Practical guide to

MODERN WORKFORCE
planning
Ref: 23:10:17-01:52
Human resources, once considered a business cost, have Contents
become an asset. And employee expectations have changed
• Introduction
with the disruption of work environments in this age of digital.
They want more flexibility with their schedules, a more fulfilling • Phase 1: Walk: Master the basics
work life and recognition for the value they provide in serving
• Phase 2: Run: Validate. Adjust. Repeat.
customers. How businesses respond can make a major
difference in meeting strategic goals. • Phase 3: Fly: Dig deeper into your data

Artificial intelligence (AI) has created new opportunities in • Conclusion

workforce management and planning that go beyond automating
employee schedules to support managers, agents, bots and any
mix of part-time or seasonal workers. When you optimize all your
call center resources, you’ll give employees a more active role in
their success. And that will boost engagement.

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Why businesses are modernizing
workforce planning now
Every business wants the right staff in place at the right time
to support customers and meet performance objectives. For
the modern contact center, that has become more complex. Top benefits of workforce planning
Employees want to make a difference, tackle more challenging • Enhanced customer experience due to
work and have more flexibility in their schedules. Without that, improved employee engagement
they’ll leave. Recent research estimates it costs $10,000–
• Reduced employee burnout and greater retention
$20,000 to replace a call center agent. When employees are
engaged and satisfied with their job, they have a direct and • Improved employee decision-making

positive impact on customer experience and the business overall. and smoother operations

There are also more basic operational costs driving • More efficient processes and accurate forecasts

modernization. Planners often rely on slow and error-prone • More data available for continual improvements
manual processes. They cannot keep up with the type of
dynamic schedules and forecasting needed to make the best
use of all resources — full-time employees, temporary workers,
bots — mixed with seasonal and market fluctuations. Your staff
needs tools that reduce manual processes in favor of modern,
systematic solutions.

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Align long-term goals with empathetic experiences
Making business decisions can become a more collaborative
process when you partner with employees. Let agents share
insights into how customers think, feel and act throughout their
journeys, giving you a better sense of how to engage your team.
Use these guidelines to apply empathy to workforce planning
and management.

Focus areas Business value

• Automated listening and learning: Use 100% of interaction • Improve process effectiveness: Simplify workflows to
data to reduce employee turnover by eliminating friction ensure proper staffing; align with schedule requests and
between employees, customers and management. regulations; automate time off to empower employees.

• Real-time interaction analysis: Use AI to analyze • Reduce employee turnover: Gamification creates engaging
data, find patterns of excellence and understand goals and team environment; give employees better training
root causes of issues to predict behavior. by identifying knowledge gaps and causes of disengagement.

• Intuitive, human-centric employee experience: Nudge • Improve performance and quality metrics: Use
employee behaviors and values closer toward business interaction data to find patterns and training needs
goals by building confidence in their abilities. connected to customer topics and sentiment trends.
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Start here: modern workforce
planning and forecasting
Face the challenges
Manual processes won’t give you the efficiency and
flexibility needed for long-term success. These methods
can’t account for the variety of schedules and roles
needed in a modern contact center. And with continual
updating, they’re often inaccurate.
Walk. Run. Fly.
Why it’s so important Whether you’re ready to understand and
Employees want more flexibility. Building schedules that predict staffing requirements across all digital
engage employees and address their needs reduces channels or want more simplicity and flexibility
attrition. It also supports an organization’s service-level in how you manage employee schedules — our
goals and saves time by considering agent preferences Walk, Run, Fly approach can take you through
and adjusting to last-minute demands or issues. the journey.

How Genesys addresses it

Genesys uses AI-powered software to generate schedules,
making a planner’s job easier and more accurate. These
tools maximize efficiency by balancing the supply and
demand of resources with a systematic approach
that eliminates human bias and errors — while giving
employees the flexibility they want.

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Phase 1

Walk: master
the basics

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Walk

Master the basics

Planners are under increasing pressure to staff call
centers, better manage employees’ schedules and
forecast further out — and they need to do this more
accurately. This requires good data and a shift away
from manual processes; it begins in the “Walk” phase
of workforce planning. Once you understand what’s
already working and determine what you need to
improve your workforce planning, you’ll gain more control
over the chaos.

