Shift planning: An 8-step guide to planning shifts like an expert and boosting productivity

For any business with a contact centre or call centre team, shift planning is a crucial—and quickly evolving—operational requirement.

With the rise of remote working and geographically distributed teams, effective shift planning today involves a lot more work than just defining shift rotations with pen and paper or on spreadsheets.

At the same time, it’s becoming more human-centric, with agents and other employees having much more of a say regarding their schedules.

At Dialpad, we are not only providing a distributed contact centre solution, we’re also building a workforce management (WFM) solution with unique shift planning features. Keep reading to learn about what exactly shift planning is, how we’re approaching it, and tools and best practices for implementing it.

What is shift planning?

Shift planning is defining a schedule that dictates what hours need to be worked by who over a specific period. Usually, shift planning is carried out with a few weeks’ notice, allowing for short-term scheduling. It takes into account factors like:

• shift overlap

• shift change times

• shift swap

• vacation

• training

• holidays

• time zones

A common example of a shift plan could be:

• From 7am – 8am, there are five contact centre or sales agents answering phones.

• At 8am, 12 more people come on duty.

• At 12pm, 12 more come in, and a few others leave.

• At 3pm, 11 go home.

Why is shift planning important?

The goal of shift planning is to minimize overall costs while improving productivity. If over-staffed, there are not enough calls to keep agents busy, resulting in unnecessary costs. If under-staffed, SLAs are missed, customers are unsatisfied, and agents are overworked with poor productivity. Done well, it makes it easier for a contact centre team to get ahead of spikes in demand and plan for busy periods.

Benefits of shift planning

Shift planning has many benefits—for agents, supervisors, and customers. Here are just a few of them:

More visibility for supervisors

Proactive shift planning gives supervisors more visibility and clarity into contact centre operations and schedules, which then empowers them to maximize productivity among all teams.

More cost-efficient operations

Shift planning is also crucial for making sure you have enough agents when you need them, without overstaffing, which keeps labor costs down.

A better customer experience

Having enough agents online when your contact centre is busy reduces wait times and sets your teams up for success—the result: an exceptional customer experience across every voice and messaging channel.

Higher morale

Contact centres experience some of the highest employee turnover rates among all industries, and one primary reason is that agents are often overworked and overwhelmed. Staffing appropriately is a great way to retain employees and lower attrition costs.

Outcomes of poor shift planning

On the other hand, not having a robust shift planning strategy can put your business at a disadvantage in a few ways:

Low employee satisfaction

Poor shift planning leads to dissatisfaction among agents. If shifts are assigned without considering employees’ availability or work-life balance, it can result in frustration and harm morale, productivity, and overall job satisfaction.

Inefficient workflows

If shifts aren’t properly scheduled or coordinated, it can also lead to conflicts, overlapping responsibilities, and insufficient staffing during busy periods. This can seriously hamper productivity and decrease retention rates—which ultimately impacts your customer experience.

Increased costs

Of course, these first two consequences (increased employee turnover and lower productivity levels) of inadequate shift planning will ultimately impact your bottom line.

One common example: A lack of proper coordination and staffing during peak periods will most likely result in overtime expenses or the need to hire temporary staff at higher rates. Long story short, the effects of poor shift planning are far-reaching, but the end result is the same: increased costs.

How to get started with shift planning: The step-by-step shift scheduling guide

To start shift planning in your contact center, get started with these key steps.

1. Analyze your requirements and monitor demand

• Assess your historical data and trends (e.g., call centre occupancy, call volumes) to understand peak hours, busy seasons, and fluctuations in call volume.

• Consider your business’ service level goals or SLAs. What are your non-negotiable standards and response times?

• Identify any specific requirements or constraints, such as legal regulations, union agreements, or other factors that would impact shift planning.

2. Review workforce availability and how it stacks up against demand

• Now that you know expected call volumes compare that against your available workforce.

• Assess the skills and experience required for handling different types of customer inquiries.

• Identify any additional staffing needs or potential skill gaps.

3. Gather information about your staff

• Maintain a comprehensive database of your agents, including their availability, preferences, and scheduling restrictions.

• Establish open lines of communication so you can easily reach out to employees and coordinate more effectively with them.

4. Choose a type of shift planning

• There are many shift planning approaches, such as fixed shifts, rotating shifts, split shifts, or flexible schedules. Select one that not only ensures adequate coverage during peak demand but also aligns with your contact centre’s operational requirements and employee preferences.

5. Create a template

• Create a shift schedule template outlining the days, time slots, and lengths based on your chosen shift planning approach.

• Consider factors like breaks, lunch hours, and any regulatory requirements for rest periods.

6. Create schedules around your best agents

• Identify your top-performing agents or those with specific skills and consider their availability while creating schedules.

