A glance at the 2022 Contact Center Challenges and Priority Study by Contact Center Pipeline sums up the perfect storm faced by today’s contact center leader. Forty-one percent of respondents cited their biggest challenge as difficulty when hiring and recruiting, Put it all together and you’ll spot an ever-widening gap in the work to be done and the people who are willing and available to do it. You know this already. You’ve tried to combat it by offering new benefits and perks, increasing wages, and incentives, and expanding your offerings around working from anywhere. But that approach to the problem, in this current market, is not unique to your business. It’s become the new expectation. Finding and retaining people now means looking beyond what appears on a pay stub and toward the things that create deeper meaning in work and show greater respect for the worker. It’s deploying systems that make the agents more effective at doing their job–not sending them into a quagmire of tools and technologies. It’s designing processes that enable success, empower the employee, and eliminate transactional work–not hindering their ability to deliver authentic, human experiences. It’s finding and engaging people in work with purpose, providing a platform where their voice is heard and respected, and demonstrating a true understanding of the realities of their work–not underestimating or missing out on the value that a truly empowered employee can bring to the business.