Bank of America Maintains Commitment to $25 Minimum Wage

In our increasingly digital age, the role of the frontline customer service employee is constantly evolving and recalibrating to meet customers’ needs. Very large companies, in particular, must thoughtfully organize their agents into different teams according to both their particular skill sets and the overarching needs of the business. Where the agent role used to be a contact center Swiss Army knife, many of today’s agents are far more specialized. For this reason, as well as other financial limitations, most large corporations do not institute a company-wide minimum wage, and even fewer publish the information publicly. Since 2017, Bank of America has been a stark outlier by committing to annual company-wide raises until they reach a minimum wage of $25 hourly in 2025.

Today, there is a sharpened focus on agent roles that require advanced people skills, emotional intelligence, and comfortability working with complex technology. However, many positions in the contact center are still considered entry level. The agent role can be a great place for someone to begin their career and learn many new skills at once. Unfortunately, in the United States entry level jobs usually offer very low wages, which often do not even meet the cost of living in cities.

Bank of America’s promise

By committing to the $25 minimum hourly wage in 2025, Bank of America has effectively promised stability and opportunity for their employees that far outweigh their competitors. With the average US wages for customer service representatives currently at $18 hourly, BoA’s compensation has decreased turnover and promoted engagement across contact center and in-person roles. It can be challenging to measure the ripple effect of such a change across a large company, but one of the more compelling statistics is 85% of BoA employees saying the bank is a great place to work. In fact, the top reason employees say they work at Bank of America is their benefits. 

The disconnect between managers and employees

For so much time and resources given to the subject of “agent engagement,” many contact center leaders are still in the dark about what truly motivates their team. In our most recent market study on the Future of Contact Center Employees, CCW Digital found that employee-centered initiatives like compensation reevaluation, career pathing, and more flexible scheduling all ranked lower in priority than initiatives more closely tied to increasing profit. 

When evaluating changes that are meant to improve agent engagement and productivity, it is critical to factor in the real-world considerations that impact these employees. Knowing that wages across the customer service industry can be abysmally low, leadership should have a clear understanding of where their company fits into the average. It is useful to look to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, one of the fundamental models of modern behavioral psychology. At a high level, the hierarchy functions so that higher level needs can only be accessed and met once the lower level needs are met. Low wages that are at or below the cost of living put people in the danger zone for potentially not meeting their basic needs–food, water, and shelter–and thus create stress and dissatisfaction both inside and outside of work. For folks in this type of situation, initiatives that seek to improve performance by engaging agents are unlikely to be effective, as engagement and motivation are tied to higher level needs. 

More large companies should recognize Bank of America’s wage raising initiative as a positive example of how the best interest of the employee is often the best interest of the business. With so many new technologies and processes available for contact centers to make big moves towards improvement, satisfied employees should always be a top priority. If the decency tied to the provision of a living wage is not enough motivation for leadership, then the improved financial outcomes associated with this change for Bank of America should be. 

Image provided by Steve Pancrate on Pexels.