Over the last couple of weeks I have received a number of emails from Workforce Planners who have moved from positions within the contact centre to back office and branch roles. These positions are becoming more widely available as companies move to leverage the benefits that have been achieved by workforce planning processes in contact centres. By automating many of the processes that were previously done manually in back office and branches, companies are able to save on FTE, improve their forecasting and reporting capabilities as well as leverage improved efficiencies and visibility of what is actually being done.

Over the next couple of weeks I am hoping to interview some of these Workforce Planners so that you can find out what they have to say about moving from Workforce Planning in contact centres to Workforce Planning elsewhere in the enterprise.

Don’t forget, if you are an Openwave customer, the Openwave conference will be held next week (22-23rd February) in the Four Points Sheraton Hotel.  Details can be found here.  Ronene will be speaking at the conference and we look forward to meeting you there.

Happy 2012!

This week Fifth Quadrant held Workforce Management and Quality Management Network Groups in Sydney and Melbourne. Thank you to IAG in Sydney and Suncorp in Melbourne for hosting the events for us. In Sydney, Matt McPherson, Senior Manager Workforce Planning & Optimisation at IAG spoke about the transformation of their Workforce Management team and the investment IAG has made in restructuring and training their team in best practice Workforce Management.  

One of the things that was very evident in the Networking groups is that Workforce Planning has evolved over the years and planners are no longer involved in just inbound contact centre Workforce Planning but also multichannel (inbound, outbound, email, webchat), branches, back office and even retail. Although traditional Workforce Management skills are still required, other skills such as the ability to communicate and present well are equally important as Workforce Planners need to influence a larger group of stakeholders than ever before. The profile of Workforce Planners within organisations has risen and there is a lot more buy in from the top down about the importance of their contribution.  

In 2012 Workforce Management and Quality should be working more closely together as these teams can each provide a wealth of knowledge for the other on what trends they are seeing and why. If Workforce Planners notice an increase in AHT, the Quality Analysts can give the insight into why this is happening and the teams can work together to look at options to reduce it.  
Workforce Management is the key to providing an efficient service and Quality Assurance is the key to being effective. 

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.

When taking into account the actual number of agents that have left the contact centre in the last 12 months, the raw turnover rate of full-time agents in Australia has decreased slightly from 40% in 2010 to 37% in 2011. For Australian part-time agents, the raw turnover rate is currently 25%. In New Zealand, the raw turnover rate for full-time agents is 44% whilst for part-time agents the raw turnover rate is 53%. This has a large impact on Workforce Planning and was reflected as being the number one challenge for Workforce Planners in our Workforce Management Market report. Not only do Workforce Planners need to plan for attrition and build it into their forecasts but they also need to incorporate enough time for the recruitment and training phases to ensure that the correct amount of agents are available when required.

As a Workforce Planner it is important to understand attrition and to be able to analyse the results in different ways.

Annual Attrition Rate

The formula to calculate annual attrition rate is the number of staff that have left the centre over the year divided by the average number of staff employed. For the numbers in Table A, the attrition rate would be calculated by dividing 64 (the number of departing staff) by the average number of staff (181.5), resulting in an annual attrition rate of 35%.

Annual Attrition % = Number of staff who have left over the period/ average number of staff employed over the period x 100

Annual attrition is useful to know however there are other ways of looking at this information which may help to provide more information about why staff are leaving.

Internal versus External

When your staff leave where do they go? Typically this is categorised into either internal or external attrition.

1. Internal Attrition: staff move to other positions within the organisation.
2. External Attrition: staff leave the organisation completely.

If you have a significant number of staff moving to other areas within the organisation is it possible to create a business case for getting an increased staffing and training budget?

Voluntary versus Involuntary attrition

Why are your staff leaving? Is it because HR are recruiting the wrong type of people? By looking at the results of the exit interviews and comparing voluntary versus involuntary turnover you may see some trends that could be avoided.

Team Attrition

Do some teams have higher turnover rates than others? If there are teams with really low attrition in comparison to others, there may be motivation or team leading tips that could be passed on to other leaders.

Contact Type Attrition

Are some contact types more stressful than others and as a result is the attrition higher in those areas? If you find that certain contact types have very high attrition, you’ll want to know why. Is it because the type of call is more stressful or is it because of understaffing in this area?

Performance based Attrition

What type of staff are leaving, is it your high performers or low performers.

Demographic Attrition

Does it tend to be more male or female based attrition or within a certain age bracket? This again may lead you to look more closely at the agents who are being recruited.

By keeping track of your attrition rates and looking at the numbers in different ways you may start to see trends that can be avoided.