In recent years we’ve used the phrase “disruption as usual” to describe the conditions organizations across the world are facing. When it comes to talent management, business leaders have been forced to deal with issues including enforced remote working, The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting in a very short space of time.

These tricky periods for organizations don’t exist in isolation—they each have lasting effects on managing your workforce. This is reflected in the results of Verint’s most recent global research into the state of customer engagement, and worries about talent management issues are rising across the world.

The negative impact of dealing with staffing shortages, labor challenges and operating a remote workforce are among the problems worrying around half of the respondents to our survey. A higher percentage of CX leaders rated every aspect of talent management as “highly challenging” compared to 2022’s research.

In short—businesses are worried.

Key Stats from The Talent Management Playbook 

• 54% worry that staffing shortages and labor challenges will have a significant negative impact 

• >50% of CX leaders see candidate selection, coaching and mentoring, skills training, supporting employee well-being, and retaining employees as “highly challenging” 

• 49% think operating a remote workforce will negatively impact their CX delivery.

Challenges Across the Employee Experience

With concerns about issues ranging from the recruitment process to improving performance and helping to ensure employee well-being, it’s important for organizations to address each stage of the employee journey.

If you’re hiring the wrong candidates, then skills training is likely to be less effective. Equally, if you have the perfect new employee but struggle to support their well-being, then there’s a risk you might lose them quickly.

We can take a closer look at the challenges businesses are facing.

Recruitment

Hiring the right resources topped the responses (36%) for workforce priorities in this year’s research, but more than half of respondents think it’s going to be highly challenging—close to a 10% rise year-over-year. An efficient hiring process which can find the best applicants, and weed out the least suitable, as early in the process as possible will be key for solving the issue.

Tackling the Candidate Selection Challenge

Widen The Talent Pool

Employees working from anywhere means organizations can hire from anywhere. Why worry about a distributed workforce when it can become a company’s superpower? With working from home becoming a preferred choice for many, employers aren’t limited to finding local applicants and can search across the globe for the right candidates. 

Performance

Creating an environment where employees can grow their skills, learn from more experienced colleagues, and find a better work/life balance is tricky when teams aren’t working in the same location every day.

To build an effective workforce, organizations need to invest in solutions that help employees realize their potential, regardless of whether they’re in the office or work remotely.

Tackling the Coaching and Mentoring Challenge

Assess Every Conversation

Monitor and evaluate customer interactions across every channel and standardize the data to provide actionable insights. Having a full view of an agent’s performance will help identify areas for improvement and ensure every employee has the opportunity to upskill in different areas, whether they are working from home or a contact center.

Support and Well-being

Ensuring employees feel supported and able to perform effectively involves a combination of solutions and practices that begin at the recruitment phase. Building a hybrid workforce of humans and bots is critical for improving the employee and customer experience.

Automation through bots which enable customers to self-serve, real-time coaching to provide employees guidance during interactions, or access to contextual information in-the-moment can reduce call volumes and improve support quality while providing ROI.

Tackling the Employee Well-being Challenge

Flexibility for Employees

Workers typically want to feel they have some control over their schedules—there’s little point in offering the benefits of remote working if the schedule is too rigid to provide a better work/life balance.

Enabling employees to modify their own hours or accept ad-hoc shifts is another way that companies can provide flexibility to their workers and reduce risk of turnover.

To learn more about the research and how to build a productive and engaged CX workforce, you can find the full report here.

*Highly challenging = rated 8, 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale.