Last month, when the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) gave business giants BT and Centrica an international award in recognition of their practices towards workers aged 50 and older for the second year in a row, most commentators would have expected nothing less.

Based in the US, AARP is a non-profit membership organisation that helps more mature people improve the quality of their lives and in its 50 years has grown to a staggering 40 million members.

So when the AARP International Innovative Employer Awards - recognising employers around the world that have shown innovative efforts to address issues relevant to older workers - began last year, this was obviously going to be a coveted and much sought-after prize.

Secret of my success
Having a great team which is empowered and motivated to achieve success. The key is to work closely with senior
colleagues to ensure that HR is always at the forefront of the business

This year the awards, only in its second year, recognises winners from four countries outside the US, including the UK. And alongside BT and Centrica in the list of UK companies appeared one other: the Nottingham office of Domestic & General (D&G).

Before you ask ‘who?’, if you have a warranty for your fridge freezer, then chances are this would involve D&G. The company offers one of the widest ranges of domestic equipment cover available in Europe, as well as last year opening up warranty operations in Australia. The service contracts range from washing and cooking appliances, through to PCs, mobiles phones, cameras and satnavs. In addition, the
company also provides call centre services for third-party clients such as Sky and Zanussi.

The HR and training manager for D&G’s Nottingham call centre, Tracy Burrell, has been in her role for just over two years, and during that time she has transformed the recruitment strategies for the call centre, with the AARP accolades a fitting reward for her efforts.

The Nottingham site is the largest within the D&G Group, employing more than 700 people out of a total staff of 2,000. “One of the main aims was to get away from contact centres being viewed as a stop-gap employment - a temporary type of work before moving on to a more permanent job,” Burrell explains. “We want to emphasise that working at D&G is more than just a job. It’s also a fun place to work, where you can build a career for yourself.” And that means no matter what age anyone starts.

Burrell’s philosophy
Ensuring that your business is a great place to work and always reminding your employees they have ‘more than just a job’. They will then spread the word that this is a great place to work

“More mature workers are able to demonstrate empathy with their customers,” she explains. “For example, most of them would have had to deal with a breakdown in the past with a washing machine or another appliance, and so can understand just what the customer on the end of the phone is going through. Younger staff can also learn from them and vice-versa, of course. But from a business perspective, the reaction to our more mature customer service agents is positive.”

January is one of the busiest times for the Nottingham site, as customers are ringing in to register their Christmas presents or asking for help working their new purchases. Burrell and her HR team are gearing up to recruit 146 agents on fixed-term contracts by the end of the year, which will bring the site up to full capacity at around 800 staff. “There are two dedicated recruitment co-ordinators, who get admin support from the rest of the HR team, of which we’re nine in total,” Burrell explains. “We recruit directly for our contact centre agents and team leaders, but for more specialised roles, such as HR and account management skills, we use specialist recruitment agencies.”

The HR team has had to tailor its recruitment approach when attracting the older worker, either in its advertising in publications targeted at a mature audience or out at events. One way is taking ‘age ambassadors’ along to job fairs, where the more mature jobseeker can meet and talk with someone from a similar background to themselves.

And the employment on offer is not just for call centre agent roles. For example, Liz Robbins joined the Nottingham site a year ago at the age of 59 in the role of training manager. “Our recruiters don’t know the age of someone from their CV when they’re recruiting,” Burrell points out. “It’s simply by assessing their skills and experience. Training and development are also available to all, regardless of age.”

Despite news of the mandatory retirement age rising, D&G showcases the wishes of those mature workers who prefer to keep working. Call centre agent David Buckley is the oldest employee at 72 and features in the company’s ‘More than just a job’ picture campaign around the Nottingham site’s building.

In fact, the site now has three generations working there. Grandmother Jean was recruited first as a call centre agent and she referred her daughter through the firm’s ‘recommend a friend’ programme, who is now a team leader. And Jean’s granddaughter recently joined part-time, coming from Burrell’s school-leaver campaign, which Burrell initiated when joining D&G in July 2007.

Jean has since progressed to team leader herself and more recently as a mature ambassador for D&G, even speaking at an ACAS conference. “Jean’s speech, about mature workers, had the best attendance of the whole conference,” Burrell says delightedly. “People like Jean can really inspire you and make you become extremely passionate.”

On joining the company, Burrell discovered that there was a high turnover of staff during the first few months of their starting work. “What really concerned me was how to reduce attrition in the early part of the relationship,” she says, “so we set about getting feedback from employees about both the recruitment and the induction process.” The results showed there was no consistent message coming through the whole procedure, from phone interview through to the assessment centre and on to induction.

“The recruitment experience should be continuous, so we reviewed our practices and programmes to give a more streamlined and consistent message. Following a telephone interview, we hold assessment centres here at the site, where we show them the role and let them talk to the people on the floor. We’re not just giving a presentation about how good we are as a company; we’re giving them a chance to say, ‘yes, I’d love to work at D&G’.

“Conversely,” she adds, “we’d rather people say there and then, ‘no, it’s not for me’. It’s more cost-effective to know in the beginning rather than a month after they’ve been trained up in the role.”

People like Jean can really inspire you and make you become extremely passionate

All the overhauling of the recruitment and training processes has had an effect. “I’m very pleased to say there has been a massive reduction in churn, along with staff performing much better too. We focus more on health and ‘wellness’, rather than sickness absence, which has also reduced considerably over the past two years. It’s all credit to the HR team having a co-ordinated approach and making recruitment as transparent as possible,” she says humbly, clearly proud of her small team.

“We have ‘Wellness Wednesdays’, where staff are encouraged to keep fit and healthy, and employees working beyond the state retirement age are provided with annual health checks, funded by the company.”

Burrell is keen to point out that in any diverse business it is important to have a balance, so that it is not weighted in one particular direction. At the other end of the diversity scale, the school-leaver programme continues with the ‘more than just a job’ theme and aims to promote contact centre work as a career for younger people.

The ‘school-leaver team’ works with schools on interview skills and the induction programme is broken down into bite-sized chunks to suit the Generation Y mindset. The approach clearly works. Adam Walker was one of Burrell’s original school-leaver recruits, starting as an agent; he is now call centre manager.

“We’re one of a number of call centres, such as SpecSavers, Experian and Capital One, here in Nottingham. To get ahead of the competition, it’s important to give candidates the best possible recruitment experience, treating candidates - and then hopefully employees - as individuals and not numbers.”

Admitting that she “fell into HR” rather than going down a planned career path, Burrell obviously uses her ‘more than just a job’ theme in dealing with her staff. “It really is a cliché but I found something that I was passionate about. You get to meet a whole host of people you can learn from.”

Behind her, on the wall of the training room, the picture of David Buckley smiles down, surrounded by equally happy-looking youngsters, and you do get the impression that Burrell’s role is ‘more than just a job’.

Next Issue: David Mason from construction services firm CH2M Hill