Morning All,

Once again I bare myself in front of the CCV!

My Boss has asked me to look at sickness; I suggested I take a couple of weeks off for research! He only just found the funny side.

Seriously though, he has asked me to come up with a target for sickness. I have some ideas on this but I was wondering what targets people currently use in their centre and size of centre.

Chris the Unknowing!

Allowances built in to a tight schedule I did for an Outsource
contract were.

Sickness 5%

Late 2%

Unauthourised Abscence 2%

The 5% includes short notice Doctors / Dentists visits etc, but NOT long term
signed off.

HTH

DaveA

Are you looking for an aspirational target or a working target?

If you are looking for a figure to work with, 5% is probably too low realistically; more like 8 - 12%, though maybe not the way Dave has segmented out awols and long termers.

Also this is seasonal eg I would imagine no-shows/home sick/new sick will be high today and tomorrow with the match and hangover; also at certain times of year, sickness can rocket; I remember a nasty flu-bug which left a former employer with 30% absence...

If you are looking for an aspirational target, can I just say that however low 5% may sound, it is still one day in 20. Admittedly most people are sick for 2 or three days in a row, but that is still one occasion every two or three months on average per person.

Latest averages by region from CBI poll:

Hope this helps - sorry it's short on stats and reserach, but let's know if you want any thoughts and opinions on the matter!

Zoe

(no days sick in 30 months)

Edited for HTML Link, DA 17-16-2004

Hi Chris,

Sickness rates are always an interesting one for those of us in HR (especially those like me who supply contract workforces) . If you are looking to set a target then I'd take an industry benchmark. Merchants International Contact Centre Benchmarking Report (snappy huh?) puts 2003 sickness at 10% (out of interest they had 10% in 2001 and 9% in 1999). I don't have the latest IDS report in front of me (pay and conditions in call centres) but I'm pretty sure that they put sickness and absence at 6%. As a target therefore 5% would be on the mark and would represent good practice (although *smug* we have achieved 3.5% on a workforce of 400).

Kind regards,
Jim.

(although *smug* we have achieved 3.5% on a workforce of 400).


Jim

Although your practice of allowing sickness only for loss of a major limb or Ebola infection may be a little harsh :-)

DaveA

I was lucky enough to visit India last year to do some consultancy and research. One of the centres that I visited had excellent MI on attrition (I'm a stats man I'm afraid so I always go for the MI) which gave the top 10 reasons for employees leaving. Death was at number 10 just losing out to salary and the quality of the canteen!

(I should admit that they claimed to have had very few leavers and therefore the death only represented one person)

Is like a target for lost calls, we have to remember that setting targets on negatve factors of forecasting is one of the oddities of the roles we work in.

So therefore I look at them more as assumptions. I know that I have a load of Friday hating, sunny weather loving agents and therefore I factor in the assumption that 5% will be off sick at any one time, just like I assume 3% for lost calls,

When setting your assumptions, you should not look solely at industry averages, but you should look instead at your historical values and then compare with the industry, because if you have say a 15% sickness rate, this would apper normal if only looking at your own data.

I am able to list all my assumptions if wanted (but not publicly).

Hello there,

To move slightly away from my original post and on to what my boss has asked me to look at - are we efficient?!?

I have a rough idea of how to measure this, however I would like some clarification.

I think that I should look at the number of agents I have at a point of time and how many calls they could answer, then compare that with how many they did answer = efficiency!

However something about that does not sit well with me, and I think I should be looking into more variables?

Which side of me is right?

Chris

Chris.

Lets define some variables

ATT = Average Talk Time

AHT = Average Handle Time

AWT = Average Wrap Time

L = Login Hours

P = Productivity

C = Calls

Therefore :-

AHT = ATT + AWT

P = ((AHT * C) / (L*3600)) * 100

Note this is a straight Login Productivity for this I'd expect to see
65-75%. For short periods upto 80% however a lot over that or sustained
75% + will seeiously start affecting atrittion.

HTH

DaveA

A question I've always wanted to ask, why no quality metric in this.

If calls are not being answered with quality or first time resolution then you are neither wholly productive or efficient, you will simply generate more calls. I'm curious why isnt this factored in?

Just curious, not a criticism.

I use it as a measure of how hard we are working the staff.

The quality metric (should be) someting like:

Log 1/P

Giving a quality figure that decreases proportionally
according to the workload on an agent.

Hence my comment on running at Very high productivity levels
affecting Sickness / Atrittion and Churn.


The P calc is the Easyjet of call centers :-)

HTH

DaveA

Hi there Dave,

Thanks for that.

Just a quickie, you said that

"lot over that or sustained 75% + will seeiously start affecting atrittion. "

What does attrition in this sense mean?

Sickness, Unauthorised abscence, Lateness etc..

Everything caused by the staff being under inordinate pressure

HTH

DaveA

First off, I agree with Dave that excessive efficiency (agent occupancy / whatever) is likely to increase attrition through stress related sickness (genuine or percieved) and resignations due to the job being too demanding (you forgot to give me credits for the efficiency formula Dave!). I would go as high as 85% agent occupancy as ok.

I love the fact that people give a "target sickness". This just doesn't work, but companies wont let go! Why doesn't it work...?

example 1
I enjoy excellent health, but am aware that my colleagues are taking an extra 13 days (5%) paid leave as "sickness" without any penalty. In fact, my KPI targets state that I am entitled to the same! Woo Hoo! Time to dial the sick line...

example 2
I am a concientious worker who has been unlucky enough to contract malaria / leprosy / whatever while digging wells in Africa as part of my charity work. I now have re-occuring sickness and have so far had 15 days of work. Damn! There goes my bonus!

Sickness must be managed as a behaviour, not targeted as a metric! Any "dodgy" sickness is unacceptable. Any genuine sickness is genuine. If genuine sickness means that an agent is unable to continue the role, then assistance should be given in placing them in a more suitable environment. It is worth noting thast even genuine sickness can lead to dismissal, but make sure you work closely with HR in these circumstances.

Having said all that, you do of course have to have a sickness metric for forcasting, and around 5% remains the norm.

So with that in mind,

you say that occupancy around 85% is okay, is that "occupancy" the same figuer as i am working out in the formula Dave posted?

Chris

From my point of view yes.

However you also get the issues where occupancy is filled desk time reguardless
of Which agent is sitting there (used when hot-desking).

It's one of those that the definition varies by who's using it.

Needless to say MY definition is the correct one :-)

DaveA



P.S

Dylan.

Err..
I fink dats one of mine! Leastways it's in at lest 2 of me spreadsheet thingies...

So if these are the same thing, why have two names?

It depends on who's defining the term. Occupancy is one of two things

Occupancy can be:

i) The amount of time an agent is on the phone / wrap Vs their login available time

OR

ii) The amount of time a desk is in use Vs the amount of time it's available to use (Opening hours) per day.

However Productivity is always i) above. (By agent or team)

HTH

DaveA

Dylan, I agree that sickness needs to be managed as a behaviour but why not have a target? Unless your centre is hit by a flu epedemic it is reasonable to assume that genuine sickness will be similar to other centres. Why would you not want HR to have a best practice target therefore on non-genuine absence? Surely this is the only way you know if you are doing a good job managing the non-genuine absence . . .

Jim.

Hi there Everybody,

Would anybody mind sharing their Sickenss target, for a contact centre with around 80 agents

Thanks

Chris