How to reduce sickness levels in your call centre

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere always increases sickness levels in call centres causing a headache for service levels.  With lots of people in a compact area, flu bugs can quickly spread through any call centre.  Add on to this, the amount of sudden illnesses which appear during the Christmas Party Season and we have a recipe for disaster.  Well, an Australian based call centre may have found the tonic which has led to sickness dropping by 45%.

The Sydney-based call centre of Direct Health Solutions (DHS) has implemented a 24-hour hotline.  When an employee wants to take time off work, they call through to the hotline and speak to a qualified nurse.  When nurses suspect callers are “faking”, a formal absence assessment is undertaken to evaluate the sickness and a return to work interview with their team-leader is oorganised.  The hotline also include Psychologists who take calls from those suffering from stress or mentally related problems.   

The hotline has received a plethora of different excuses ranging from one agent who claimed they were still too drunk from the previous nights calls to one who was advised to call an ambulance after displaying symptoms of a heart-attack.  DHS Managing Director, Paul Dundon estimates that 25% of people who call in sick are not genuinely ill.  Agents find it harder to “pull the wool over the eyes” of nurses than those normally responsible for tracking attendance.  Of course, there are people who are genuinely sick and the nurses are able to offer them practical support to recover from their sickness.

 

 

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