Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and a fabulous New Year. I hope the sun comes out for the holidays and that you all have at least a few, fun days off with family and friends.

I am attaching a copy of our training and network group calendar for 2012 so you can make sure you put the events in your diary and come along. We will be running both Workforce Management and Quality Assurance network groups in 2012 and we hope to see you and your colleagues there. Watch out for more event details closer to their launch.

See you next year

In my last blog I wrote about attrition and different ways to analyse this in order to get a better understanding of why people are leaving. It's also important to work with your HR team to get some overall feedback on what people have been saying their reasons for leaving are in their exit interviews. This can help you understand if attrition is related to scheduling in any way. Communication between Workforce Planning and HR is therefore essential.

As a Workforce Planner part of your role should be to advise HR on the type of shift required so that new hires are recruited when and where the business actually needs them. It's also a good idea to provide HR with information around the benefits of different shift options so they can provide this information to candidates. When candidates go through the interview phase it is important that they understand the type of shift they will be working, the annual leave policies (they may need to work on public holidays) and what breaks, training, coaching etc they will typically have in their schedule before accepting the position.

During the induction training, someone from Workforce Planning should conduct a session on Workforce Planning explaining what it is and the processes for applying for leave, swapping shifts, adhering to schedules etc. They should also conduct a Power of One activity to help make this easier for new hires to understand. Make sure you provide your agents with some documentation around your scheduling guidelines and frequently asked questions so that they can also refer to this later if necessary.

Approximately one month after being on the phones it's a good idea to schedule a feedback session with the new hires and key members of the leadership team, including HR. In this meeting, feedback can be gathered on their experience to date, including the recruitment process, training, and integration to the phones. Any further scheduling related questions or concerns can also be answered at this time and you can use the information gathered in this session to improve many of your processes and hopefully help to reduce attrition in the future.