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Unscheduled absences best practices

  • 1.  Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 27 days ago

    How does your call center handle unscheduled absences, from first contact from the agent to Intraday who updates the schedule? Does your HRIS system communicate with Genesys?


    #Monitoring/Adherence
    #TimeOff/HRIS

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    Linsey Edn
    Workforce Management
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  • 2.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 27 days ago

    Hello! We have a queue set up in Gen. The advocate calls in and it goes direct to voicemail. Throughout the day someone on the WFM team listens to the voicemail and updates the schedule. They then forward the voicemail to the reporting manager. The manager owns attendance tracking, we do not have Gen linked with our HRIS. 



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    Shannon Hellner
    WFM manager
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 26 days ago

    The idea of a voicemail queue that they can dial into is great! I might look at something similar. Curious if your real-time team AND managers all have schedule update permissions in the scheduling area of Genesys?
    We currently use a Microsoft Form that agents fill out. Our real-time team checks the form results throughout the day and updates the agent's schedule in Genesys.  



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    Meaghan Coleman
    Leader, Operational Support
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 25 days ago

    Our mangers do not have schedule edit access. The advocates inform of absence strictly through the call out line, so they are not independently talking to their manager about it unless they really want to reach out. The managers are notified of the absence due to WFM forwarding the voicemail. 



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    Shannon Hellner
    WFM manager
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 25 days ago

    We follow this same process, and it has worked really well for us! 



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    Kate Russell
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 25 days ago

    I'm curious if you've found that using a voicemail queue is holding employees more accountable and therefore reducing absenteeism? 



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    Meaghan Coleman
    Manager, Operational Support
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 25 days ago

    Our Call Centre is 24 x 7, so there is always a Supervisor available on a dedicated Phone Number.

    The Agent calls in on the dedicated Phone, it is answered by the Supervisor, who asks some standard questions, then updates the schedules accordingly.

    They then send an e-mail which goes to resourcing, and Payroll (we also do not integrate Genesys with our HRIS)



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    Wayde Masters
    Demand Forecasting & Resource Officer
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 25 days ago

    Our organization is using the mobile Tempo app for Genesys. The agents are responsible for submitting their unplanned time off via this app, we get notifications of the unplanned absence in our Genesys inbox, which triggers us to review the submission and then approve it where it is applied to the schedule. In order do this however, you have to set your submission range (in MU config) from minimum of 0 (days) to whatever your max is. Agents can then also submit same day planned time off, however because of this and while we won't approve planned time off that is same day, we can edit that to unplanned. Also, we have unplanned time off requests set to NOT auto update on schedules, making this manual forces our WFM team to have visibility to these requests. 

    We've been live with Tempo for a few months now and it's going good, the pain point has been getting our agents educated on how to submit their time properly.



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    Laura Callaway
    Application Analyst
    St. Luke's Health System
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    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 25 days ago

    @Linsey Edn!  We have a Genesys Inbound line with an IVR so the different groups follow the prompts, depending on their department.  Each IVR prompt leads to a dedicated voicemail for each departments call ins.  Audio files of the voicemails left are sent to dedicated SLACK channels, so they are easier for the WFM team to work, since we support multiple lines of business.  We are able to listen to the voicemails in the SLCKA channel, tag the supervisor with a note of who called in, and the voicemail/call is kept in that channel.  

    We also code Shift interruptions and NCNSs in real-time; either after the agents arrives/leaves early or 2 hrs after their shift has started with no call. 



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    Gina Palmer
    Manager, Workforce Management
    Papa, Inc.
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    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 24 days ago

    Hello,

    Our Workforce Management (WFM) team handles the attendance for our call centers, and our agents have access to the Tempo app for call-outs and PTO requests. When the WFM team audits the day's schedule, they send an email to the leadership team listing all agents considered NCNS (No Call, No Show) for the day. There are times when agents contact their supervisors via text or leave a voicemail for their call-out. If this does not occur, the WFM team will adjust the agent's schedule and code it as NCNS time off. Since Genesys does not have attendance tracking options at this time, we have to be creative in this process.



