When Covid hit, this company, like so many others, sent staff home to work. The difference was that demand suddenly boomed for its custom-designed furnishings and high-end fabrics. Credit Manager Carlos Anderson, a long-time Credit Today member, tells how they've more than met the challenges of managing risk and collections with hybrid staffing. 

Anderson admits that, although he's now learned to like it, he hated working at home at first. It was difficult finding a balance. Prior to Covid, normal office hours had been 9 am to 5:30 pm. He would leave at 5:30 and usually not turn the laptop back on.

Now, at home, the first thing he does when he gets up is turning the laptop on. Sometimes he's on it until 9 at night. “That makes for a long day and it's difficult to maintain a life balance,” he notes. 

But the biggest challenge was keeping the staff engaged. “It was not necessarily with doing the work,” he says. “They were okay with that. They all took on additional responsibilities and did the best they could with them.”

“But engaging with each other, where they still felt part of the department and the company and making them realize that I was still accessible to them--that we were still a team and not just individuals working on their own—those were the most worrisome things for me.”

Zoom Calls

One solution was regular Zoom calls so that they could see each other and have chat groups. Throughout the day they're chatting with each other, whether it's work or commenting to each other on anything and just trying to keep that conversation going with each other.

“I wanted them to know that I cared about their wellbeing. For some people just being at home for two years impacted their mental health. They may be stuck with their kids all day, and they're trying to juggle that and work at the same time. There are others who live alone and no longer have that human interaction they had at the office. 

“It's challenging just trying to speak with people on a one-on-one personal level, just to try to gauge where they are and to let them know I'm here if they need to talk.”

Most of the staff has now returned to regular office hours once or twice a week. Some come in more than others because it is their preference to be in the office. “This will probably be it for a while,” he says. “No one comes in more than three days a week, and no one wants to come in on Monday or Friday.”

Hiring

Anderson needed to replace some of the staff lost before and during Covid, which has become a second major challenge. The employment market is now extremely competitive, with companies overpaying for talent. They are driving up salaries for new hires, which will drive up the salaries of the existing staff.

“At review time you try to give them somewhat more to keep them above the salary for new hires, just to make it fair,” he says. “It's difficult. We've found the market is very tough because people have so many options. People used to come in for interviews and they were ecstatic if you offered them a job. It was an instant ‘yes'. Now they have options, or they'll negotiate with you.”

Recently he was interviewing an applicant for an entry-level position. He was fresh out of college with virtually no experience. He offered what he thought was more than a competitive salary. He replied that he wanted another $5,000. “I'm thinking, I just need you to key in numbers. And I passed.”

“I thought he had good potential and would be able to grow out of that position. But I wasn't willing to disrupt the salary structure. It was in data entry where we needed someone to open accounts, take credit applications that we received on paper and key them into the system. He'd also be doing routine things like address changes, phone numbers, and email changes that customers might request. But he knew he could risk asking for more money because he probably had a few more offers on the table.”

In that case, Anderson pivoted to another candidate he'd interviewed who was happy with the salary, and that has worked out pretty well.

The other thing he was afraid of, was that the candidate would take the job, just to get it on his resume, stay there for six months, and then be off to their next job. So, he spent twice as much time filling that position than he normally would have.

Hybrid Training

“The whole process of filling that position became more difficult because this person was going to be working from home,” he adds. How would I be able to gauge his activity and have the right metric in place to ensure he was doing the job correctly - or doing it at the level we expected?”

Training, of course, has been another major challenge with hybrid employment. “During Covid, everything was done virtually, so we'd share screens which was very difficult because, at times, people will ‘yes' you to death. You don't know whether they fully understand what you are telling them to do.”

“It's just hard to show someone something if you can't sit there and watch them and explain what they should have done and point out that what they are doing is right or wrong. And you have to make sure that the person training them is sufficiently computer literate to be able to share screens and maybe share videos.”

To cope with this challenge, new hires are coming into the office to train with someone hands-on for four or five days, making it a lot faster. How long that goes on depends on the person and the position.

Collections

“We hired a collector and had him coming in four days a week for the first two months,” he says. “After that, it's down to three days a week and sometimes two, but I still want them in the office more than not. You show them the basics, and that will get them started. But I'm more concerned with the ‘what ifs', the things that aren't necessarily normal on a day-to-day basis--the problem accounts you have to sit there and analyze for an hour.”

As to collection problems, they have tried to work out arrangements wherever possible. “We're setting up payment plans. In some cases, we were more lenient, and in others less lenient. “We've tried to be more lenient with accounts that we knew were loyal to us—long-term relationships and those always keeping their promises.”

“With other accounts, we were less lenient because we knew it wasn't the time to take the increased risk.”

He would call and try to get a feel as to whether this was someone who genuinely needed assistance. “If we could provide it, we were happy to do so. It builds loyalty, and nobody wins if we're not shipping.”

As to hybrid staffing, he notes that “we're trying to be as adaptable as we can. From a management perspective, it allows me to be a little more ‘hands-off' because I need to trust my staff more. I need to trust they can handle situations. When they were right in front of me, I could see exactly what they were doing. Now I have to trust they're doing the right thing.” He trusts that they are giving the same effort at home as they were in the office, and what he's found is that most of them were giving more. There weren't the “water-cooler” office distractions. They were sitting there working.

At times he has actually had to tell them to stop working at times because, as hourly employees, they were working after hours, maybe just out of boredom or trying to keep up. But they could get the company in trouble with labor laws.

“I sincerely appreciated their wanting to do that just to keep up with the workload,” he says. “It showed me the type of staff I have. They showed me the actual care they have, not only for the company but for their jobs. The pride they take in their work was pretty eye-opening. Some showed me a level of commitment I wasn't aware of.”

Contact Information:

Phone: 800-648-5728 ext. 2370

Email: carlos.anderson@kravet.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-anderson-318b2810/