• Distribute shifts fairly among the team to avoid burnout and maintain employee satisfaction.

7. Prepare for unexpected events

• Have contingency plans for unexpected events such as employee absences, high call volumes, or emergencies.

• If you don’t have one, make a strategy for quick schedule adjustments, overtime management, or backup staffing arrangements.

8. Equip your team with the right shift planning tools

• There are many options out there. Some are more general contact centre or CCaaS solutions that have a few scheduling features thrown in—generally, it’s best to have a solution that’s designed specifically for shift planning and workforce management.
  
  These are more likely to have core features like scheduling automation, employee self-service portals, and real-time monitoring features.

3 Shift planning best practices

When you’re implementing shift planning, here are three best practices to keep in mind:

• Use historical data to predict demand. A good shift planning solution should be able to integrate with historical data from your other systems to predict demand (For example: How many agents are needed for a busy holiday sale?)

• Embrace “always on” scheduling (in a healthy way). With the transition towards hybrid and remote working models, teams have become more physically dispersed across different time zones. This is actually great for the “always on” model of shift planning—and means your business can serve customers in multiple time zones.

• Use the time saved on scheduling wisely. When it comes to shift planning, one of the most common benefits is of course, time saved. Don’t waste it—look for ways to leverage this extra time to help your agents and/or supervisors (such as implementing training or rewarding agents with a much-needed break after a busy period).

How to comply with predictive scheduling legislation

In the US, many cities and states have implemented Fair Workweek laws to create more predictable and transparent schedules for hourly workers. Most contact centre employees, of course, fall under this umbrella.

These predictive scheduling laws are slightly different depending on where you’re located, but typically they’re meant to protect employee wellbeing by requiring businesses to:

• Provide advanced notice when posting or changing shift schedules

• Allow employees to rest between shifts (no “clopening”)

• Pay a premium when changing schedules after the notice period

Know the laws in your jurisdiction before you start planning shifts to stay compliant.

How to calculate shift planning costs

At a high level, understanding shift planning costs is relatively straightforward. Here’s how to do it:

Calculate how much an employee costs the business per hour. To do this, you can add together their gross wages to the total cost of related expenses. Then you can divide this total by the number of hours the employee works each year.

This will help determine how much an employee costs the company per hour.

1. Calculate hourly wages

You’ll need to know the hourly rate for every employee scheduled to work and multiply this rate by the number of hours each person works within the period you’re trying to calculate. Let’s say it’s a one-month period—January.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you have five agents working eight hours a day, from Monday to Friday, and each one makes $20/hour.

Example formula

(Agent 1 hourly wage x Agent 1’s hours worked in a month) + (Agent 2 hourly wage x Agent 2’s hours worked in month) + ... = Total month hourly wages

2. Include overtime costs

You'll have to factor in overtime pay if your agents work overtime (more than the standard 40-hour workweek). The standard overtime rate is 1.5x your hourly rate.

Let’s say November is a busy month, and each of your five agents needed to do two hours of overtime each week.

Example formula

Total number of overtime hours in a month x Overtime hourly rate = Overtime costs

3. Account for shift differentials

If your business requires contact centre support outside the usual 9-to-5 schedule (such as night shifts), you’ll also need to account for any premium rates.

4. Add benefits and payroll taxes

Depending on if you have salaried employees, you’ll also need to factor in the additional cost of employee benefits and payroll taxes.

5. Calculate the total shift cost

Finally, add everything to understand your total costs for this period.

Example formula

[(Total monthly wages for all employees) = (Total overtime costs) + (Total shift differential costs) + (Total benefits and payroll costs)]

Example calculation

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you’re trying to calculate costs for November. You have five agents working eight hours daily, Monday to Friday, each making $20 per hour.

8 hours a day x 5 days a week = 40 hours of work a week per agent

40 hours a week x 4 weeks in November = 160 hours of work in a month

160 hours of work in a month x 5 agents = 800 hours of work total in a month

800 x $20/hour = $16,000/month in total

Let’s say each agent worked two hours of overtime each week.

2 hours of overtime/week x $30/hour = $60 overtime pay/week

$60 x 5 agents x 4 weeks = $1,200/month in overtime costs

Shift planning examples

Now, let’s look at a few different ways to set up shift schedules depending on your team’s and business needs:

1. Fixed shifts. Fixed shift employees work set days and hours each week. For example: 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. This is the most predictable—but least flexible option.

2. Rotating shifts. Rotating shifts is useful when your business needs to provide support 24/7, but you want to keep things fair for agents. With this schedule, shifts would rotate regularly so everyone takes turns going on late-night and early-morning shifts.

3. Split shifts. Split shifts are a little more complex—you’re basically “splitting” an agent’s hours into separate periods. For example, an agent might be on for a few hours in the morning, off, and then on again in the evening.

