Exploiting the strategic value of Workforce Management

Part 2 of Workforce Management Foundations, by Jeff Austin

Within a call centre, workforce management (WFM) is, typically, employed to ensure maximum logistical efficiency by maintaining the most effective balance between staffing and service level requirements. However, WFM can add much more strategic value and be a transforming business enabler. In this article, the second in a three part series looking at how to leverage your WFM capabilities, Jeff Austin, Managing Director of Siyandza Skills Development Training, explains how correctly integrating Capacity Planning into the process is the key to evolving WFM into a powerful strategic decision making tool.

In the first article in this series - Laying the right Workforce Management Foundations - we looked at the forecasting and scheduling process and how to make sure the right WFM foundations are in place. In this article, we are going to look at capacity planning and how using this properly can convert WFM into a strategic business enabler.

Exploiting the strategic value

Once all the WFM core basics are in place within the organisation (see Part 1 for further detail), the WFM team will be able to act as an enabler for the rest of the Call Centre. As we shall see, the value and outputs a WFM team with a solid foundation can provide the business are substantial, but, all too often, Call Centres do not appreciate or use this potential capability.

In many instances, this is a consequence of the existence of ‘organisational silos’ ─ where the various departments within the Call Centre operate independently of each other and only interact where required (if they interact at all). A classic example of this is when the marketing department only informs the customer service channel (i.e. call centre) about a large campaign hours before its launch (if at all). In such circumstances, the Call Centre is unlikely to be able to handle the higher volumes of calls and this could result in missed sales or missed service level targets.

Yet, once the correct foundations are in place, the WFM department will be in possession of detailed information that will enable every other department within the Call Centre to make better decisions, particularly strategic decisions about what is going to happen in the future and how best to plan for these changes.

The WFM team should be doing more than staff scheduling and assisting the business with overall resource management. The department is in the unique position of being able to support the business in goal-setting exercises and determining the growth in resources required across the organisation. Such resource categories would, typically, include:

• IT equipment (computers, software licenses, bandwidth, etc.).
• Furniture and floor space for staff.
• Additional support staff, such as quality assurance specialists, trainers, HR staff and Team Leaders.
• Additional staff along other delivery channels.
• Training space (to handle growth, as well as training schedules).
• Telco minutes, phones and headsets required.

Obviously, central to all of the above resource growth decisions are budgetary and financial planning considerations. For instance, in a scenario where there are continuously increasing call volumes, such as in the graph below, the Call Centre will need to make numerous strategic and financial decisions about how best to continuously handle such a growth pattern.



The WFM team has a pivotal role to play during predictive strategic planning sessions like these because they are best able to forecast the nature and impact of future events on the Call Centre.

Setting up ratios

One of the best ways of employing the WFM team as a strategic enabler within the business is to create a set of ratios ─ determined by various factors across the organisation ─ that are tracked by the WFM team. These ratios then alert the WFM team to future events that are likely to require additional resources.

Such ratios could include:

• Sales-to-calls ─ the number of sales that will be generated within a given time frame. This can also be related to ratios in the production and delivery channels of the organisation.
• Floor space-to-staff ─ the amount of floor space required per person. This will help the organisation determine precisely when it will need to look at expanding.
• Staffing ratios ─ for example, Team Leader-to-agent and Manager-to-Team Leader. Such operational ratios are vital in anticipating required personnel levels and can also be used to inform HR development and training strategies.
• Activity-to-rest ─ the frequency, duration and numbers of staff taking breaks at a given time. These ratios can also help food and snack suppliers with their demand planning.
• Support-to-staff ─ ratios for all of the support departments within the Call Centre (i.e. the number of receptionists, trainers, WFM staff, etc. required per member of staff).
• QA-to-calls ─ the percentage of calls that need to be monitored using the quality assessment process. This is then applied to the number of quality assessments that a quality assurance specialist can complete in a day (including appropriate people and service level factors) and used to determine the number of Quality Assurance staff needed.

Creating a capacity planning model

In order to manage all of the above, the WFM department will need to create a Capacity Planning (resource management) model. It should include all of the ratios determined by the business, as well as forecast volumes, and track the variance of these inputs. Updated and managed regularly, the model will then form the basis of all reporting and strategic communication between the WFM team and the rest of the business.

A single individual within the WFM department would, usually, take ownership of the Capacity Planning model and collate the various data inputs from the various stakeholders throughout the organisation, as well as other members of the WFM team.

Depending on the complexity of the model, it is always constructive to include financial inputs. This will make sure that the broader financial impacts of the modelled scenarios are also considered during the decision making process.

Understanding the future

By integrating Capacity Planning into its WFM process, a Call Centre is able to evolve its forecasting and scheduling foundation into a powerful tool that enables it to constantly anticipate and adapt to its changing business environment. Armed with accurate data, the WFM team can not only help the organisation operate at optimal maximum logistical efficiency, but better understand what is going to happen in the future and more effectively plan for it.

In the third and final part of this series, Jeff Austin explains how correctly applying the strategic outputs of an evolved WFM department can transform a Call Centre from a reactive to a proactive business.


In part 3 - Transforming the Call Centre with evolved Workforce Management - of this series, Jeff Austin looks at transforming a call centre from a reactive to a proactive business.