Reference no: EM133183365
BACKGROUND:
Sterling Cooper Fundraising Consultants provides telemarketing services to assist not-for- profit organisations to achieve their fundraising goals. The company is based within Sydney, Australia, and currently employs over 400 workers from the local community. In order to reduce costs associated with training and to ensure a uniform standard of service, employees are permanently assigned to specific departments within the call centre, such as supporter database building (responsible for identifying potential donors), database maintenance (responsible for updating databases to ensure people registered on the 'do not call' list are removed), call department ("callers" responsible for making phone calls to potential supporters to secure donations), quality auditors (responsible for randomly selecting and listening to calls made by callers for quality control purposes), and client reporting and statistics (responsible for compiling data and client reports regarding time spent on calls and amount of money raised).
The majority of employees (approximately 300) are assigned to the call department and are employed as callers who are responsible for contacting prospective donors for the purpose of persuading them to donate money. The call department is divided into teams of 50 callers, who are supervised by one team leader. Callers access names and contact phone numbers from a computerised database provided to them by their team-leaders. Callers are required to follow standardised scripts, explaining the purpose of their call, and are required to ask for donations four times within the course of a single call, prior to disconnecting and initiating another call. All callers work the same number of hours per shift, and the same number of shifts per week. Weekly rosters are provided, which specify start, finish, and break times; break times are staggered to ensure sufficient caller coverage at all times and callers are required to adhere strictly to these times. Several quality control metrics are applied to assess the callers performance, including the dollars raised per call; number of calls initiated per shift; time delay between calls, after commencing shift, and after returning from scheduled breaks; and adherence to the prescribed script. These metrics are compiled on a monthly basis and provided to team leaders (and not to individual employees). Based on these monthly metrics, the lowest performing 10% of employees per team are required to attend a mandatory two-hour, out-of-shift training session, irrespective of their previous history of performance.
Annual employee surveys over the past five years have indicated a steady decline in job satisfaction and motivation, reflected in declining rates of fundraising dollars secured for clients. As Sterling Cooper Fundraising Consultants have recently secured a high profile client who have tasked them with fundraising to secure donations to support a scholarship program, they are keen to address the problem of declining motivation.
QUESTIONS:
- Drawing on theory and research, explain why Sterling Cooper Fundraising Consultants are experiencing a lack of employee motivation and morale.
- Drawing on theory and research, provide specific recommendations for how Sterling Cooper can improve their employees' motivation.