What’s Really Stopping Your Talent From Blooming?

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Many organisations invest heavily in attracting talent but often overlook the role their internal environment plays in enabling employees to thrive.

To find out more, we asked Danny Wareham, Founder & Director at Firgun, to explain the factors that are stopping contact centre talent from blooming.

Video: What’s Really Stopping Your Talent From Blooming?

Watch the video below to hear Danny explain the factors that are stopping your talent from blooming:

With thanks to Danny Wareham, Founder & Director at Firgun, for contributing to this video.

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A Metaphor for Talent Development

Imagine buying budding plants to brighten your office. You trim them, place them in water, and leave them on a shelf, only to watch them wilt. Frustrated, you buy more plants, repeat the process, and expect better results.

“I’m going to talk to you about spring, because spring for me means flowers, beauty, vibrancy, and colour, and the office is looking a little bit sparse. What I’ve done is I’ve gone out, and I found some budding plants.

They weren’t quite flowering yet, but I saw the potential, so I brought them here, I put them in some water, obviously trimmed them off first, then put them up on the shelf behind me, and I’ve kind of left them alone.

Obviously, they’re a bad batch. The garden centre told me the hydrangeas will be okay, but they’ve just dried out, wilted, and clearly have been mis-sold.

What I’m going to do is I’m going to throw these away, and I’m going to get some more. I’m going to go back to the garden centre. I’m going to complain. I’m going to tell him that he’s obviously sold me some duds, and instead I want some that are already budding.

I’ll pay again, no doubt. I’ll bring them back, I’ll put them in the vase, I’ll trim them, I’ll put them through my process for getting them ready for the office, and I’ll put them back on the shelf.

So I’ve already been, and here they are, nice and budding, and ready to go. They’ll be fine now, won’t they?

Now that’s ridiculous, obviously, but how many of us approach many of the processes in our contact centres in this way?

We’ll go out and we’ll spend money on talent attraction, we’ll spend money on recruitment agencies trying to find us the right people for our roles, and then we’ll bring them into our organizations.

We’ll put them through our processes to onboard them, to train them, and release them into the operation where we just leave them.”

This approach, though clearly flawed for plants, mirrors how some organisations manage talent. They spend on recruitment, onboard employees, and leave them to navigate a work environment that may not support their growth.

The Importance of Culture

The solution isn’t just about hiring better candidates. It’s about creating a workplace culture and processes that nurture talent.

This means examining your environment – policies, practices, and team dynamics – to identify barriers that might stifle potential.

“Now often we will go back to the recruitment agencies, to the talent team, to the hiring manager, and say we need to change the process of our onboarding to get us better talent in the door.

My argument is sometimes we need to first look at the environment. What is the environment? What is our culture? What are all our processes, policies, and protocols driving within our organization? Is it perhaps them that are stopping your talent blooming?”

Much like plants need the right care to bloom, employees need a supportive atmosphere to thrive.

Review your organisation’s culture and processes to ensure they empower your people rather than hold them back.

When talent doesn’t bloom, the issue may not lie with the people hired but with the environment they are placed in.

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Author
Robyn Coppell

Robyn Coppell has worked as Digital Content Manager for Call Center Helper since 2021. After University her first job was in a contact centre and has stayed in this space ever since.

She has experience of contact centre operational management, software systems, css and php coding. She edits a lot of the guest content that is published on Call Centre Helper.

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