4. On-call shifts. As the name implies, agents who work on-call shifts just have to be available—they don’t have to be working until they’re called. You don’t typically see on-call schedules in contact centers—this is usually used in healthcare or other service professions.

5. Flexible shifts. This is the most open-ended type of shift planning—there isn’t a predictable pattern, and is usually used as a backup or contingency to cover any scheduling gaps.

6. Compressed workweeks. These shifts are typically longer, but they let agents do full-time hours while working fewer days in the week. Staggered shifts. With extended business hours, staggering shift start times are a great way to retain good coverage throughout the day and avoid being under or overstaffed.

What is shift planning software?

Shift planning software is an application or tool that helps managers organize and schedule employee shifts. Typically, shift planning tools come with features such as forecasting or integrations with calendar apps, which can save hours every week for busy supervisors.

How to choose the best shift planning software and tools: Top features to look for

Not every business needs the “best shift planning solution,” but it’s important to know what features your team needs, whether basic online scheduling or more advanced, system-assisted scheduling. Here are some key features to pay attention to:

Real-time management

If you have a large workforce, you’ll need to be able to keep an eye on operations in real-time. Look for features that help supervisors quickly respond to unexpected peaks in customer queries or service requests and easily redeploy agents to high-priority channels or specific tasks.

Flexible shift planning

A good shift planning platform should make it easy for you to adapt to different shift patterns and plans depending on your team’s needs throughout the year, including rotations and round robins.

Dialpad WFM, for example, lets you build shift plans and patterns from scratch and can also automatically assign shifts—weeks in advance—without you having to lift a finger:

Forecasting based on staffing historical data

Want to stay ahead of high call volumes? Look for a solution that can use your historical data such as average handle time, hold times, and so on to understand and predict how many agents you need—months in advance.

Coverage monitoring

Some solutions, such as Dialpad, also have intuitive features that empower supervisors to plan the right level of coverage to meet SLAs and schedule your workforce accordingly:

Global planning

If you have a distributed workforce across different time zones, look for the ability to quickly view schedules in any timezone and schedule channels in multiple languages using agent skills.

How to use shift planning software for your business

No matter how advanced or basic your shift planning tools, here are a few tips to keep in mind to get the most out of them:

1. Take a “best agent for the job” approach

Often, supervisors start building schedules by looking at dates and call volumes—which isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s often more efficient to start by scheduling your best employees.

For example, if you have an agent who is multilingual and is needed to support a time zone overlap, you’ll want to plug that person into the schedule first and work other people around them. Otherwise, you might find that you need to go back and reschedule agents if you have to fill the gap later.

2. Always have a backup plan

One of the best things about shift planning software is it can speed up many processes—including making backup plans.

For example, there’s always a risk of someone calling in sick or being unable to show up for a shift. While you could manually go through a long list of names to see who’s available at the last minute, your software can help you with this by generating a list or chart of agents who would be available when someone no-shows.

3. Collaborate on scheduling

Some scheduling software, such as Dialpad WFM, lets you collaborate with your team leads as you’re shift planning—this gives everyone full visibility from the start and saves a ton of time and back-and-forth.

4. Integrate with the rest of your tech stack

If you’re like most teams, you’re using tools other than just your shift planning software—so why not integrate them?

Dialpad WFM, for example, integrates with CRMs and workforce tools like Salesforce and Workday to make it easy to sync teams’ time off and absences, generate forecasts, and much more.

How to ensure more efficient shift planning: Top tips

Planning schedules and ensuring you’ve got good coverage is one thing, but how can you continue optimizing this process? Here are a few ideas that have worked well for us.

1. Encourage employee participation. Your agents should have a say—it may not be a huge say, but they should be able to provide some input—into their availability. This makes for less back-and-forth later on and also helps with workforce engagement and satisfaction, which are important if you want to retain your employees over the long term.

2. Foster a culture of flexibility. Any contact centre team, no matter how well run, will have no-shows from time to time. Emergencies happen, and you—and the rest of your team—have to be ready to pivot when they do. This kind of preparedness is key to reducing unexpected inefficiencies, and if you want a team that runs like a well-oiled machine, it’s essential.

3. Take advantage of automation. Regarding efficiency, your software is your most important weapon in your arsenal. Many automation and Ai features can take time-consuming, manual tasks off your plate—use them.

Maximize your business productivity with Dialpad shift planning

At Dialpad, we see shift planning as a way to improve quantitative metrics, empower leaders to schedule their workforces fairly and improve employee retention rates.

See why companies of all sizes leverage Dialpad’s WFM features, from intuitive shift pattern builders to easy time zone management, to improve shift planning for distributed workforces.