Document sent to Utah Department Of Workforce Services -- My Appeal

I feel that I should not have been fired, and that I should have been given some warning or feedback that I was not doing a good job for the company. I was surprised when I was fired because I was not expecting termination. I feel that I should have been given employee evaluations that each supervisor is supposed give each month. I feel that I should have been given a warning if I was not being compliant to company standards. I feel that I should have not been mislead by my supervisor in the email he sent me a week or so before my termination.

After being fired, I went in and talked to Hemma in the HR department. I told him my situation, and one thing I found interesting is that he said that I could still apply for positions at NuSkin for further employment and the reasons that I was fired would not make me ineligible for employment. That is what he said after I mentioned some of the following things to him.

On Saturday the 11th of May, I went into Big Planet and looked at some of my stats because I was never shown how I was doing. I was told that one reason I was fired was because I was late for work. In January I was late 14 times, but nobody ever talked to me about this situation. I think I was into work and clocked in on time most every time, but I was not logged into my computer and I did not have the program, Dial Pad, opened up that monitors our phone times. Because I was not logged into Dial Pad by 7:01, I was considered late even though I might have been there at my scheduled time, but running a little slow at getting my computer on and logged in so that I could log into Dial Pad. I had realized that I getting logged onto Dial Pad late and that I should improve this, so I came in before my scheduled time so that I would have better stats and so that I could qualify for a pay raise.. In the months of February and March I improved to the company standard of only 2 tardies each month.

I was told that one of the reasons I was fired was because I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing at the right time. At NuSkin, some of the people in the call center are scheduled to do two jobs. I was one of them. If the call volume is low, then you are supposed to do chats, emails, and service called concierge. When doing these three things the employees are supposed to be watching the Dial Pad so that they can get on the phones when the wait time on the phones gets over 4 min. Usually most everyone does not see exactly when the wait time goes over 4 min. So when the wait time gets over 4 min, supervisors usually send out an email to those on chats to notify them that the queue is over 4 min. Sometimes the wait time will hold just near 4 min and sometimes you honestly are doing things like doing research on the internet finding answers for customers off of search engines or off of internal support pages, and you don’t see that the queue is high and that there is a need to get on the phones. If I was fired for not getting on the phones and not seeing that the queue was over 4 minutes, then everyone else on chat should be fired because most everyone does not see that the queue is high at times. They don’t do exactly what they are supposed to do.

About 5 days before being terminated, I was working on an email for a customer and I had a generic answer saved on my desktop so that I did not have to type the whole email again that I had previously answered. I had probably 15 windows programs opened on my screen. To get that file I had two options. I would have to minimize each window individually, or just click on the show desktop button. I clicked on the show desktop icon and I opened the file I had on my desktop. When I was doing this my supervisor Joe Wytiaz came over and he was going to tell me to get on the phones, like he does quite often like other supervisors, so that we can take care of the people waiting on hold. Without asking what I was doing, he got mad at me because I did not have the program Dial Pad opened up that showed what the wait time was. It was not up because I had recently clicked on the show desktop button and I was finishing formatting the text document on my desktop to fit the needs of the customer. So Joe did not listen to the reason I did not have the program showing, and this is one of the reasons I got fired.

Another interesting thing is an email I received from Joe.

This situation was a time that one of my phone calls went through my break and I did not have my break. Because my phone call went through my scheduled break, I took my break about two hours later when the wait time on the phones finally got down to about 0 minutes. There was one person in the queue with under a minute wait. I needed to go take a brake for a few reasons. One reason was because I needed to go talk to another supervisor to tell him that what he did worked so that he did not have to worry about the situation anymore. Another was because I needed a break. And another was because it is the law that employees get breaks. So I went over to talk to Brook while on my break, I guess the wait time spiked and there were more customers on hold. Joe trusts us all and I thought he would understand my situation. So Joe came over and told me to get on the phones and he would not listen to why I was on break. So I quit taking my break and got on the phones. Joe considered this my call avoidance. I was not avoiding calls; I was taking my rightful break.

Here is the series of emails we sent back and forth to each other while I was taking phone calls.

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Hi

The idea of being able to move your break to a later time isn't so that you can save the break up for when there is a queue and the dodge the queue.

The idea is that if your break comes along and you would rather help the queue, then help the queue and break later when the queue is gone.

It's pretty much only a 1 sided deal where you want to help the team.. we won't ever have a time where the break will let ya dodge the queue.

So, in summary, if there's a queue, don't change your break to avoid calls.

Joe

I am sorry you feel that I was avoiding calls. This was not the case.