Use case
Andy has worked as a planner for years. But it’s always been a
struggle to keep his scheduling spreadsheet up to date within the
constraints of labor laws and regulations — as well as employee
preferences. While he works within his budget, he’d like to do more
to ensure his call center staff delivers on business outcomes in
the most efficient way possible. To modernize processes and keep
employees happy, Andy needs to understand the data.

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WALK

Assess your organizational Tips

and data requirements
Examine your demographics and generational
No matter your level of maturity with workforce planning, working styles if you have many employees
success requires a long-term vision that’s driven by nearing retirement age, or if younger
data. Start by assessing your workload as a planner employees tend to have higher turnover rates.
and forecaster, including how much time you spend
on defining requirements, and creating and modifying Representation of protected classes will be
schedules using manual methods. The amount of time will important for government contractors who
likely be an eye-opener. must comply with applicable affirmative action
plan requirements.
Once you’re committed to a data-driven approach, define
the data sources needed to support your business Workforce policies and constraints, such
outcomes, capture that information and determine as your industry, business type, locations
whether you have the talent to fill those needs. and regulations, will vary. You’ll also need to
Document all your customer and employee engagement consider universal regulations such as labor
channels and which interactions occur on each one. Then laws, the Health Insurance Portability and
assess each channel for: Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), GDPR,
the Payment Card Industry Data Security
• Average engagement time
Standard (PCI DSS) and the National Do Not
• Specific skills required Call Registry.

• Hours of coverage (e.g., 24/7 or

standard business hours)

• Interaction volume

• Employee skills and availability 8

WALK

Map out your resource plan

Resource planning is an ongoing process. It might include Tips TO IMPROVE accuracy

hiring plans, who to hire and the best personalities to get
• Normalize your call volume to establish
the work done. For example, different skills are required
full-time equivalent requirements.
for handling emergency calls than selling makeup
over the phone. For every employee, the attitudes and • Isolate trends and patterns for events
competencies they need should match your customer and public holidays. Anticipate attrition
segmentation and engagement plan. rates, shrinkage, turnover and retirement.

Analyze your data in view of what you currently have and • Forecast volume and average
what you need to add. A gap analysis can reveal trends handle time (AHT).
and seasonality. Also note the differences between
• Perform demand analysis to fine-tune
interaction types, such as interactions from product
resource allocation and build staffing
launch campaigns, which typically have more resources
requirements based on your data.
allocated in terms of talent, offers or web pages. Consider
how these differ from other interactions, including by • Review your workload demand monthly,
channel use and customer demographics — and how to respecting legislative requirements
apply those lessons. by location and industry.

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WALK

Create schedules that support

the business and employees

Shifts used to be referred to as segments for lunch, breaks

or work in general. Modern workforce planning uses
the term “workplan.” The idea is that, instead of a fixed
schedule, you offer employees a template, preferably using
an app. It gives them more flexibility and control to change
their schedules, which are still based on your business
rules. This flexibility improves employee engagement Tip
and empowers them as valued team members rather
Once you’ve identified gaps in coverage, plan ways
than a cost.
to address them with workplans that focus more
One of the most powerful differences in modern workforce on punctuality than fixed adherence.
planning is looking closely at why employees are leaving
rather than simply pushing them to produce. Even a
moderate amount of attrition has a significant impact
on profitability; it raises the costs of recruiting, hiring and
training. Most importantly, it can negatively affect the
quality of the care and service your center provides.

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WALK

Measure your results Track these KPIs and what

you’ve learned from them:
Once jobs or interactions are complete, capture what
• Attrition – Learn to negotiate with employees
you’ve learned by answering these questions and
and business leaders so that business goals are
analyzing the results by engagement category:
balanced with empathy for employee needs.
• Did you get what you wanted out of it? • Employee satisfaction – Gain insights with
feedback from collaboration and internal, company-
• Was the agent’s lead approved as part of your process?
wide communication such as surveys.
• Was the customer handled well with FCR? • Education and training – Identify when and how to
deliver it, and how to measure its effectiveness.
• Did the team leader support and drive
the employee’s performance? • Service-level goals – Set your benchmarks
and goals for call volume, AHT, schedule
punctuality and call resolution.

