Elusive Work-Life Balance: Five Steps To Achieving Harmony With Workforce Management, The

Customer Inter@ction Solutions,  Feb 2007  by Hawkins, Tracey

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

The familiar terms "flexible working" and "work-life balance" hold different meanings for different people. For an employer, flexibility often means a way to ensure staff availability at the right times to meet customer demand. To the employee, flexibility usually means freedom to pursue outside interests, whether leisurely pursuits or family commitments, and to schedule work around these activities.

As a result, there is a daily battle of managing the conflicts between staff preferences and business needs. This is particularly relevant for the contact center industry, as working mothers are the largest employee group and nearly seven out of 10 agents prefer to work flexible hours.

Fortunately, tensions between both perspectives can be reconciled within the same organization. In this article, we will explain how flexibility and work-life balance - for both employee and employer - can be achieved in five steps with workforce management (WFM).

Why Work-Life Balance And Flexible Working?

Besides the obvious benefit of sanity or less stress in an increasingly hectic world, there are pragmatic, bottom-line impacts from achieving a work-life balance and flexible operation, as follows.

Save on recruitment costs. Just as it is more expensive to win over new customers than to retain existing ones, it is good business to retain the people you have invested time, money and training in. Recruitment is expensive, and research shows that staff turnover is significantly lower in those organizations that have four or more work-life balance initiatives or flexible working practices.

Reduce absenteeism. In a recent survey, a public sector organization established that more than 50 percent of its staff members admitted to using sick leave as a means of managing family commitments, resulting in an overall attendance rate of 87 percent. When improved flexible working options were introduced, attendance rose to over 96 percent.

Motivate staff. Employees who can designate the times they would like to work, their less-preferred times, times when they are not available and so on are likely to be more productive, have higher attendance rates and are less likely to seek a new job. Lack of work-life balance is one of the top 10 reasons stated by employees for resigning their position.

Improve customer service. More productive, happier employees also mean better customer service. Having the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time improves operational efficiency and performance, reducing the number of calls abandoned, increasing revenue and sales, reducing the time spent managing customer complaints and so on.

Finding The Right Balance With WFM

The typical manager must account for many considerations in developing flexible working options while ensuring that the contact center meets its goals. These considerations include:

* How many agents do I need, at what time and with which skills?

* What are the preferred working hours of each agent?

* How do I balance personnel who want flexibility against those who do not?

* What other constraints do I have to consider, e.g., breaks, training, meetings, working time directive, contractual hours, etc.?

* How do I manage special events or new campaigns and have the ability to identify and respond to unforeseen events?

* How is my contact center performing (service levels may differ for different work types)?

* How do I understand the impact of changes in advance?

* How do I ensure that supervisors and team leaders have time to do other things outside of schedule management?

* How do I keep staff informed of what they are working on and when?

Many contact centers try to manage these processes manually, which is incredibly time-intensive and unproductive since it removes agents from their primary purpose of serving customers and managers from their core function of managing the business.

A sophisticated WFM solution can be a cost-effective way to balance all of these pressures, enabling organizations to deliver flexible working options while improving performance and reducing costs.

Five Key Steps To Work-Life Balance

Step 1 - Identify The Options

There are a broad range of flexible working options:

Term-time working. When someone on a permanent contract can take unpaid leave during school holidays.

Part-time working. Employees work a reduced number of hours, usually with working times agreed in advance.

Flex-time. Gives employees a choice about when they work.

Job-share schemes. Two people share the duties of a post that would normally be done by one person. Both work parttime and share the salary, holidays and any other benefits.

Compressed working hours. Allows staff to work their contracted hours over a shorter number of days, for example, a four-day week.

Shift swapping. Employees rearrange shifts among themselves to suit their needs, as long as the business needs are met.

Telecommuting. Employees do their jobs from home, often using a telephone and computer to stay in touch.