Low pay, high stress, and poor career prospects are some of the reasons cited for high staff turnover in business process outsourcing (BPO). Attrition rates among frontline staff vary from 26% a year to 40% (and sometimes higher).
A 2024 poll by Deloitte, suggested that 63% of contact centre leaders faced staff shortages.
OpsTalent, a tech BPO with offices in Poland and Sri Lanka is bucking the trend. It boasts a staff attrition rate of just 4%.
OpsTalent has a staff attrition of 4% and staff satisfaction rate of 84%
Low staff turnover has enabled the firm to build its leadership team entirely from people who’ve worked their way up through the ranks. The longevity of staff provides clients with a sense of stability and continuity not often found within BPO.
“The low attrition rate is key to the success of any project,” Gabriela Ziólkowska, co-founder and CEO, OpsTalent told Customer Experience Magazine.
“If you train people for three months and they leave, you cannot perform for the client. [And] you’re always training new people,” she added.
From day one, co-founders, and husband and wife team, Gabi Ziólkowska and Trevor Coyne decided to build a firm that people wanted to be part of. Where “people want to stay, develop, grow and don’t feel that [it’s] painful to go to the office,” explained Ziólkowska.
Building a firm the people wanted to be part of
“When people are happy, they go above and beyond,” she added.
On the advice of a friend working for Capgemini, the pair sat down to write a culture book for their fledging firm. But it soon dawned on the co-founders that employees needed to be involved.
EX forms the backbone of the company
Over 10 years later OpsTalent has crafted an EX programme that sits at the core of the business. Called the OpsUp Your Life Employee Journey, the initiative focuses on four areas — growth, wellbeing, recognition and inclusion.
The programme picked up gold in the Employee Experience category at last year’s International Customer Experience Awards.
Hiring staff for their soft skills
Around the same time, the co-founders rejected the idea of a culture book, the pair also realised it had to alter its approach to hiring staff. While putting together the team for its initial project, it dawned on them that they had to prioritise soft skills, rather than technical capability.
“We were sitting in the room and we said, ‘We need to change everything’. So we replaced the whole team and then we started hiring for soft skills,” said Ziólkowska.
“We go to the market sourcing on tech skills, but we hire on soft skills,” she added.
Due in part to its hiring strategy, OpsTalent has to focus on developing in-house technical skills.
The management team is constantly looking for talent in the latest in-take of staff. “You can go any direction in life. That is the way we look at talent,” explained Ziólkowska.
Developing the talents of the team
A big part of the firm’s employee journey focuses on career development. OpsTalent offers staff certification opportunities in agile leadership and design thinking. Last year, a third of graduates from its training academy were either promoted or changed roles.
“We have around 40 people in the management team. Everyone of them started from a low position in the company. It is a saver for us to develop staff. We make sure they’re satisfied, they are very loyal and know they can grow with us,” said Ziólkowska.
To galvanise a sense of team spirit OpsTalent designed its head office in Wroclaw to be a community space. The office has a large ‘living room’ area that hosts social events and classes. Its well-equipped kitchen is often used to cook communal meals for the team.
At the time of this interview, Ziólkowska’s brother had arrived at the office to cook a Christmas lunch for the team.
Managing the cost of EX initiatives
By using the office space, OpsTalent controls the cost of its employee experience efforts.
“We started doing stuff at the office because we didn’t have money. At the beginning we were doing what we could just to keep the company running,” said Ken Coyne,, head of growth with OpsTalent, (and brother of Trevor).
Since the pandemic, OpsTalent struggled to bring its staff back into the office. It currently offers hybrid working with many people spending three days in the office and two days at home.
However, clients are increasingly asking for staff to be based in an office.
“We want to get people back in the office. We think it is key to bring people together — that’s part of the employee experience,” added Ziólkowska.
