In Focus Collections


Values and beliefs – the secret to an effective workforce


Developing an outstanding team of collectors relies on understanding their psychological needs as a team, and as individuals


Andrew Jackson Head of collections & recoveries, Funding Circle andrew.jackson @fundingcircle.com


It is an open secret that collections and recoveries is one of the most interesting and rewarding aspects of the finance industry. This area includes the best of customer


service, data-analytics and law, and poses daily philosophical and psychological questions on fairness, vulnerability, and human behaviour. Helping your team members to understand


just how lucky they are to be debt collectors (ahem, I mean ‘customer solutions managers’) is one of the biggest challenges for any team leader.


Motivating and inspiring Collections agents come in all shapes and sizes: from 21 year olds following scripts, to mature adults who like helping people and regular hours. Motivating and inspiring all team


members takes a lot of managerial time and effort, but the rewards on offer are high – including reducing employee churn, mitigating compliance risk, and having a great team culture. Managers typically require their direct


reports to propose SMART goals. Identifying specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed goals is often the starting point, but this is a mistake. Developing truly effective goals should


start with an individual’s values and beliefs. Childhood, home-life, work, and


relationships all generate clusters of feelings that form an individual’s values and beliefs. Whilst it is not a manager’s role to be a psychotherapist, by being aware of values


April 2017 www.CCRMagazine.co.uk


and beliefs, we can work better with individuals to build their strengths and battle their weaknesses.


This area includes the best of customer service, data-analytics and law, and poses daily philosophical and psychological questions on fairness, vulnerability, and human behaviour


Away from threats David Rock’s SCARF model relies on the psychological principle that people move away from threats twice as much as they move towards rewards. The SCARF model suggests that the


main values that influence our behaviours relate to status, consistency, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Accordingly, how much someone is affected by a change in your


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