The Impact of Schedule Modification on Adherence

Operations Management, Metrics/Performance Measurement, Adherence to schedule, Measuring properly, Setting objective for

Oct 17, 2012

Formal workforce management is a new concept in our call center, as well as all of the related metrics, including Schedule Adherence. My question is, at what point in time do you dis-allow an exisiting schedule to be modified? Do you update the schedule for sick or tardy events? I would say no since they are unplanned/unscheduled events. Example: An employee does not work any of their scheduled shift because they are out on an excused absence for illness. Currently, we would modify the schedule to reflect the absence. However, the employee and department will be in adherence because we have changed their scheduled activity to "sick."

– Daniel Downey

Answers

  • Marnee Downing Posted at 7:52AM on Jan 7, 2013

    Daniel -- I am accustomed to adherence being about what an agent has done or not done when working. In that vein, a tardy impacts the agent's adherence, but unless the center is very small does not have a significant impact on the overall adherence for the center. Daily events, pre-approved absences, call outs, scheduled training sessions, would all be adjusted out. Typically there is a deadline early the following day for the supervisor to submit changes and after that they are stuck with the poor score -- changes behavior very quickly. Late arrivals and early departures are also adjusted based on timely submittal to a workforce team. Schedule adherence is a great tool for measuring is the agent where they are suppose to be, when they are suppose to be, Are they available when suppose to be? At break? In a meeting all on time? Or are they trying to manipulate the system and go to lunch with a friend? Adherence helps supervisors hold agents accountable for poor behavior.

  • Jeff Palzkill Posted at 7:50AM on Jan 17, 2013

    Here is a radically different thought process on adherence. Adherence is an interesting indicator for people doing the right thing at the right time, but in my opinion is very much overused in the call center world. I've used the Aspect eSP and Empower systems to allow agents to put in their own schedule changes to include bathroom breaks! The trick with adherence is that we'd all like everything to run smoothly and everyone go to breaks on time, never need a bathroom break or instantly teleport from their cubicle to a meeting and back. This just doesn't happen - so by recording reasons WHY adherence suffers (a memo in the Empower system was required when we used the adherence metric) and then review and find the reasons for adherence issues - are we scheduling a meeting from 1pm to 2pm in a different building but expecting the agent to logout/go into Aux and magically appear at the meeting at 1pm? The concept here is travel time for meetings - if the meeting starts at 1pm do you schedule the agent off phones at 1255pm or do you schedule a 1 hour meeting for 45 minutes of content (i.e. the real meeting starts at 110pm and is done at 155pm)? So a root cause analysis on why Agent X is not adhering to a schedule - long talk times making break late, or Agent Y is adhering too well to a schedule by going to ACW 2 minutes before their break so they can break right on time is needed as opposed to looking at a statistic by itself. jeff palzkill, MSTM, CCOM

  • Rachel Roberts Posted at 7:53AM on Feb 19, 2013

    Are you asking whether or not to punish an associate by lowering their adherence score if they take off sick? That seems very harsh to me. No one should ever be punished for LEGITIMATE sick leave. That's just ridiculous.

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