Banked Hours

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Look for the post about '1820 contracts' on this page
http://www.callcentrevoice.com/topic.asp?forumid=13&threadid=2377

We use banked hours, and it is generally well received. We tend to mainly use it so that when staff work a Saturday (which is a shorter day) they get a full day off during the week, and dont miss out on any pay. This means they bank 3 hours, and come the busy season we have an extra 30 hours we can "ask" of them.

I try and avoid it being the other way round, as everyone should have the opportunity to earn overtime at some point. Plus it can be tricky as agents who are owed hours have clear ideas when they want to cash them in.

Back on the topic of agents owing hours, it tends to fall into two camps, those that clear them when required, and those that are happy to just have a number get larger and larger till they leave, and have it come out of their final pay check.

There are a few practices that can be put in to place to avoid too many hours being banked or having a lot of variance, which I have experience with. If you are interested I will write up a bit more.

Ok,

Well, banked hours (in my opinion) can really be a balancing act. As mentioned some people like it, others are very hot on the fact that at the end of the day they will be getting paid less (after all they are getting paid at normal rate hours that they would normally be able to work as overtime)

from a scheduling point of view what you want is for everyone to owe the same number of hours, as this will give you the most options in terms of offering out extra hours. Here is a copy of the hours owed by one of my teams.

-11.25
-5
-5
-2
-1.75
0
1.5
1.5
4
7
11.5
17.25
17.75
17.75
21

As can be seen there is quite a bit of variance, and 5 people either owe nothing, or are owed hours. This means I cant schedule them for extra hours within hitting overtime pay (which of course we want to avoid). This level of variance will naturally emerge as some people like to leave early when it's quiet, or don't have many social commitments and can pick up extra hours at the drop of a hat.

To counter balance this you could (and I do) try any of the three following (there are probably many other ways I haven't thought of)

Prioritise overtime offers to those with the most hours (this way when it really gets busy, hopefully those who owe the least hours, will still owe some. Sadly this in a roundabout way means starting with those who are least likely to say yes to overtime.

Prioritise offering short days to those who owe the least hours. As above this will also mean asking those least likely to say yes.

We have some banked hour based scheduling. At my place of work this is done in the form of short and long Saturdays. Unlike the point mentioned above it isn't dependant on the agent agreeing. For us everyone starts working on Saturday morning at the same time, and as it quiets in the afternoon the agents gradually drop off. We have scheduled finish times of either 2,3,4 or 5pm. Rather than scheduling this on a rotating pattern I tend to do this so those with the least banked hours get the shorter Saturday shift, and consequently bank more hours than those working till 5pm. I haven't encountered any complaints about "why do I always get the longer Saturday..." but it's the sort of thing that could come up, so only do this point if you are confident in delivering the answer.

Lastly, and possibly the most effective, although tricky to schedule is a simple swap of hours.

if I have someone working 9-5 who owes us 20 hours and someone working 11-7 who owes 5 hours. I could offer the agent working till 7 the option to leave two hours early (bring them to 7 banked hours) and give the 9-5 agent the option of clearing 2 hours and working till 7. Providing they are equally skilled there is no impact on resource levels, and they are now at 7 hours and 18. Do this a couple more times and they will be on 11 and 14, so its kind of a free win (no downside) but does require both parties to be up for it, which is why it can be tricky.

I think that's most of what comes to hand immediately. Please let me know if any of it isn't clear, or if you have any other questions, as it is a broad topic and I probably missed a few points.

Thanks KevinP, great help