Quantify Your Work to Justify Additional Staff

In this day and age we are all asked to do more with less, and workforce management teams are no exception to this rule.  Sometimes, however, we find ourselves being overwhelmed with work and we then go to bat for additional resources, and without the right information, we can get shot down quickly.

There is one method that can certainly help with this challenge.  Do what everyone else in the corporation must do when they require additional help — justify the additional staff requirements!

Too often, we simply ask for additional staffing but we really have not gone through a process of quantifying the required work.  The steps are quite simple.

  1. Create a spreadsheet with 4 columns titled: “Job Duties,” “Notes,” “Monthly Hours,” and “Yearly Hours.”
  2. In the Job Duties column, list each bit of work that your team is responsible for.  An example might be, “Schedule Changes.”
  3. In the next column, detail the work: 2600 requests per month @ 4 minutes each.
  4. Calculate the total hours in the monthly column and enter it here: (2600 x 4 minutes)/60 = 173.33 Hours
  5. Calculate the yearly total and place this total in the yearly column: (173.33 x 12) = 2080 Hours

Once you have totaled each of your activities, this will provide you with your required production hours for the workforce team.  Now you must add in your overhead and shrinkage such as time off, holidays, training, etc, and this will give you your grand total required hours.  Take the grand total and divide by 2,080 hours (total hours paid in a year) and that will give you your required FTE for your workforce team.

Now that you have the data detailed out, when you are given additional workload you have several options:

  1. Fit in the work in if you have the available staff.
  2. Require your staff to work overtime to complete the work.
  3. Delay or reduce existing workload.
  4. Figure out a way to automate some existing tasks.
  5. Delay or deny the new work request.

Communication is the key.  Make sure you are advising your leadership of your available bandwidth or struggles before it gets out of hand.  This method is also helpful as your contact center grows.  By using this method, you should have much greater success hiring additional staff.  Not to mention, workforce teams should always lead by example.  Now go out there and grow your workforce teams the right way, by quantifying and justifying your workload!

Quantify Your Work to Justify Additional Staff

In this day and age we are all asked to do more with less, and workforce management teams are no exception to this rule.  Sometimes, however, we find ourselves being overwhelmed with work and we then go to bat for additional resources, and without the right information, we can get shot down quickly.

There is one method that can certainly help with this challenge.  Do what everyone else in the corporation must do when they require additional help — justify the additional staff requirements!

Too often, we simply ask for additional staffing but we really have not gone through a process of quantifying the required work.  The steps are quite simple.

  1. Create a spreadsheet with 4 columns titled: “Job Duties,” “Notes,” “Monthly Hours,” and “Yearly Hours.”
  2. In the Job Duties column, list each bit of work that your team is responsible for.  An example might be, “Schedule Changes.”
  3. In the next column, detail the work: 2600 requests per month @ 4 minutes each.
  4. Calculate the total hours in the monthly column and enter it here: (2600 x 4 minutes)/60 = 173.33 Hours
  5. Calculate the yearly total and place this total in the yearly column: (173.33 x 12) = 2080 Hours

Once you have totaled each of your activities, this will provide you with your required production hours for the workforce team.  Now you must add in your overhead and shrinkage such as time off, holidays, training, etc, and this will give you your grand total required hours.  Take the grand total and divide by 2,080 hours (total hours paid in a year) and that will give you your required FTE for your workforce team.

Now that you have the data detailed out, when you are given additional workload you have several options:

  1. Fit in the work in if you have the available staff.
  2. Require your staff to work overtime to complete the work.
  3. Delay or reduce existing workload.
  4. Figure out a way to automate some existing tasks.
  5. Delay or deny the new work request.

Communication is the key.  Make sure you are advising your leadership of your available bandwidth or struggles before it gets out of hand.  This method is also helpful as your contact center grows.  By using this method, you should have much greater success hiring additional staff.  Not to mention, workforce teams should always lead by example.  Now go out there and grow your workforce teams the right way, by quantifying and justifying your workload!