@Melissa Palmer I know I am in the minority on this but what we do is, each day we look at the previous day's schedules, quickly scanning down looking for the pink out-of-adherence bar. If we see it before the start of the off-queue activity, we expand to see the Exception Details, hover over the pink, and if it shows "Interacting" we move the start time. We have a 5 min buffer set so the lessens the amount of changes needed. I've done this for contact centers ranging in size from 50 - >1200. From my experience, it is worth the effort and not as much work as you think.
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Gina Palmer
Manager, Workforce Management
Papa, Inc.
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-24-2026 17:16
From: Melissa Palmer
Subject: Negative Adherence Impacts of On Queue Time
I have a group of agents who are routinely scheduled for off‑phone activities under the "busy" status. However, they are often late to these segments because their calls run long. While they are technically late to their off‑queue activity, they are still actively handling customer interactions-which is a positive outcome, as we want them to take care of our clients.
The challenge is that their adherence is negatively impacted each time a long call extends into their scheduled off‑phone period. I considered configuring "on queue" to be ignored for adherence, but I'm not certain that approach is appropriate, especially since these calls can run 30 minutes or more into their off‑queue time.
What is the best way to configure the system so that long calls do not unfairly penalize adherence for these agents?
#WFMConfiguration,BestPractices
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Melissa Palmer
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