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WALK

Checklist
Before you run:

Determine anticipated volume and the channels needed

to handle it.

Define roles and responsibilities, as well as the required

number of resources in each role, the mix of skills needed
and staff segmentation.

Document the location of your workforce: On-site, At the end of the Walk
hybrid or remote.
phase, you’ll see signs of
Document the shifts offered to agents, including start improvement with initial
times, breaks and lunch times.
planning and begin gathering
Identify ways to create practical flexibility (for example, feedback from employees.
start times between 9:00–9:30 AM rather than a fixed start
time of 9:00 AM).

Document processes on how you’ll manage forecasting,

scheduling, real-time monitoring, time off and training.

Communicate the implications of any changes required for

planning, why they’re necessary and their benefits.

Build a service-level recovery plan to use when it’s apparent

that your contact center is over- or understaffed.

Validate changes to previous patterns and trends. 12

Phase 2

Run: Validate.
Adjust. Repeat.

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RUN

Validate. Adjust. Repeat.

Forecasting is a dynamic process that requires continual
review and refinement to be effective. In the Run phase,
you’ll build on your workplans to increase accuracy,
efficiency and overall business success — and adjust your
forecasting for better results.

Use case
New feedback shows Andy that employees appreciate being able to
adjust their own schedules. He has also started analyzing historical
data and comparing it with his forecasts. This review identified
several gaps and inaccuracies, such as the time required for training.
And Andy uses this data to better plan for an upcoming marketing
campaign. He’s also talking more with internal peers whose plans
and processes affect agents. With a better understanding of the data
he needs to input, Andy can automate the forecasting process.

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RUN

Review all relevant

data and feedback
Gather KPI data from the Walk phase on customer Tips
interactions and get started. This data should come
from many different sources: customer and employee Assess external factors that might influence
feedback, survey results, topics, sentiment analysis, and what you have and what you need.
call outcomes. You should also review historical workforce
data and look for patterns. Labor market trends/predictions – Depending
on unemployment rates, unfilled jobs can
You’ll see where the forecast was inaccurate — and why. influence your ability to backfill quickly and
Call volume is a good indicator, as well as AHT and call economically.
resolution rate. Did these come close to your forecast? Go
back to your initial plans and adjust, as needed. Business trends – Customer interactions are
moving to digital channels, which impacts
Review your scheduling plans and how well they mapped
other behaviors.
to actual agent hours. Get employee feedback on how they
feel about their schedules and workload to gain a sense of
Industry trends – Correlate these with how they
the value of this planning from the employee perspective.
might impact demand on your engagements.
If they acknowledge the new flexibility, you’re on track to
giving employees more of the work-life balance they seek.

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RUN

Compare your KPIs to

benchmarks and investigate
In this phase of your planning process, you’re looking for
outliers — where expectations don’t match actuals. If your
AHT is high, your agents might not have the right skills, or
your settings could be incorrect.
Plan for the unexpected
• Look at your turnover trends.
If your schedule plans differ from the actual time worked,
it could be that employees are arriving late or working • Think about succession planning
overtime. You might not have adjusted for seasonality, and career development.
which can change from month to month. Marketing
• Consider how the cost and speed of
campaigns also rely on agent availability and bandwidth to
your hiring plans impact efficiency.
handle the number of engagements.
• Decide on the best times to coach
Look at your staffing levels if you suffer from high call
and train around peak volume.
abandonment rates. If the abandonment is high before
an engagement occurs, it could result from understaffing • Consider how new digital channels
that led to customer frustration during a long wait. The will affect your workforce planning.
opposite problem is a high employee idle rate; assuming
there were no technology issues, this could indicate
overstaffing.

