Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Preventing Losses from Time Theft in the Contact Center
“Wage theft” is a concept we often hear in conjunction with employers who stiff workers by failing to pay overtime, docking pay for job-related training or simply not paying workers for the time they worked. Employees aren’t always the victims, however: wage theft’s opposite, “time theft” can victimize employers, as well. Think of scenarios in which workers leave early and have a friend clock them out hours later. Time theft of this nature costs American businesses a great deal of money – it’s a problem that affects about 75 percent of businesses, according to some studies -- and it’s not always an easy or inexpensive problem to remedy.
But remedies need to be found: time theft causes employers to distrust employees, which sets up a culture of suspicion. Draconian measures to combat it punish honest employees, and risk damaging employee engagement. It’s estimated that companies lose about seven percent of their organization’s gross annual payroll to time theft, according to the American Payroll Association. So despite the discomfort it introduces into the workplace, time theft is an issue that must be confronted, according to Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software, in a recent blog post.
“While many contact center managers may not worry about an agent checking his or her Facebook (News - Alert) page for a few minutes on company time, they will certainly not tolerate when one agent clocks in a fellow agent who never showed up at all,” he wrote.
Traditional methods of time-keeping such as punch-clocks or paper time cards are highly vulnerable to time theft, because they lack oversight and accountability. According to Ciarlo, a workforce optimization solution can be one of the best ways to combat time theft without becoming too draconian.
“A workforce optimization (WFO) solution may be the best option for making sure that there is no discrepancy between the hours declared and the hours truly worked,” he wrote. “One of the primary benefits of WFO is increased productivity and service levels, and these are achieved in part by functionality that accurately records the number of hours worked.”
By tracking agent adherence to planned schedules and determining agent work time accounts, these solutions can help optimize all aspects of the workforce, including scheduling and hours worked. Some solutions, including Monet’s, provide full-motion video and audio capture, which documents what contact center agents are doing at any given time during their shifts, making it much harder for workers to “’fudge” their hours.
While no one wants to run a contact center that seems like a prison camp – it would combat efforts to make employees feel like a trusted member of the organizational “family” – it’s naïve to operate in a climate of denial when it comes to a large workforce. Workforce optimization – already in use in many contact centers – is a great middle ground.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi