Workforce Management Featured Article

Helping Employees through the Transition of New Workforce Management Solutions

In the contact center, the critical function of workforce management has undergone some major changes in the last two decades. Once accomplished with graph paper and complex algorithms by someone who took quantitative analysis in college (and didn’t sleep through it, like the rest of us), managing schedules and estimating call traffic was both an art and a science.

Later came Excel spreadsheets, which made the job a little easier. But it wasn’t until the advent of the modern workforce management solution that contact centers were suddenly able to build reliable schedules, manage their workers and factor in a variety of “what if” scenarios to ensure coverage at all times.

While modern workforce management has been a great way for contact centers to improve the customer experience and make better use of their human resources, they haven’t always been a roaring success with contact center employees.

According to a recent post on the Kronos’ (News - Alert) Workforce Institute blog by Bob Clements, senior vice president and chief workforce management evangelist at Axsium, one of the biggest challenges of a new workforce management solution is selling the idea to workers.

“For most people, one of the biggest causes of stress is change at work, and for employees, the implementation of a workforce management system can be a particularly scary change,” writes Clements.  “It changes the way that they get scheduled for work.  It changes the way that they request time off.  It changes the way that they report time worked.  It changes the way that they get paid.  It leads to stressful questions. Will my hours get cut?  Will I make less money?  Will I lose my job?  Will I be able to provide for myself and my family? “

Since employee engagement is one of the most critical factors for contact center success, it’s important that organizations handle these anxieties properly without affecting morale or inadvertently boosting turnover (which is often high enough in the contact center).  In this case, as with many other technology changes, the most critical thing to do is communicate with employees. This may involve building a change management plan.

“A strong change management plan not only informs the employees that a new WFM system is coming but tells them why the system is being implemented, what the organization is trying to achieve, and most importantly, how it will affect employees,” writes Clements.

While the company may be choosing a new workforce management solution to build in better adherence, more precise forecasting or to free up managers from routine tasks like time-off requests, many employees are likely to believe that it’s a “Big Brother” step by the company. The contact center should help employees understand how the new solution will help them personally: by making time-off requests easier, for example, or to allow schedule bidding and swapping.

Unfortunately, notes Clements, the very change management plan that will help employees better understand the new solution is often the first thing to get cut when budgets or time run tight. While it may be tempting to do so, consider that the rumor-mill – one of the most destructive forces known to any modern organization – won’t be taking any time off.