Training is needed before you throw your employees to the fire. When I say training, I don't mean 40 hours of online videos that aren't really geared towards training an employee to do their specific job. Customer training videos should not be considered as employee training videos, ever.
We also want to feel appreciated. The Salt Lake office really has had it's fair share of successes that felt as though went unnoticed, or underappreciated. Again, I felt that a lot of the leaders in the SL office tried, but with a limited budget, and with them being extremely busy themselves...sometimes some of the basic incentives went by the wayside.
Unfortunately, the Salt Lake office is ultimately run by either Toronto, or Santa Barbara, so ideas we present seem to only go so far and then die before they're given a chance. I can't necessarily attribute it to politics, but it sure felt like it sometimes. Salt Lake is a huge office, with tons of room to grow, but we're made to feel like a little satellite office that only had a few employees. While we were constantly told changes for the better were coming, we just couldn't see it happening. After a while, it really just became "noise," and those promises were ultimately treated with a "we'll believe it when we see it." response from a lot of employees.
The employees realize there is no place to go. Making them a Senior phone answerer isn't really something to look forward to. Bring in more manpower so those promotions mean something and are something to look forward to. Make your Senior people team leaders, and leaders within the company, not just a title. If you just give a new title and a little extra money, but no hope for "moving up" it doesn't mean much. If after 3+ years of working there, all I have to look forward to is having "Senior" in front of my name while doing the same thing I've been doing for years, then why try?
