Shift bids

[stretch]

Hi,

I manage a 300 seat inbound (24 / 7) call center with fairly high turnover, so that I have to replace attrition quite often and as a result have to do frequent shift bids.

I really dislike doing these bids, as it causes a lot of extra administrative work and general unhappiness among the reps. I suspect that shift bids actually contribute to my turnover problems.

I'd like to hear from others where shiftbids fit on the 'pain and suffering' index, and how you approach this chore. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

[Choloe]

Instead of doing a shift bid for everyone in the center, do a mini bid for the schedules that have been left vacant. I would suggest doing only 2 major shift bids per year and doing a mini bid which would include your new hires and any other schedules you may want to include to ensure you have adequate telephone coverage.

[tteamer]

Hi Stretch,

I have performed numerous shift bids and have done so in a way that is not so painful.

Feel free to give me a call at 510-986-0686 x 16 and I will be happy to share some ideas.

Your goal should be to perform one large shift bid, align your schedules properly and other subsequent shift bids should be small and much less painful. If you have an automated tool to assign the schedules, the admin should reduce.

Eventually, your agents should not have to dramatically change schedules, thus decreasing their unhappiness.

Give me a call.

Tracy

[jdoran]

We do a lot of retention work with contact centers and generally, my clients only do shift bids 2 or 3 times per year. Limiting the number of times you offer shift bids will help reduce your dependency on them and focus employee's attention on other retention programs. Also, in most situations, longer term employees have first bid.

If you are still experiencing turnover problems, you may have some deeper rooted issues that need be analysed and resolved.

You might want to consider (if you haven't already done so) surveying your employees to find out what's important to them. It's a great way to get the employees involved and to understand where you really need to focus to improve retention.

I hope this helps.

[santunes]

I agree with JD. You may want to consider the reasons for your high turnover. Though turnover is quite common in the Call/Contact Center Industry, my experience has seen that centers offering attractive salaries, and that demonstrate great efforts by management to maintain good morale, often have exceptionally low turnover. You may want to consider what adding a dollar an hour to the CSRs salary would do to your turnover. It may reduce your turnover enough to compensate for your high recruitment and training costs. Or, you may consider offering an increase after 6 months or a year. This will usually encourage people to stay much longer if they have a goal i.e. salary increases after 6 months and again after 1 year, or they get bonuses after 1 year of employment.
Just some thoughts!

[stretch]

Thanks JD and Santunes for your suggestions on managing retention. I appreciate your thoughts.

The main reason for this post, though, is the shift bid process that I have to manage. Limiting the number of shiftbids to twice a year solves the frequency issue, but it creates other problems. I have to backfill new or vacated schedules, and if I offer these to my new employees my existing reps complain that they did not get a shot at these schedules, which are often better than the ones that they have been assigned to.

Choloe, since you are doing minibids in your site, can you let me know if you have any problems with reps missing out on 'good' schedules that are offered to the new recruits?

I appreciate your advice!

Tteamer, I'll give you a call, I'm glad for any input.

[santunes]

Stretch,

My experience with the mini bids is that offering good shifts to new recruits causes major issues with people with higher seniority who are working schedules they don't like. What they did at one call center I worked with is offer the new shifts to the current staff starting at the top and working your way down. Most people with higher seniority are happy with their shift so it goes down the list quite quickly. Of course when it comes down the list, you need to decide if the 'person taking the new shift's schedule needs to be replaced also. But because the new shifts make their way down the list quite quickly, it is much less work/time/effort than a complete shift bid. It worked quite well for them.

[Dismuke]

Originally posted by santunes
. You may want to consider what adding a dollar an hour to the CSRs salary would do to your turnover. It may reduce your turnover enough to compensate for your high recruitment and training costs. Or, you may consider offering an increase after 6 months or a year. This will usually encourage people to stay much longer if they have a goal i.e. salary increases after 6 months and again after 1 year, or they get bonuses after 1 year of employment.
Just some thoughts!

Indeed - sometimes it is less costly in the long run to pay a little bit more. You can get better quality people who will be less likely to need as much oversight and "babysitting" and have less turnover. Of course, trying to convince upper management of this can be a challenge in many organizations.

