Workforce managementΒΆ

Workforce management (WFM for short) represents a set of tools that should make workforce and absence planning easier for your contact center team members. It takes effort, time and responsibility to schedule shifts, plan vacations, doctor appointments, on-call or standby shift times, specific activities during workforce availability, etc. Our workforce management module can significantly help you in this respect and make the task easier. The purpose of this guide is to explain how WFM works and how you can operate it.

What workforce management tasks can WFM help you with?

  • create a plan based on a fixed rotation

  • manually create and edit existing plans

  • use multiple alternative plan version

  • manage personal data and legal staff limitations (temp staff, pregnant women, part-time contracts, etc.)

  • manage vacations, public holidays, etc.

  • automatic shift, on-call and workplace planning

  • check statutory limitations, vacation limits, etc.

  • approve/reject proposed modifications

  • get a complete overview using numerous reports and stats

  • A comparison of scheduled shifts with estimated traffic based on historical data

When working with the WFM module, it is important to realize how users are divided based on the role that they play in the contact center:

  • methodologist is a person who controls the entire planning and has virtually no limitations; this person can create and edit plans, enter personal data, public holidays, vacations, plan on-call shifts, etc. The methodologist plans shifts for all other roles.

  • The supervisor can plan specific jobs. Plan changes proposed by the supervisor must be approved by a methodologist.

  • The coordinator has access to all staff shift records but cannot change them. This person can request the staff to work extraordinary overtime.

  • An agent can only view their plan.

Note

Some of the WFM advanced options and settings can be adjusted in the FrontStage Admin, which is only accessible to the application administrator or the methodologist.

The WFM module can plan work for supervisors and agents. The methodologist and the coordinator are deliberately excluded from the plans.

Since WFM is mostly used by the methodologist, most of the descriptions in this guide are meant for this role. It is the methodologist who is best suited to make other contact center users familiar with the WFM module parts relevant for them.