Overview
Workforce planning is essential to running a cost-effective call center. Proper planning determines the number and skill set of employees needed to handle the workload, probable attrition rate, and what is required to assure that occupancy, shrinkage, SLAs, and other operational goals can be met. Workforce planning is also tricky because it requires us to see into the future and plan for various scenarios, some of which have a high probability of occurring and others that have a low chance of happening. Ideally, workforce planners should be able to model any number of scenarios based on different forecast data. If forecast data are accurate, the resulting plans are converted into scheduling, hiring, onboarding, and training activities. If forecasts are off, planners can easily model the “new reality” and adjust the plan quickly.