Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Unpredictable Schedules Are a Major Problem for U.S. Workers
Irregular and unpredictable schedules are a major burden on American families, and the call center industry is one of the biggest offenders. Last minute scheduling, erratic working hours and unpredictable paychecks are all contributing factors in a market that has one of the largest turnover rates in the workforce.
According to new research from the Shift Project at the University of California, minority groups and women are hurt the most by erratic scheduling. The findings are based on a survey of 30,000 hourly workers who earned the same wages, but had varying degrees of predictability in their schedules. Black and Hispanic women have the worst work schedules in the country, while white men have the best, according to the study. The children of workers with unstable schedules were also shown to have worse behavior and more inconsistent childcare than those whose parents had stable and reliable schedules.
The call center is one of the biggest culprits when it comes to expecting workers to be “on call” and available to come in at the last minute. That means workers cannot adequately plan for childcare and other important facets of their family lives and also cannot count on receiving a steady paycheck from week to week.
“We’re talking about serious deprivation from relentlessly unstable paychecks,” said Daniel Schneider, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who works on the Shift Project along with sociologist Kristen Harknett from the University of California, San Francisco. “We think what’s left after parsing out all these other reasons is discrimination.”
Fortunately a number of cities and states, including New York and San Francisco, are working to fix the situation by passing fair scheduling laws to protect workers. And CT Representative Rosa DeLauro recently announced plans to reintroduce the Schedules That Work Act in tandem with Senator Elizabeth Warren. The Act requires U.S. employers to provide schedules at least two weeks in advance and compensate employees if schedules are changed abruptly or are long or deemed difficult.
Passage of the Act would have wide-reaching implications for the call center industry and call center scheduling at large. More than ever, call center managers and schedulers will need to rely on technology and automation to reliably predict call flows and volume to create efficient schedules well in advance. AI is increasingly being used in call center solutions to automatically forecast and generate schedules and ease the burden on human managers and schedulers. The result is consistently better service levels and accurate staffing, as well as predictable and reliable schedules for call center agents and staff.
Edited by Maurice Nagle