Workforce scheduling

The workforce scheduling worksheet turns a forecast into a roster requirement in the order the arithmetic actually works: contacts and average handle time into workload, workload into the agents that raw work needs, then divided by your target occupancy and again by one minus your shrinkage. It also returns how many agents shrinkage alone accounts for, the rostered hours across the day and the shifts that is. Enter your own figures and it computes on the page, with no account.

Workload first, because it is the only certain part

Contacts multiplied by average handle time is the work to be done, in seconds, and dividing by the interval gives the agents that raw work would need if everyone were busy every second. It is always the smallest number on the page and it is the only one that is arithmetic rather than policy.

Occupancy is a decision, not a fact

Nobody handles contacts every second of a shift, and how busy you are willing to run people is a choice with consequences for attrition and quality. Dividing the raw requirement by your target occupancy is where that choice enters the number, which is why it belongs to you and not to a benchmark.

Shrinkage is the one that surprises people

Breaks, meetings, training, coaching, absence and downtime are paid time nobody is on contacts, and they are applied to the whole roster rather than to the workload. Dividing by one minus shrinkage is why a thirty percent figure adds far more than thirty percent of the raw number, and the worksheet shows exactly how many agents that is.

From agents to hours and shifts

Multiplying the rostered requirement across the intervals in the day gives rostered hours, and dividing by your shift length gives shifts. That is the number a scheduler actually works with and the one a budget conversation understands, and it falls out of the same inputs.

What the worksheet refuses to decide

What service level you should hold, what shrinkage or occupancy is reasonable, and whether a forecast is any good are your team's judgements. The worksheet does arithmetic on what you enter and publishes no benchmark for any of them.