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RUN

Make the most impactful

changes first

With a better understanding of workforce planning and its

impact, you’re ready to adjust your forecast and schedule while
examining any other gaps revealed during this process.
Tip
Your AHT tells you how many interactions an agent can take
Create shifts that rotate, typically on
during a shift. To reduce this metric, look at repetitive types
a weekly basis. This gives agents the
of interactions that can be handled through automation —
opportunity to work all shifts, both
specifically bots.
desired and undesired, which balances
Get agents in sync with your schedules and then continually the distribution of popular and less
monitor the schedules. Start by verifying your forecast with popular working times and days.
historical data. For example, has schedule adherence and
And when you select workplans, create
punctuality improved? To fill potential resource gaps, some
a predictable pattern for the selected
companies are hiring “gig” workers. This takes the pressure off
workplans and have your system rotate
planners who don’t have the budget for additional employees. It
them weekly.
also enables their regular employees to focus more on customer
experience than productivity.

AI gives you even more opportunity to improve the accuracy of

your forecasting. The “ensemble” method is a post-processing
activity that evaluates multiple forecasting models — such as
time-series analysis, regression analysis and simulation modeling
— to create a single integrated forecast. By combining various
models, you avoid any situations where a peak or valley can be
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overvalued by one model.
RUN

Measure your results

• Employee Net Promoter Score – Track • Customer satisfaction surveys – If

changes and include more questions workloads are more balanced, agents
related to planning improvements. should be offering better service and
more effective engagement.
• Shift change requests – In addition to
capturing basic data, get feedback on explicit • Call abandonment rates – When this rate
reasons. Changes could be due to more is high, it could indicate understaffing,
accurate forecasts or an easier process. especially when calls are dropped
before an engagement occurs.
• Queue wait times – While call length might
increase due to agent availability, this is still • Monitoring – Perform intraday, real-time
a major indicator of customer satisfaction. monitoring to diagnose and solve problems
faster. This will also give you a view into work
• Agent idle rate – This is typically related
performed by agents who work remotely.
to overstaffing; better forecasting should
result in a lower rate. Before cutting hours,
review your plan to see if you’re scheduling
the right agent with the right skills to
address multiple types of engagements.

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RUN

Checklist
Before you fly:

Gather current reports and determine if they’re still relevant,

valid and useful.

Document required metrics, measurements and statistics

with their current definitions, calculations and targets. By the end of the Run phase, your
Identify potential gaps in current and future reporting. attention to workforce planning is showing
Define your future needs and requirements. results. You’ve begun automating your
Identify sources of reporting metrics and review the level
forecasting process to improve service
of effort needed to create and deliver reports. Focus on gaps. Productivity is up and initial feedback
opportunities to automate. shows that agents are happy about the
Verify the accuracy of calculations and data
flexibility and scheduling options.
sources before you hold employees accountable for
performance objectives.

Document the time spent planning and forecasting.

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Phase 3

FLY: Dig deeper

into your data

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FLY

Validate. Adjust. Repeat.

In the Fly phase, you can use AI to simplify workforce
planning and extend your forecast length. With
automation and AI-powered solutions, you’ll spend more
time focused on understanding data and delivering
value from it than wasting time moving data around
manually. And you’ll win with more accurate forecasting
and scheduling. Flexible rules, time-off management and
accessibility are just a few employee benefits.

Use case
AI gives employees full visibility into schedules and that transparency
makes life a lot easier for Andy. He can forecast further ahead so
that employees understand expectations. And his forecasts are
accurate for staffing needs mapped to available resources. If Andy’s
teams need more help, he can bring in short-term workers and train
them quickly using modules that cover specific tasks. While Andy
used to feel like the slow and inefficient “bad guy” of planning, now
he’s making work life better for everyone.

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FLY

Move from too slow to

fast and accurate
Old forecasting approaches were manual and tedious,
making them vulnerable to human error and inaccuracies.
Those errors can impact budget and employee By 2025, customer service
satisfaction.
organizations that embed
An AI-powered solution can completely automate the
forecasting process, including data collection and AI in their multichannel
preparation. AI takes the information that planners enter customer engagement
and automatically detects operating hours, spots outliers
and anomalies, and accounts for special events or dates platform will elevate
that could cause variations from the norm. By choosing operational efficiency by 25%.
from dozens of algorithms and testing thousands of
configurations with hundreds of thousands of iterations, 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Workforce
AI can generate accurate forecasts in seconds — and Engagement Management
automatically choose the most accurate model for
optimal service to meet your unique needs.

