[Earl]

Alan,

This is exactly what we do at my center. Not only am I keeping it simple, I am also keeping the process fair and consistent. Now, mind you, I have over 800 people in my call center and we used to offer the vacated and new schedules to senior and better performing agents but ran into issues when the senior agents came off of their old schedule.

My questions to you is...What happens to the agent's old schedule that they were working before taking a new schedule?

Keep in mind, that when someone takes a new schedule, there old schedule come available. and if we gave that old schedule to a new hire, it generated issues with other senior agents who may have wanted it. So in essence, it will take a lot of time and effort to keep reoffering schedules when people come off of one. In principle, if one person comes off a schedule it could effect several other poeple. That is why, most companies throw everything out and tell the agents that there will be a full blown shift bid, meaning that we will throw everything out and start over. And trust me, when you do that, anxiety begins to creep into the agents mind wondering what will they get.

In my center we have automated this and my attrition has fallen off drastically which has helped in the areas of morale because an agents schedule will never get worst than what they have currently. I can gaurantee the agents will not get a worst schedule than what they have. Not only has this solution created better morale, but it also has provided me better service levels and my agents do not come to request a lot of schedule changes because there is enough movement that they believe in the process and those agents who are in school or dealing with child care issues knows that their schedule won't be taken from them and can plan around it. It troubles me when management don't try and think outside of the box and come up with better approaches to keep good people. Far too often, companies just come up with a process and force it down the agent's throats without considering all concerns and implementing a solution that will benefit the business, customer and agent. People makes up about 70% of the operating budget, therefore, call center managers should always look for solution that will not impact the budget so dramatically. So Stretch, I suggest you look into implementing a more fair and constent solution like the one we are using.