The Value of Part Time Agents

Airing a Super Bowl commercial, overwhelmed during open enrollment or just having large flexes in your contact center staffing? Adding part-time agents is for you! Listen to Dave Hoekstra and Brian Munoz chat about including part-time agents into your culture and the value that they can offer to your team!

What is Calabrio Shorts?

Calabrio Shorts is a fun-sized podcast that covers all sorts of topics around the contact center industry. No topic is off-limits as we cover frequently asked questions, industry trends and definitions, and yes, we will have fun doing it.

The Value of Part Time Agents
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[00:00:00] Hello everyone. And welcome to this edition of Calabrio shorts. My name is Dave Hoekstra product evangelist here at Calabrio and we are talking about part-time agents. In the contact center world we generally have a real need for as many people as we can get as long as it makes sense with the budget.

[00:00:18] And what if we could bring some of those people in and spend a little less money and get a little bit more targeted information. And to help me out. Have brought in an expert here, somebody who's done this a long time. One of my partners in crime, who I've known for years and we've worked closely together, we've got Brian Munoz here, he's our supervisor of professional services.

[00:00:37] But basically what that means is he manages the WFM consultants here at Calabrio. He has spent most of his career working in workforce management. So we're gonna spend a little bit of time asking Brian, maybe some pros and cons of part-time agents and what are some things to think about? Brian, welcome.

[00:00:52] Glad to have you let's start out right with. The idea of part-time agents. So let's maybe do a little bit of a definition. Now in the US it's pretty easy what a part-time agent is, but what have you seen in yours that can help us kind of, solidify what a part-time agent is and what they could do for you?

[00:01:08] Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks for the intro, Dave. Yeah you did mention in the US it's, pretty standard we're seeing anywhere from, maybe 20 to 30 hours a week. Generally. Although we have worked with contact centers where we have agents that are coming in for four hours a week or six hours a week, as flexible as we can be.

[00:01:25] But really the way that I like to define part-time is anyone that is not full time. Maybe they're not carrying benefits. Maybe there's additional costs that the organization isn't incurring to keep these people on staff, but it's really, are you fulltime or are you not fulltime? Anything that is not full time.

[00:01:42] Any flavor of that is what I like to define as part-time. Okay. And as a part-time for a contact center that might be considering part-time, let's kind of take a look at it and let's let's look at some of the pros, right? What are some of the things that an organization could expect to benefit from in using some part-time workforce?

[00:02:05] Well, I'll start at the bottom. The bottom line cost generally part-time employees are gonna be more affordable than your full-time employees because they're working less and they might even be coming in at a reduced rate. Okay. So the, obviously there's a cost benefit, right? There's we're spending less money to get these people in the door, whether it's just because we're working them fewer hours.

[00:02:29] Or it could be because they don't make as much per hour or as part of their contracted rate as that. Okay. That's a good one. Also, I think flexible part-time agents allow for flexes and cost. If we look at some of our organizations, let's just take retail where we might bring in some bubble staffing, in Q4 of the year.

[00:02:51] We don't want to have to maintain that cost for all 12 months of the year. We're really just looking for assistance ahead of time during the holidays. Yeah. And we've definitely seen our share of organizations that have to ramp up for the holidays. Retail's a great example or my favorite is and especially in the US healthcare around open enrollment time or something in that frame where, you know, oh, we need a hundred extra people.

[00:03:15] It doesn't necessarily make sense to go out and hire 100 full time employees. And do you also notice that maybe there's a benefit for time of day as well? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Evenings and weekends are the top two for me when we're looking at bringing in part-time staff. Okay. Now I know that you and I have both spent a lot of time in workforce management.

[00:03:38] And it's really easy to talk about how great it is to bring in these part-time agents. But you and I both know that there are some reasons that make this a little more difficult. It's a little easier said than done. So what are some of the maybe cons that part-time agents can kind of bring into the mix there?

[00:03:52] Something that maybe an organization would wanna pay closer attention to? Well, there's a few, the top one that I could say is that generally we tend to see part-time staff having a higher turnover rate. You and I both know that it costs to hire an employee than it does to maintain that employee. So going through the hiring process over and over again, can be additional cost as well, the limited availability, which is a pro, for our cost can also be a little bit tough. When we talk about you, is that person a part of the organizational culture, can they make the meetings?

[00:04:24] Can they feel like they're part of the team? We're bringing them as much of the experience as we are to the rest of our agents. Yeah. And I remember one of the biggest problems that I experienced when we always started talking about part-time agents is that a lot of contact centers have fairly long training cycles.

[00:04:42] It's not super easy to just bring somebody in. It usually takes, sometimes 6, 8, 10 weeks to get people comfortable with handling the incoming volumes, especially these days when the easier contexts are being held by self-service and the more difficult ones are now being thrown in the lap.

[00:04:59] And the problem that I remember was always that people wanted to work part-time, but we had to have them train full-time. Right. And it was always like, okay, you're gonna be a full-time employee for the first six weeks you work here. Well, I can't do that. I can only work 20 to 25 hours a week. Curious if you've seen any organizations that maybe have approached this as any unique tactics they've seen on how to train.

