be printed as a report. Obviously this has benefits in terms of mandatory training and the need to report on this to the PCT.

And while there is never a right time to dedicate hours to staff training, anything that simplifies the process must be considered.

Long term impact
Did the staff enjoy it? Yes, those who gave it a go enjoyed the program. Has it had a long term impact? It is hard to say at this moment.

I suspect that, as part of a PCT-sponsored exercise to alleviate the burden of training and reporting on mandatory training, this package is invaluable.

As a single practice initiative I'm not sure that, even with this aid, we have time to raise awareness of IT safety issues and embark on the remedial action at precisely the time we need maximum commitment to the new GMS contract.

My advice would be to alert your PCT risk manager to this training package and allow them to develop a resourced supported program, while we get on with seeing patients, safe in the knowledge that our staff's health and safety training is being catered for.

The publishers of health and safety training software Prevent-IT! are celebrating winning their first client, Stockport-based Adidas UK.

The software, which is aimed at office workers, uses a creative approach to get computer users to think constructively about their own routine and overturn ingrained habits in an attempt to prevent repetitive strain and back injuries.

Max Klein, partner at Inside Track, explains: "People react well to an enjoyable presentation of information and to a challenge they don't find overwhelming. We design Prevent-IT! with that in mind.

"The computer games-like 3D office that users move around in and the interaction mean they have something to do and to control from the word go and don't just sit there passively.

"The Display Screen Equipment Regulations, the official guidelines on the safe use of office computers, cover many different aspects. They range from the user's own health and their sitting posture to how they take their breaks, the organisation of the work surface of their desks, the space they have to move around in and the office lighting."

Prevent-IT! was developed by three North West companies: Liverpool-based Mersey Fire and Safety, the health and safety training consultancy; Inside Track of Warrington, software publishers and 3D web design pioneers, and the Formby IT consultancy, Ashurst Ward Associates.

"We launched the first Prevent-IT! module at an important time with increased awareness of the contribution of poor posture to musculo-skeletal conditions and stress; also, sensitivity to the impact of compensation claims on a company's resources and management time, which proper training, assessments and appropriate action will serve to eliminate," says Klein.

The publishers of Prevent-IT! are optimistic that more companies will buy their software: "We have just landed our second, Runcorn-based client. Several other organisations have the first Prevent-IT! module on trial, and purchase decisions are now before the boards of various North West and London-based organisations."

Prevent-IT! office safety training software has been developed to help firms deal with the Health and Safety Executive inspectors' new crackdown on office workers' health problems. This software trains computer users to comply with Display Screen Equipment Regulations.

....easy to install on networked or standalone PCs. Training at their own desks, users are tested on their knowledge of the DSE Regulations. They fill in a report to identify any problems with their own health or with the equipment they are using. The software can also generate training records and analyse individual and group performance.

Dave Fanning:  Prevent-IT! is a self assessment health and safety device for computer operators who work for more than one hour a day. Anyone who uses a computer has to be assessed by law under the Display Screen Equipment Regulations.
Roger Phillips:  Do all employers know that?
DF:  I don't think many employers are aware of it.
RP:  And so they're not really doing what they should do in terms of assessment?
DF:  No.
RP:  If they do know it, how complicated is the assessment process?
DF:  It depends on how many users you have. If, for example, you have 200 users, you have to pay someone to carry out the risk assessment, and that may mean, with most companies, using a paper assessment where someone actually stands and watches you using the computer for about half an hour. So you are actually paying that person. If you've got 200 users, it can be 100 hours to actually carry out the assessments - and then you've got to analyse all the results, and it's a paper chase.
RP:  Your system does away with that.
DF:  With Prevent-IT! DSE2003, you put the CD into the user's computer or you go on the company's intranet, and you do your own assessment interactively on the workstation. Not only does the program tell you what all the regulations say about you and your computer and your workstation, but you can move around the office using the computer keys, so it's health and safety with a bit of fun while you are being assessed.
RP:  Yes. It's quite...I've had a go with it, and it's quite fun. You go around the office and you can click on things in the office, and it will tell you about them, whether they're right and what's wrong. And there's a self assessment test.
DF:  Yes, there's a self assessment of the user's own workstation with 20 questions relating to their health and their workstation and so on. And after the questions, there are 15 questions in a test for the user to make sure they fully understood the program. And at the end of the test, everything is electronically recorded for the employer and the employee.
RP:  So they can get statistics from it as well?
DF:  They can get all the statistics - who needs eyesight tests, who might need an orthopaedic chair if they've got back problems, this information is all recorded electronically.
RP:  Is it becoming more important because people, whether you like it or not, are becoming more, you know, suing everybody - you know, my back hurts, it's your fault and I'm going to sue you?
DF:  Yes. I know the Health and Safety executive are becoming very concerned over the alarming increase in people suffering musculo-skeletal problems. Because of their poor computer chairs or badly-designed workstations and people not receiving the correct training as to how they should sit when they are actually operating the computer....There have been some big claims over the years from people suffering from musculo-skeletal problems and, of course, you will be aware, yourself, of RSI claims.
RP:  This hopefully would avoid the claims or, if people do claim, you could say: Look, we did the assessment. We took the necessary steps out of that assessment to help this person.
DF:  That's right. You were assessed. You assess the person once a year. You got all the information then. If the computer operator doesn't give you that information, then you say: When you did the assessment, you didn't tell me. If you tell me, as the employer, I can take steps to rectify that. The feedback we're getting so far is positive. People like using it because it's a sort of game for them as well....it's showing them how to look at their own workstation.

....allows people to take a virtual tour of an office while learning about the latest health and safety regulations.

It also compiles information on employees' health and gives human resources departments an instant check-up on personnel.

The program's inventors say it could help firms avoid costly legal fights with employees who have been injured at work.

Dave Fanning, managing director of Mersey Fire and Safety, said "Learning about health and safety while sitting at a computer has advantages for employees and firms. People tend to do paper tests which leave firms with lots of work.

"This program means an HR department can get an instant....of, say, how many employees have had a sight test recently."

A Padgate company is using computer game technology....to create a computer-based training program to teach workers who use computers to be safe at their desks.

Mersey Fire and Safety, Inside Track and Ashurst Ward Associates have combined to launch what it has called a new approach to health and safety training for office workers.

Prevent-IT! Office Safety is designed to help companies deal with Health and Safety Executive inspections....tested on their knowledge of the regulations and submit reports, which can then be used to generate training records and analyse individual and group performance.

Beryl Simpson of Inside Track said: "We have carefully structured the display screen equipment information into 'bite-sized chunks' and applied the 3D and interactivity from computer games technology so training takes on a completely different look and feel."