My suggestion, however, would be not to just give the extra pay increase across the board and hope it will somehow fix your attrition problem. Unless you are underpaying your people in comparison to other employment options in your market - or unless the extra pay will suddenly make them significantly better paid than any other employment options they might have in the market - chances are the impact on attrition will be temporary and minimal. The reason is because it does not take very long at all for an employee to become "comfortable" with a $1 per hour raise. Most people will simply increase their spending accordingly and have very little to show for it at the end of the day. Those that live paycheck to paycheck will most likely continue to do so. After a few weeks, the "good PR" you received from the pay raise will be old news - and the very same factors that are currently driving your attrition will come back into play.

What I suggest instead is to channel the extra pay only to those employees who stick around in the form of retention bonuses. For example, instead of a $1 per hour pay raise, you could give a $500 retention bonus to each employee after 6 months and on every subsequent half year anniversary and a $1,000 retention bonus after 1 year with the company and on each subsequent full year anniversary. $500 and $1,000 is a pretty significant windfall for most call center employees - and since most call center workers are not skillful at saving money, it is more than many would be likely to accumulate if it were instead paid out in small increments. Plus your bottom line rate per hour will be much lower than $1 - yet it will have more effect.

For example, a $500 six month bonus will cost you 48 cents per hour per full time employee. The $1,000 one year bonus will raise that cost to 96 cents per hour during the second six months of each year. However, averaged over the entire year, the cost is 72 cents per hour. And keep in mind that since no extra money is given to those employees who do not stick around, the bottom line average rate per hour for the increase is actually even lower. Essentially, what you are doing is rewarding your stable employees by passing on to them some of the savings you realize by not having to constantly replace them. And, as an added bonus, receiving and seeing others receive nice periodic windfalls is good for morale - and that, in turn, will have an impact on attrition.

Now, one thing you will have to be prepared for is that, after people qualify for and receive their bonuses, you will see a small spike in attrition. But these are people who would have left anyway and probably ended up sticking around a few months longer than they otherwise would have in order to get the bonus. Furthermore, you will know ahead of time exactly how many people are due to bonus in any given month and, once you have a track record of how much of a spike it will be, you will be able to anticipate and prepare for this type of attrition well in advance.

One cannot emphasize enough how an extra $1,000 handed over in a lump sum makes a person earning a modest wage "feel richer" than if that same $1,000 were doled out in 48 cent per hour increments over the course of a year. My experience is paying the money out in a higher wage per hour has its biggest impact on the recruiting side. On the retention side, it is more effective to pay it out in lump sum windfalls.

[Dismuke]

Originally posted by stretch

I'd like to hear from others where shiftbids fit on the 'pain and suffering' index, and how you approach this chore. Any suggestions are welcome.

I agree with the other comments about the need to keep the number of across the board shift bids to an absolute minimum.

When across the board shift bids absolutely must take place, I would come up with a standardized ranking method well in advance and make sure that every single rep in the call center knows exactly how it works. This will minimize morale problems and help you better handle the disgruntled workers who ended up getting a "bad shift."

I would weigh seniority very heavily in the ranking method - but I would not use it exclusively. Attendance is also an important component - if you don't show up for work and are not punctual and we haven't fired you because we are so desperate to keep every warm arse in a seat that we can, well, you will pay big time come next shift bid. I would also consider including significant points off in the ranking for those who are at a certain point down the path of progressive discipline - especially if you are working in a company where the HR department and/or upper management is reluctant to let you get rid of the bad apples because of attrition concerns and wants you to "work with them" beyond what is otherwise rational. By lowering the rank of those on discipline, the shift bid may have the added benefit of encouraging some of your "problem children" to leave on their own. If too many people in your call center were hired in at the same time to make seniority a significant determining factor in the bid, then you will want to include a heavily weighted performance component.

What you have undoubtedly discovered is that some shifts are more popular than others. As has been suggested in other postings, use "mini shift bids" as "desirable" shifts open up and use new hires to backfill the "less desirable" shifts.

