Workforce Engagement Management

Just trying to get an idea of the most efficient use of Genesys for scheduling. Right now, we schedule a week at a time, about 3 weeks out. This makes it tough to see schedules across weeks, and limits the usefulness of things like the shift swap tool. We're looking to move to scheduling 4 weeks at a time, though I'm pushing to look closer at scheduling more like 6m or a year at a shot. (what I'm used to at previous Jobs, with different systems.)

How frequently do you all publish schedules, and how far out? Pros/cons?

Thanks!

#Scheduling

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Jason Mock
CAPITAL Services
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Hi Jason,

We are in a similar boat, building schedules one week at a time approximately 4-5 weeks in advance. The lack of continuity in published schedules has also been a significant efficiency loss for us. I had submitted this to the ideas lab back in February and requested a timeline but have yet to receive a response. 

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Andrea Rushfeldt
ATB Financial
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We also do a week at a time and we do three weeks out.  Because of the forecasting, we can't really go too far out.  Plus, when we have a separation, we don't want to remove them from the schedule set entirely and we don't want them listed the week after we know they are gone, but we do what them listed as a NLE (No Longer Employer Activity code) for the week they were separated because we had planned on them being here.  If an agent changes shifts due to a shift bid, I also find it difficult to update schedules midway through a schedule set.  

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[Gina] [Palmer]
[Workforce Manager]
[Papa]
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We give our agents 3 weeks of published schedules at any moment. I do a 4 week forecast/schedule cycle to take into account staff movements and call trends. Half our staff are on a rotation and I find that when staff leave the gaps in the rotation are a nuisance to back-fill, so this cycle allows me to adjust the rotation before creating the schedules. I also only use weighted history forecasts with manual tweaks for exceptional days and trends - I find the auto-forcast really can't handle unusual days.

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Andrew Doller
Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Australia Pty Ltd
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Hi,

At most we schedule 6 weeks ahead but it's week by week with using the weighted forecasting. This is so we can choose what historical weeks and the weighting to use to base the forecasts on. Adding new starters in, or leavers and shift changes is manual for each week so any further would require too much manual adding/removing of people/schedules.

thanks

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Mike Corley
Benenden Healthcare
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Hey Jason!

Coming from PureConnect, we never published schedules so the transition to the schedules in Genny Cloud was a learning process. 

My QA Team coaches all of our Agents quarterly, we have bi weekly team meetings for the Agents & Supervisors.

The concern with my leadership team is - if we publish all schedules at once, will it make the Agents nervous knowing months in advance when a coaching session is?

Because I'm constantly working in the present and future (training session preps, company wide event preps, etc) I generate schedules 3 months out - however I only PUBLISH one month's schedule at a time to ease the concern the leadership team had. 

So for example  - most of our team meetings, coaching sessions, and 1 on 1s were already scheduled by me for September in July or Aug.

(I can then add as I go - but my organization has a lot of meetings, so knowing what we have already planned for the dept ahead of time is better for our staff planning)

I will then publish September's schedule on the last Friday of this month. 

Pros to scheduling in advance & just saving until you're ready to publish:

You'll know what is already "on the books" and can advise other departments when a better time is to hold training or events

Cons:

You can't re-apply an updated forecast to an already generated schedule (we don't use ABM forecasting - we do Historical Weighted Index.. we find it is more true to what we're actually doing).

So you're generating a schedule with 1-2months old forecast numbers for scheduling. (To combat this, I make forecasts weekly so I can determine what shifts are needed for the upcoming week/what OT to offer vs relying on the data I created months ago)

I hope this helps! =) Have a great day!

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Jacqueline Turner
Workflow Coordinator
NYCM Insurance
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Hi,

We're currently using Verint but migrating to Genesys.  At present we generate schedules in a 4 week block - we have 4 teams working a 1 weekend in 4 pattern.  We publish them 1 week at a time so agents always have 4-5 weeks schedule in hand.

I understand that with Genesys you can't publish part of a schedule - so i am assuming we'll end up on 1 week schedules, but planning on keeping 4-5 weeks ahead.

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Dave Tiltman
RCN, Royal College of Nursing
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