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    Robert Gacula, Manager, Workforce Management Team
    American Specialty Health
    RobertG@ASHN.com CA, San Diego.
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    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 19 days ago

    This is all very helpful, thank you all. The consensus appears to be that WFM handles callouts from the start by processing voicemails, emails, or requests from an app. Then they inform the call center supervisors of the absence for their tracking purposes.

    My team doesn't handle callouts from the beginning. The supervisors process the callouts and inform WFM of the absence via a form. We processed callouts in the past, but there was too much back-and-forth with the agents as WFM tried to figure out exactly what was said on the voicemail. An app like Tempo or even a template for the agents should rectify that. I'll consider having my team adopt the processes mentioned in this thread.

    Thanks again!



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    Linsey Edn
    Workforce Management
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    Original Message


  • 12.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 18 days ago

    At my company WFM has a voicemail set up that we check a few times a day to update the schedules based on what they were said. We also have the option for email and use the Tempo app like others seem to be using. My WFM team also uses the Intraday monitoring to see if agents are not logged on without reporting missed time. We have an "Urgent Chat" in Teams with Ops to call out the missing agents to see if they reported the time to the supervisor or if they know about any technical issues. If they have not we mark the agent as NCNS until we hear from them, or they show up.

    The WFM team handles the tracking of the attendance which seems to differ from other companies. We currently use a Microsoft Access database that only WFM can update to prevent supervisors from playing favorites, and the managers can ensure the supervisors are holding the agents accountable. I do not recommend Access, but it is what I inherited from people that come before me. I am currently working with my IT department to create an automated solution. You are able to pull by API the agents schedule to another database to track the time codes used. Some logic can be set up to automate the tracking of how many times the agent was tardy, received an occurrence (other companies may call it getting a point), FMLA used in 12 months, and Sick Leave used (NM state protection for workers) in the past 12 months. This is hopefully going to reduce the amount of double work on my WFM team. Genesys may eventually create an attendance solution, and I have had several conversations to plead our case that it is needed. They are listening, but also have a lot ahead of this idea to work on. I can't wait that long.

    I'm also planning on using the work for the attendance solution to push codes to the schedule. This would help fill in for the lack of time exceptions that most of us miss from Genesys Engage. I plan to have a place for agents and supervisors to put a request for a time exception for WFM to approve/deny. If approved it would update the schedule with technical, user outage, or anything else needed that the agent might need to have updated. The supervisor can put in their coaching or meetings as well. I find the current coaching request in Cloud not capable of meeting the needs for my company. This is another area I have had conversations with Genesys around ways to make WFM lives a lot better. This is not to bad mouth the company, but just to let WFM know there are ways around the current status of Cloud. The Genesys team has a lot of work they are doing in all areas so these areas will have some time that we will have to have work arounds to complete our work, and try to minimize the labor on the WFM team. 

    Thank you for creating a post for the WFM teams to talk to each other and make sure we are all following best practices when it comes to unscheduled absences.



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    Michael Haney
    Director, Workforce Strategy
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    Original Message


  • 13.  RE: Unscheduled absences best practices

    Posted 18 days ago

    Our contact center, similar to others who've posted here, has a dedicated in-box that gets both voicemails reporting an unscheduled absence, or an e-mail from the advisor. A member of the WFM team processes these, added that info to the schedule and notifying the supervisors. And if we notice through real-time adherence that someone hasn't logged in, we reach out to the supervisor for more information. Our payroll is separate from Genesys, so sometimes people will request time off in one, and forget to make a matching request in the other system. Or they might message their supervisor directly about a sensitive issue, and WFM just gets the information that this person will be out today. 

    Have any of you found a good way to generate a report on tardiness in Genesys? Currently we're just relying on people self-reporting that they're running late, or someone on WFM noticing that they haven't logged in on time. I can't find an easy way for Genesys to simply generate a list of who logged in late on a past date(s). I can look at each advisor's log in-log out info under statuses, but going through that person by person is not feasable for routine monitoring of the whole contact center, it's just something I can use if I need to research a specific person's login details. I can also go to the schedule for a past date and filter for a specific management unit to see the timeline of who wasn't logged in on time, but I would love to just export a spreadsheet of that data for everyone. 



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    Joann Smith
    Workforce, Data Management
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    Original Message


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