Employee schedule adherence is a key factor in effective workforce management (WFM). WFM in contact centers is all about having the right people in the right place at the right time. This means that contact center teams not only need to be scheduled appropriately to meet organizational needs, but they need to show up and perform according to schedules too.
Let’s take a look at how better schedule adherence practices can improve workdays for contact center employees and the customers they assist.
What is schedule adherence?
In contact centers, schedule adherence is defined as the total amount of time worked compared to the total time scheduled to work. Schedule adherence takes into account the beginning and end of shifts, total call handling time, non-call related work like training, and breaks.
Why schedule adherence matters
Schedule adherence is a popular key performance indicator that helps businesses determine the productivity levels of a workforce.
Additionally, it’s a critical factor that impacts both the employee experience and customer satisfaction. When adherence is low, the effects ripple through the entire contact center, leading to significant challenges.
Costs of low adherence
- Customer dissatisfaction: When agents don't follow their assigned schedules, customers may experience longer wait times, leading to frustration and negative experiences.
- Missed service levels: Poor adherence makes it harder to meet service level agreements (SLAs), affecting operational efficiency and customer service KPIs.
- Overburdened agents: If some agents consistently fail to follow their schedules, others may have to take on extra workload, leading to burnout and stress.
Schedule adherence formula
If we break down schedule adherence into a formula, it would be:
Schedule adherence (%) = (Time actually worked ÷ Time scheduled to work) × 100
A high adherence rate, closer to 100%, means that contact center agents are handling customer service interactions in a timely manner.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say an agent is scheduled for a 9-hour shift, including 1 hour of total break time. That means they are expected to work 8 productive hours. During the day, the agent works 7 hours and 45 minutes, because of an extra 15 minutes of unscheduled break. To calculate schedule adherence:
Schedule adherence (%) = (Time worked ÷ Time scheduled to work) × 100
= (7 hours 45 minutes ÷ 8 hours) × 100
= 96.9%
In this case, the schedule adherence rate is 96.9%. While this is a strong percentage, small gaps like unscheduled breaks can still affect overall performance and staffing levels in a busy contact center.
WFM and schedule adherence go hand in hand
Manually developing schedules and tracking adherence is more than a hassle, it isn’t effective across large contact centers. A cornerstone of workforce management platforms includes tools that transparently monitor employee schedule adherence.
Aspect WorkforceOS includes powerful workforce engagement management tools built to improve employee and customer experiences. Aspect Workforce includes real-time metrics that offer insights into employee adherence to schedules and productivity goals. Schedule adherence in Aspect Workforce provides dynamic metrics for fast-paced contact centers, giving both employees and supervisors insights into productivity.
Additional performance management tools in WorkforceOS offer in-depth metrics to improve overall adherence. Aspect Performance works seamless with Workforce to make adherence tracking and proactive coaching easier than ever before.
Purchasing tools that track adherence is just the start of improvements that can be made to enhance employee experience and customer satisfaction. You’ll need to implement practices that utilize insights provided by your WFM platform.
How schedule adherence impacts employee satisfaction and customer service
We’ve learned time and time again that happy employees mean happy customers and better business outcomes. Improving schedule adherence can positively impact employee satisfaction, improving customer service interactions too.
These are just a few ways that better schedule adherence can boost your employee experience:
- Flexible Scheduling. Adherence metrics let employees track their own performance and make adjustments, like swapping shifts or requesting time off, without affecting service levels. This flexibility helps agents manage their work-life balance, reduces stress, and ensures staffing remains optimal, improving both agent satisfaction and retention.
- Performance tracking. Schedule adherence tools offer transparent views into productivity, giving employees insight into work goals, including performance consistency.
- Employee growth opportunities. With schedule adherence metrics, employees can self-monitor their performance, while supervisors can identify growth and training opportunities.
- Scheduling fairness and shift management. Accurate adherence metrics give management the data needed to create balanced schedules based on employee performance, helping avoid employee burnout.
With improved schedule adherence, your organization and employees will be better suited to meet the needs of your customers.
Schedule adherence can impact customer interactions by:
- Improving KPIs. Monitoring schedule adherence can inform changes and improvements that impact other KPIs key to customer experiences like first-call resolution, average hold time, and abandon rate.
- Ensuring appropriate staffing. Adherence tracking can help ensure your contact center has the right number of agents staffed at any given time to meet call demand and customer needs.
- Boosting service quality. Employees adhering to their schedule are more likely to be focused on efficient resolutions and better service quality.
Best practices to improve schedule adherence at contact centers
Improving schedule adherence starts with the tools you use and is enhanced by effective management practices from leadership.
Here are some key practices to keep in mind while exploring ways to step up contact center performance through better schedule adherence.
- Recognize adherence trends. Aspect Workforce includes robust reporting with real-time and historic data to identify trends in adherence. Utilizing these trends, contact center leaders can develop initiatives to improve scheduling, training, and coaching opportunities for better workforce performance.
- Automate adherence monitoring. Set customizable adherence thresholds in Workforce to automatically notify employees or supervisors of activity. Employees can adjust their workflows to self-improve adherence, while supervisors can offer proactive intervention to improve service levels.
- Provide transparent, effective communication. Transparency is an important factor to promote trust between employees and supervisors. Employees should not only be aware of adherence monitoring, but they should be active participants in this process as well. Aspect Workforce includes customizable dashboards that make it simple for employees to track their own performance and supervisor feedback.
- Offer flexible scheduling. Monitoring adherence should also benefit employees, ensuring that your team has flexible scheduling options for healthier work-life balance. Efficient yet flexible scheduling will ensure both employee and service needs are being met.
- Recognize and reward employees. Encourage agents to be responsible for their schedule adherence through recognition and reward programs. Gamification solutions like Aspect League provide a variety of options to motivate employees to improve KPIs like schedule adherence.
Interested in learning more about how improving schedule adherence can boost performance in your contact center? Explore how one of our customers drove efficiency across their workforce with insights from Aspect Workforce and Performance.