[00:05:21] An employee in a part-time fashion. Yeah. So what I have seen really is two separate tracks, because as you mentioned, it can be maybe sometimes six to eight weeks of a runway for a full-time employee, bring them in. And then if we only have, 12 to 16 hours a week of that person's time, as opposed to 40, that math does not look great.

[00:05:40] So taking your core workload and focusing it more during what is happening. During the time that I'm hiring these part-time agents for, or are these skills something where we can bring them up to speed on 50% of what we're training our full-time staff on. But if we look at what is the content that needs to be covered during the training, what is their onboarding look like?

[00:06:03] Do they have their own leader? That can really own this process from top to bottom. Those are ways that we can identify. That part-time space in the organization and then be able to operate within that instead of trying to fit it into that full-time methodology. Because quite frankly, they just don't have that time.

[00:06:20] Okay. Yeah. And that's the fun part, right. Is trying to, we're trying to it's like finding a puzzle piece that isn't quite the puzzle piece you want, but how can we fit it into the puzzle? Right. And that's always been the challenge of working with part-time agents, but, there are benefits.

[00:06:36] As long as you can work around, the example, I've kind of always used just like college students, right? College students are a great example of how part-time I can't work. Tuesday, Thursdays, cuz I go to class. And on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I have this responsibility. So I'm really only available from noon to 7:00 PM on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays.

[00:06:53] And it's okay. So the good news is I have a need for some people on Wednesday afternoons, but I can't train you every Wednesday afternoon for 36 weeks in a row. Right. I have to get you up to speed. And that's always been a challenge now. There's actually something that's kind of happened in the world in the last few years that has really kind of changed the game on part-time agents.

[00:07:16] Right. And I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but this whole work from home or hybrid working. Has really enabled a lot of people to step into the remote working part-time type of thing, but we still have the same problem. How do we train them? So that's always something to pay attention to.

[00:07:34] Have you seen organizations that have maybe started to try to fill the gap with some remote workers that can work hybrid? Oh, absolutely. Well, and it's. That, that enablement of allowing everyone to work, from home, maybe we were pushed a bit, but we all ended up there and we got into it.

[00:07:53] But yeah, where we've seen success with some of our customers is when part-time agents are under their own leadership and following their own structure. Being able to define that having one person or one team of people, able to take care of every part-time agent from onboarding into scheduling that first, 12 to 16 weeks, we have seen success when part-time is really fully owned, by one leader or by a team of leaders or by a group of individuals that is managing the entire part-time agent experience.

[00:08:25] Yeah, I like that because it doesn't foster that sense of like your attempt or your, you're someone that's not part of the full-time group. You've got your own little group of these workers that can share their experience together and help each other kind of continue.

[00:08:39] So I really like that. Yeah, exactly. They feel like a full member of a part-time team instead of a partial member of a full-time team, like so much of what we're doing in contact centers, with workforce management, quality monitoring, everything really leans into agent satisfaction. And if we can make that person feel like a whole piece of the team, that's huge.

[00:09:05] Another thing that hybrid has brought in that really benefits part-time models is the, it used to be. I'm sure if you've ever worked in a call center before you've been asked to work a split shift and most people do not want to do that, right? Because it used to be go sit in your car for two and a half hours and read a book and then come back.

[00:09:26] Nobody wants to do that. But now with hybrid, I can go get some laundry done. I can go pick the kids up from daycare . And so it really is kind of fostering a new approach to part-time and that's, I think one of the reasons we wanted to kind of touch on this topic is that there are some real benefits to it now.

[00:09:42] What are some of the key factors that could lead to an organization, maybe wanting to make this decision to kind of dip their toe in the water of part-time. So I think, I mean, for me, coming from workforce management, the place that I'm always gonna start with is the forecast. When are those calls coming in?

[00:10:01] How long do we need to handle it? So definitely starting with where is our call volume. But also if we look at those, for example, those split shifts, maybe there was one in a hundred people that, that used to work for. And we were real excited to have 'em on staff, but now being able to do that from home you can use your agents.

[00:10:23] Whenever you need them. And also whenever they can be available to you, I mean, something I think we should touch on when we talk about flexibility and remote work is, self scheduling and maybe there are agents out there that we can give them the opportunity to design their own schedule. Now, I know I'm painting with a broad brush here, but there are tools that WFM solutions can provide to find out from the agent.

[00:10:44] Hey, next week, when are you gonna be available? Let's fill in this bingo card. Yeah I mean, paint with those brought up a brush as you want, because what really should be happening is the technology feeding the need and not the other way around. Right. And so when we talk about these things, I know you and I, when we first got our start in doing this, there was nothing like this, or it was you work 40 or you work nothing.

[00:11:05] Right. That was it. Right? And oh, absolutely. The amount of inefficiency that a contact center had to deal with, but now there's so many different options and now the technology is supporting that. So imagine a scenario where you could, someone is interested in going part-time and you say, okay, just gimme 20 hours.