We were running a low queue for quite some time and it was not that bad and I had not taken my brake. So on my brake I actually was working on a problem with a customer and I went to tell brook that the thing he did fixed the problem worked. And then Jim started talking to me and that is when you came up to get me on the phones.

Again I am sorry if you feel that I was trying to avoid calls. Just talk to me and find out the situation before you accuse me of this please. I know you are just doing your job and I feel that you are truly concerned for the needs of our customers. I know that I can do better at watching the queue for our customer needs. I just don't want you to go down being known as the person who does anything to avoid the queue and that is the way I think you feel about me at times.

Just trying to avoid any frustrations on my part by letting you know how I feel by communicating with you.

Steven Risenmay

Intime: 7am
7:00 - 7:15: Prep Time
7:15 - 7:45: Phone Time
7:45 - 8:00: Break Time
8:00 - 8:30: Phone Time
8:30 - 8:45: Break Time
8:45 - 9:00: Phone Time
9:00 - 10:00: Team Meeting
10:00 - 11:15: Phone Time
11:15 - 12:15: Lunch
12:15 - 2:00: Phone Time
2:00 - 4:00: Chat/Email
Outtime: 4pm

If you wish to displace a break because you're tied up on a call, or because you need to help with the queue during your break, that's fine. Take that break as soon as you can to replace it.

If the queue is large, you can't be taking 'missed breaks'. That is the time where we are relying on you to help the customers. And by 'we' I mean the whole floor who doesn't want to take the calls we projected and schedule you to take.

If you take a break that is not scheduled during a queue, you are avoiding calls. You might not want to have the intention of 'call avoidance' but that is what it is. I really wish that we could all just do things ourselves, or do whatever we wanted to help things but the bottom line is we need bodies, in chairs, headphones on, taking calls. If you have an issue that merits 'Off Phone Work' of more than 2-3 minutes, you need to place it in hands of a TA and then take another call.

It's just that easy. Don't blow time trying to figure out something above and beyond, just plow through calls. And if you need special time for projects you want to invent, come talk to me, and I can consult with WFM to determine if removing you from their labor calculations will be detrimental to the rest of the floor or not.

We just can't have everyone else on the floor taking a higher volume of calls because you want to do things in a different way.

Joe

PS I'm not out to get ya here. You do a very good job of assessing a client's needs and you know your material. Heck, you're about to be setup to take, and pass, cert 10. This isn't a disciplinary talk or anything like that. This is just me trying to help you realize that doing anything other than taking calls will mean more work for your teammates.

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If Joe would have listened to me when I was trying to explain the situation, this problem would not have come up. Another thing that is interesting is in his PS. He was telling me that I was going to take cert 10 which is the certification 10 test for a pay raise. To be eligible for the cert 10 you have to have a good monitoring score, good attendance, and be doing pretty much what NuSkin wants its employees to do, being compliant with the company’s policies. If you are not meeting expectations you can not be considered for taking a certification test.

One thing where I really think NuSkin messed up was with the fact that my supervisor did not give me any feedback on how I was doing in the company. Every month each supervisor is supposed to have a one on one to show the employees their monitoring scores and to show them their call times, tardies, and other stats to show them their standing in the company. This is mostly to help the employees be better. I never once had a one on one with my supervisor Joe. If I knew that there was a problem, I would have improved the way I was working. The only feedback I ever received from my supervisor was him telling me to do better with watching the queue when I am on chat, and the info he said in his email saying that I about to take the certification 10 test.

If I was fired for being tardy, then I should have been fired back in January. If it was my stats that were bad that got me fired, I should have been shown my stats. Also, sometimes my stats may have been bad because I was always interviewing for other positions in the company. I was attempting to get off the phones to further my employment and establish a career. I was even trying to implement other things at work to improve customer service levels, something that upper management wanted us to do. I don’t know if those times that I was doing those other things were considered in my stats. I honestly don’t know. But I do feel that things were not handled correctly at NuSkin and I hope that some of the things I talked to Hemma about in HR have changes so that others in my position will not go through some of the things I went through. I hope that supervisors are held responsible for what they are supposed to do at that company.

I was fired because of not doing exactly what I was hired to do. I think people like Joe should be held to the same standards. As a manager he was not responsible and did not do what he was asked to do. He was not a leader, he never gave me feedback to help me become better, and he made me believe that I was doing everything ok except for not getting off chat on time.

I never saw stats compared to mine. I think this is a discrimination against me. I think I should have been given a warning like others receive. I think that he did not follow proper procedure in terminating me from employment. He should have been doing his job and if that would have been happening, I think that there could be reason to fire me if I did not improve the way I was working.