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FLY

Tap into patterns using

predictive routing

With a data-based understanding of customer

segmentation and intents, you can form predictions
about how many calls — or Instagram messages — Tip
you’ll get, or how many times customers will call the
Run “what-if” analyses to estimate the impact
billing department.
of changes in call, staffing or performance
Using AI-powered predictive routing lets you match assumptions. For example, you might have
customers in real time with the most suitable agent to conflicting or uncertain estimates of call volumes
optimize your performance and business outcomes. for an upcoming marketing campaign. A what-
Predictive routing does this by combining both historic if analysis would show you the staffing levels
and real-time customer, agent and interaction data — required to maintain service quality performance
using machine learning to identify patterns in the data over a range of potential call volumes — giving you
about which agents are suited to which types of work. the insight needed to forecast and plan schedules.

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FLY

Maximize automation for AI plays an important role in

personalized scheduling improving agent productivity.
In the Fly phase, AI enables you to personalize schedules For example, it suggests
rather than manually creating and updating general knowledge content based on
schedules to fit any employee.
the customer’s message and
Planners can pre-populate schedules based on data
insights and new information gathered via feedback.
intent. This allows the agent
For example, have new employees automatically to become a part of the AI
populate into your schedule. You can also make global content feedback loop for
adjustments to meet other needs, such as regular or ad
hoc staff meetings.
continuous optimization.

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FLY

Measure your results

• Monitor for anomalies and adjust for improvement. “With Genesys Workforce
• Review AI algorithms for accuracy, speed and Engagement Management,
effectiveness. we pretty much know
how our day is looking
• AI-powered forecasting should consistently exceed
95% accuracy.
regarding shifts, queues
and staffing levels.”
• Document time saved on planning and forecasting.
Chip Sugrue, VP Customer Strategies,
• Compare employee satisfaction and service-level goals American Heart Association

with benchmarks established in the Walk phase.

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FLY

Checklist

Generate load-based schedules and notify agents

automatically.

Solicit agent input for more ways to simplify their workflow

and processes. As you start to Fly, you’ll find new
Celebrate successes with ongoing recognition and rewards. opportunities in your AI data to create
more meaningful engagement with your
Incorporate employee profiles and preferences into
automated scheduling and forecasting. employees. Many organizations partner
with a third-party company like Genesys
Use business intelligence in your forecast, such as
to fully implement the Fly phase.
marketing campaigns, industry trends and local job market
competition.

If you haven’t already, deploy an integrated mobile

app for agents.

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Conclusion

Planning for complex call centers is hard. Yet for decades,

spreadsheets have been the primary tool of workforce
planning. These old tools limited planners to control, fix
past problems and use scheduling workarounds. Now,
planning can be more predictable.
When you’re ready to fly,
By optimizing and automating many aspects of the Genesys can help you:
workforce planning process, contact centers can schedule
• Automate the capture of data to analyze
the appropriate employees for tasks at the appropriate
times to facilitate business goals. This flexibility and agility • Get your data AI-ready

also empower employees with better onboarding, training • Set up ways to continually monitor
and education. and improve employee engagement

Genesys can guide you through part or all of the process

to improve workforce planning and engagement. We’ve
pioneered Experience as a Service® to help organizations
SPEAK TO AN EXPERT
of all sizes provide true personalization at scale, interact
with empathy, and foster employee and customer trust
and loyalty — all through the power of cloud.

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ABOUT GENESYS

Every year, Genesys® orchestrates billions of remarkable customer

experiences for organizations in more than 100 countries. Through
the power of our cloud, digital and AI technologies, organizations can
realize Experience as a Service®, our vision for empathetic customer
experiences at scale. With Genesys, organizations have the power
to deliver proactive, predictive, and hyper-personalized experiences
to deepen their customer connection across every marketing, sales,
and service moment on any channel, while also improving employee
productivity and engagement. By transforming back-office technology
to a modern revenue velocity engine, Genesys enables true intimacy at
scale to foster customer trust and loyalty.

Visit us at genesys.com or call us at +1.888.436.3797.

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