Ultimately, the solution rests with finding people who want to work the so-called "less desirable" shifts. In many respects, this is a challenge that is largely solved in the recruiting process. If everyone wants to work to work the morning shift but you are having difficulty filling the late afternoon shift - then only hire people who want to work that shift, even if it takes you a while longer to find those people. During the interview process, be very up front with your applicants about the shift bid process and explain that there will be a lot of existing employees ahead of them in line for the morning shifts for the foreseeable future. Let them know that, if they cannot work the shift they are being hired for, you will have no need for them - and then stick to it. It is not uncommon for people to outright lie in the interview process and tell you how much they would love to work an afternoon shift - only to suddenly come up with a tear jerking sad story once they are trained about how a desperate daycare situation or a lack of a ride suddenly makes it necessary for them to have a day shift. Tell them how badly you feel and how much you will miss them. Give in and everyone else will come up with their own sad stories - and then call you on your inconsistency if you fail to buy in. I would actually go so far as to have all new hires sign a piece of paper during the hiring process explicitly stating that they understand and accept the fact that they will be required to work a certain shift.

You probably find that you have a small core of people on the "less desirable" shifts who actually want that shift. Talk to them and find out why - and then talk to your recruiting department about devising creative ways to find other potential employees in similar situations.

Another thing that will help is to be flexible enough to work out win-win scheduling situations. Perhaps an employee has classes or important personal business to attend to on certain days of the week. Give them the time off they need - in exchange for them working when you need them the most. You might also consider allowing fully trained employees in good standing to go part time if the hours they work help your staffing situation. I have done this a number of times to fill holes in weekend and evening schedules. Sometimes people want to go part time because of school. Others want to try out a job somewhere else - but stay on part time with you and keep a door open if things do not work out. Indeed, you might want to be the one to proactively make such an offer whenever a good employee gives notice. I have done that a number of times and it has worked out well. Sometimes they continue on part time until they have completed their probationary period with the other company. And some continue on longer as they enjoy the extra income. In a few instances, the other job did not work out and I ended up having valuable employees come back on board on a full time basis.

[Choloe]

First you have to find out which reps from the floor would be interested in the mini shift bid. If you do it by seniority or performance, the reps with the most seniority or highest performance are allowed to bid first. After these reps have bidded on the new schedules, then what is left goes to the new hires.
Something else that may help is giving the reps the opportunity to swap entire schedules (hours and days). After swapping they have to work their new schedules for a minimum of 3 months or until a new shift bid takes place.

[Scott Wright]

We have developed and patented software to allow for agent bidding by half hour increment. Each agent selects their own hours and our turnover is less than 5% annually. Call me or e-mail me and I'll be happy to talk with you about how we do it and how it might fit for you.
Scott Wright
Willow CSN
630-832-7669
swright@willowcsn.com

[Earl]

Hello Stretch,

I think I understand your problem. If I am correct, your problem comes in when you run into the problem of back filling schedules before you offer to the new hires. I see a few threads here talking about minimizing shift bids. I must say that shift bids should be done base on the business needs and we currently perform shift bids at least 3-4 times a year. which is due growth and positive and negative attrition. My Work force managment and Human resources departments have a good repoire with each other and have noticed that in the past our schedule bids did have some impact on our negative attrition.

We implemented a solution that allowed the agents to post their preference starting with their dream schedule and drilling down to include as many schedules as they wanted that were better than their current scheudle. We actually utililze a database that our agents access via a URl via their workstation. Since a person's preference is determined by their lifestyle, they can access this database anytime they want to update their preference. We let our agents know three weeks in advance when their will be a shift bid and on that day we lock the database and download the new schedules and schedules that have been vacant due to attrition. My staff just hits a button and the software actually starts at the top based on performance and/or seniority and reveiws all preference based on ranking.

The great thing about this process is that when an agent who may be ranked lower comes off a schedule to receive a new, his/her old schedule becomes avaialbe and the system goes back to the top to review anyone ranked above may have wanted it as a higer preference and if so, the new schedule is granted and their old schedule goes back into the hopper. This cascading affect happens until all agents agents preferences have been reviewed. What is left over goes to the new hires and we never have any issues with the agents complaining about the process. Now get this.....Our ACTUAL SHIFT BID TAKES ABOUT 10 MINUTES TO COMPLETE

[Alan Clayton]

Give your more senior people the opportunity to fill the vacated slots.

Do it based on a combination of seniority and performance...

Keep it simple

[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.

[stretch]

Hey Earl,

Thanks for your note. It sounds like you have resolved some of the fairness issues (and admin. overhead) that concern me. Can you let me know whether your tools are proprietry or commercially available?

I appreciate your input!