The Hidden Cost of Poor Scheduling

“Scheduling-induced burnout is a significant component of the broader sort of burnout syndrome. It results directly from inappropriately, or poorly, managing your work schedules, that creates that chronic stress for agents.

Actually, there’s a definition from the World Health Organization as well, which is “a syndrome resulting from a chronic stress in the workplace that has not been successfully managed”, which from the context of the scheduling perspective is a primary contributor in contact centres.

And in fact I recently read, and I can’t quote you where it was from, that something like 35 to 40% of burnout issues are a result of scheduling issues, so it’s quite a significant thing in contact centres.”

“Problematic scheduling patterns are often at the root of the issue, so things like back-to-back scheduling patterns – late nights followed by immediate early mornings – are a really big contributor.

They can disrupt the circadian rhythm as well, so it’s really very important to make it work. Split-shifts often fragment the day and make personal life planning nearly impossible.

And, by the way, some of the things I’m mentioning here, it’s not a one-size-fits-all thing – so for some people split-shifts actually can very good, but just generally speaking, they often can create stress from a shift scheduling perspective.”

“Excessive workloads with high occupancy, when this leaves agents with barely any time to catch a breath between calls, can often cause that sort of burnout.”

“And then unpredictable last-minute changes in your schedules, so these can disrupt not only what you’re doing, but also impact personal commitments, and then create that chronic stress type scenario.”

“Another element I would say is lack of schedule control, so like when you implement a rigid scheduling system that doesn’t account for individual preferences or personal circumstances, I think this is another important point.

And also limited input into the actual creation themselves, similar to the preference, but this results in a profound lack of autonomy in their work–life balance preferences.”

“I’d also say  that micromanagement of adherence is in there as well, so sometimes this can also drive chronic stress and burnout-type situations because people are just seeking that number, rather than actually doing it for the right customer outcomes.”

“Every contact centre will be slightly different because it depends upon your set-up, and how much of the scheduling is emphasizing, or how far along you are, say, in your in your reference-type scheduling, or work–life balance-type activities.”

“Typically, burnout decreases agents’ confidence in their job, so this is going to directly impact the quality metrics of your contact centre, whether that’s customer experience or NPS and such like that.”

“Fatigue itself, which obviously is an outcome of burnout, can lead to higher average handle times, as agents struggle to focus or recall information because of that type of situation.

And also error rates as well may be linked to the quality side of things, as it could lead to more repeat calls, or customers’ frustrations, which then can lead on to that extra call volume.”

“And then I would say a last one, depending upon your business, you’re likely to experience higher escalation rates, because exhausted agents can lack the energy, or the patience, to fully resolve a contact, and therefore you’re likely to see that increase as well.”

“When in these types of situations, where you have potentially increased repeat rates, increased AHT, and increased escalations, you’re going to see more workload come in.

So the higher the amount of chronic stress, the more workload that’s created as a result of the failure demand, because of the things that weren’t done in the first place.

And you get into what I call this death spiral. What you end up doing is then going “okay, so how do we get ourselves back into a better service level position?”

So let’s work on maybe making our agents faster, which of course then has that effect of increased sickness, and all these sorts of things.

And I call it the death spiral of workforce planning because you could start with a fairly good service level, only because it’s being held up by agents that are basically being overworked, you’re going to see that descending spiral level, as you see those increased volumes, and AHT, and such like that.

And ultimately people will take breaks, so even if their occupancy is high, they’re going to need to take it eventually.”

“I always believe in data-driven wellness programmes wherever possible. So using workforce management analytics to identify those high-risk scheduling patterns, such as frequent changes, or insufficient rest periods, or excessive overtime, is one element that you can do.”

“Establishing those clear thresholds for how you want to intensify your schedule and your rest periods based upon those historical data, and then tracking those wellness indicators such as increasing absence patterns, declining schedule adherence, or performance variability.

That proactively identifies those types of high-risk agents who might be either suffering burnout right now or are likely to suffer burnout in the future, because of the scheduling method that you’re currently deploying.”

“Increase your schedule transparency and control, so developing things and deploying things like self-service options that allow agents to self-select shifts within service level constraints.”

“A shift-swapping platform is also really valuable as well, as it allows those agents to trade off shifts whilst they’re still maintaining the coverage requirements that you’ve got for your business.

“Implementing schedule notifications – I think actually, believe it or not, such a simple thing but it can make a big difference, so agents know what they can expect when with their schedule and start to make the plans and personal commitments outside with confidence.”

“Creating a streamlined time-off request system, I think if you haven’t already got that, that’s really important because that shows the real-time availability, and it makes it much easier for agents to self-select their holidays, and linked to the first one in the self-scheduling options.”

“I think when it comes to designing wellness-centric schedules, I would say that you can create forward-rotating schedules, so the morning, afternoon, and night that align with the natural body rhythms – I think that’s important.

Implementing mandatory minimum rest periods – you’ve got to do that anyway from a labour law perspective, but design it specifically, not just what you have to do from a regulation perspective, but also what you want to provide to your people, because they’ll have a trade-off in terms of business optimization versus agent wellness optimization.

And I think that creating preferred schedule templates as well, so agents can select based upon their lifestyle needs, is also a really good step for a business to take.”

“I think we’ve come a long way in workforce management to really improve this area, but there’s still lots of opportunity.

And I still think that often when a business hits that cost pressure, this is the sort of thing that gets put to the side, and actually in fact it’s one of those metrics like I mentioned in that death spiral scenario that you actually do need to look after, and it has real impacts on your business outcomes.

So, putting it to the side when cost becomes a pressure is actually self-defeating, because you’re going to end up putting cost into your business as a result of not looking after the wellness of your agents.”