[00:11:22] I don't care where just gimme 20 and that fits perfectly. But then your technology solution also supports the decision to put those people. I mean, maybe you don't need people helping out from 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM, but after that, you're good. Right. And so helping to kind of help those people, like you said, build their own schedule from scratch following a set of rules.

[00:11:43] that's something that is really important these days. So you had also mentioned when we talked something about, what are some of the trends that might show up? You mentioned the forecast, but are there any other things that in those trends that might help an organization realize that part-time could be an option?

[00:12:00] Absolutely. I mean, if we dig in a little bit further to the numbers and I know I've said this earlier, but evening and weekend staff, more and more contact centers being open seven days a week, especially here in the United States, because we cannot wait until Monday for an answer. That's right.

[00:12:14] But we, need that staff. We need the staff on demand. So looking at what is happening with your evenings and weekends, and then do you have any irregular intervals? I mean, this could be something. As limited as we'll say Super Bowl Sunday. Hey, we know we're publishing in ads.

[00:12:32] We're gonna need some extra coverage there, but maybe it's something that's, regular happening every few weeks. So where are we seeing your staffing flex? Where are we seeing those big red bars on the staffing model? Hey, we had 10 people. We could have used 30 people for this block of three hours.

[00:12:49] So really just taking a look at the data. And I think your point is, when I talk to people about WFM, the unfortunate reality about workforce management is that it does make you more efficient and it does make you hit these goals. But it, what it does not give you is an army of people standing outside your building, waiting to be called in to, to work that you don't pay them anything.

[00:13:11] And part time's kind of the happy medium, a little. Between that, right? Believe it or not, there are people out there that only wanna work 10 hours a week. You, we just have to find them. We have to make sure to we have to make sure we get them ready and get them useful. And there are a lot of people that want to do that.

[00:13:28] And that's kind of what we tried to do here. Now you said, I think it was a great piece of advice. You mentioned about keeping them as part of the, singular focus group, any other good pieces of. experience that you could pass along and maybe using part-timers. I think there is so much to be said for agent engagement.

[00:13:47] And I know, again, we're talking about part-time, this definitely applies to full-time as well, but when you are an individual that feels like they are a part of an organization, especially cuz a lot of these people are sitting in their own homes. We're a lot of us, aren't in an office where I can look over the cube and say, Hey, Dave, look at us working four hours next to each other

[00:14:06] isn't this great. Anything that we can do to make people feel like they're part of an organization is going to be huge. So I've seen some organizations go through, when we were back in the office, let's talk about having a maximum occupancy requirement. Okay. Which I apologize for the quick pivot, but they're like, we want you to have a little bit of breathing room in between these calls.

[00:14:28] So you can enjoy talking to your neighbor. I mean, I know that's probably a little bit risky for some contact centers and service levels we're looking at, but it's all, it all goes back to just taking care of your people. So taking care of your employees. So they'll take care of your customers and, you're right.

[00:14:44] Doesn't matter if it's full-time or part-time or weird shifts or normal shifts, right? Asking and receiving continual feedback about their not only their schedule, but their mental state, their ability to handle interactions where they need coaching, where they need development. I mean, that's all goes into this, right.

[00:15:04] And what you can really do is set up a world class organization that is able to kind of bend and flex where it's needed. And the key is, I mean, ultimately WFM does one job getting the most number of interactions handled for the appropriate cost. Right. That's what WFM is and always will be all about.

[00:15:27] And so you do tend to need good tools, cuz it's very difficult to build a schedule to say, okay, give this group of people no more than 25 hours, but no fewer than 18 hours, but make sure that none of those hours happen between after 7:00 PM. All of this is different rules. It's very difficult to do that without a really good WFM application.

[00:15:46] So we're making sure that not only part-time agents have their value, but we're also making sure that the software gets it. Alright. So I feel like we've got a really good grasp on what Part Time here is, let me just ping you one more time. Any other pieces of advice or anything we could think of? No, you know what I think that's the most that I have for now.

[00:16:07] Okay. That's fantastic. And that's what Calabrio Shorts is all about is just getting to the subject, getting in and getting out. For those of you, if you have questions, please do not hesitate to ping us @[e-mail] we're glad to answer any questions or if you have a great idea for another podcast episode, I.

[00:16:23] was going to say, maybe we'll see you in C3, right? That's right. C3 is happening fairly shortly if you're listening to this after September of 2022, we'll see you at the next C3. But this year in Orlando, we're looking for a really great time. And yeah. And we're certainly looking forward to seeing you there.

[00:16:42] If you have questions on how to integrate a part-time strategy, we're gonna have ask the expert sessions. We're gonna have lots of great people there that really know what they're talking about. So please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you want to discuss anything further. Thank you to my guest today.

[00:16:56] Brian Munoz appreciate the time Brian, and for the rest of you, we always appreciate you spending a little bit of time of your day with us. So we'll see you on the next episode of Calabrio Shorts from me, Dave Hoekstra and Brian Munoz. Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you soon.