WFM Unfiltered | Workforce Management Podcast

Agent Mentorship into WFM - Aaron Wojtak

• Irina Mateeva • Season 1 • Episode 45

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Aaron Wojtak joins Irina on WFM Unfiltered for a brutally honest dive into what’s really happening at the intersection of real-time analytics, agent performance, and leadership in contact centres. With a background that spans frontline agent roles to strategic workforce planning, Aaron brings a grounded, no-nonsense perspective that cuts through the noise of corporate fluff

This episode challenges the traditional “command and control” culture still lurking in too many operations teams. From burnout to broken feedback loops, Aaron exposes the root causes of performance issues and advocates for a healthier, more collaborative approach. It’s not about policing agents or pushing dashboards - it’s about unlocking human potential and making metrics meaningful again.

You’ll hear Aaron and Irina tackle hot-button topics like the misuse of AHT, the illusion of quality vs speed, and how leaders waste time in the name of control. But this conversation doesn’t just criticise - it offers real solutions. Expect actionable insights on mentorship, skill progression, and how to break down the silos that sabotage so many WFM functions.

This episode is a must-watch for anyone tired of surface-level workforce chatter and hungry for the truth about what works. Whether you’re a real-time analyst, team lead, or strategic leader, there’s gold here for every level. Aaron doesn’t hold back, and neither do we.

Watch now and find out why the best WFM leaders are the ones who started on the phones.

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Irina:

Hello, my lovely WFMers out there. I'm your host Irina, and this is another episode of WFM Unfiltered, and today we're heading to Colorado to have a chat with my lovely guest, Aaron. hey Aaron, how are you doing?

Aaron:

Hey, I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Irina:

I'm doing fantastic, especially because I am on shitload of coffee today and I crave more, so I'm already imagining my next cup of coffee, but other than that, I'm, thank you for asking.

Aaron:

I yet,

Irina:

Did. No, I can't have that on the podcast. I can't have a person without a coffee. Oh my God. You should have said that to me, and I would gladly have used another one. But, we have a, great topic that usually goes along with having a lot of coffee as well, but, can you please introduce yourself first?

Aaron:

Yeah. so I'm Aaron Wojtak. I've been in the contact center world for 29 years now. mainly WFM for about the last 20 of that. I've been in all aspects of it from the real time analyst. Moved my way all up, and have been, director of WFM and then I've done a lot of consultative type stuff in my past careers. that's really kind of me in a nutshell. I got two kids, a wife, two dogs. kids are grown, so they're not hanging out with me too much anymore. but, yeah, that's, pretty much me.

Irina:

Oh, lovely. Thank you so much for being a part of the podcast and for be willing to share your knowledge and experience with, all of us here. So I was very curious to ask you about the topic of real time and how has it been on the floor. And this for me seems to be a very con, controversial topic. From one hand, I'm getting a lot of people that are seeing the value of real time as this, that kind of a cornerstone where you need to really collect data and insights on the day and feed it back to the, forecasting and planning team to see what's really going on. And on the other hand to, make sure that the agents are not burned out and we still deliver the best possible results with the coverage that we have. On the other hand, I'm getting a lot of. Real time analysts that feel like the position of real time is to be monitoring cues and making changes of the skills all day long at all times. So that's one thing that's such a controversial topic and. I am siding with the first group, and I don't believe it's healthy for anyone, including for us in the planning team to be constantly asking people, change this, change to that change, this change to that. But I was curious about your view on this one.

Aaron:

So I've been in a couple different environments where they have mashed some of the WFM. positions together. So I've been in environments where the realtime team was also in charge of making schedule changes and moves, things along those lines. and then I've been in where those are two separate entities, doing a lot of that communication back and forth on, hey, we need to change this, need to change that. I'm personally of the mindset that. There's technology that can help on both sides of those things. So it just depends on what the investment is. You can let me know and you can edit this out if, like Intrad DM as an example, takes real-time information off the WFM system and actually helps make those schedule changes and things like that. So it takes some of the burden off of who's ever running the floor. So for me it really is. They shouldn't be just sitting there calling out, Hey, so and so has been an after call work for an extra 30 seconds. They shouldn't be that policing type environment. RTAs should really be looking at what does the environment look like, what's going on, and making real time decisions on. Hey, do we need to ask x, y, and Z agents if they can move their lunch out 15 minutes because we've gotten an influx of calls because we know there's an outage in our system somewhere. So should be more driving of where the contact center's going through the day as opposed to just reactionary. they need to be proactive and they need to be touching on those things. there's tools that can help them with that, but I've been in centers that were small enough to where. They really could do that on a real-time basis with just the basic WFM tools and looking at like CMS or looking at whatever's showing the volumes and where they're at and making real-time decisions that way. So I definitely go for more of that, the former versus the latter, because they do need to have that ability to make decisions and changes.

Irina:

what, isn't that going against the plans that we're having? Because while I agree that you are supposed to be taking certain decision and certain changes, I. I have seen so many environments where changes are all over the place, and basically the initial plan that you're having is outdated at the minute that it's published and on the day itself, everyone is doing everything else, but the activities that are in your planning.

Aaron:

And that's where that control has to be there. that partnership with. The operations team the people that are actually out on the floor working with their agents that report up to them, that's where they have to be, brought in ahead of time on, Hey guys, here's what we're expecting this day. Things along those lines that they need to be aware of. Hey, we may make modifications'cause here's what we're seeing. there's places where I've been, and we put in a, different type of program, You know how realtime teams, they have a radio or they've got a, some way to communicate out to the supervisors on the floor. And there may be, and then this was all, pre COVID when most people were sitting in an office, but we had it to where there was like six radios out on the floor with supervisors and then there's one at WFM and WFM saying, Hey, so and so is this. Or Hey, we need to move this, or, things on those lines. It just got crazy because, two supervisors would end up talking to an agent and saying, Hey, we got a, notification about your off call work, or something along those lines, but. We put it to where one person had a radio on the floor. One person at WFM had a radio, and then they were running the floor in shifts. So let's say one supervisor had it for two hours. They ran the floor for that timeframe. The other supervisors could manage everything else. it was all about the communication. So you communicated ahead of time, Hey guys, here's what we're really seeing. You communicate on an hourly basis, Hey, here's volumes are coming in 20% higher. We need to move some lunches or breaks. Hey, we need to cancel this training. Hey, we need to do this. about the communication. if you keep I'll say jerking the agents back and forth too much, you're gonna start to burn them out. They're not gonna know which way is up, and you've gotta be cognizant of that health factor of the agent's mental health because if they're constantly getting bombarded with, hey, you're after to coworker, you're in there an extra 10 seconds, things along those lines, they're just going to get fried and they're not gonna wanna be there much longer. And attrition is definitely a lot more costly than taking a beat and helping to support an agent. or 10 agents, anything along those lines. So I think it's just all about the communications.

Irina:

I had previously covered that topic from the other angle and another perspective that empathy is not necessarily a part of our scope in WFM or real time or any function within the, WFM team. But it's more on the TM being a manager of that person to be worried about their, mental health. Which I'm completely disagreeing with, but that opens the door to how much should be the involvement on the day from the real time team with the agent. And I have seen it in both ways. in teams where we're saying every single information that needs to be given to the agent needs to be filtered through their team lead because it's their responsible manager. And the other direction in which this, you are running the floor. Are on the floor, you are responsible to manage that communication. It's faster. Sometimes you're articulating it much better, and ultimately you are creating that relationship with the agents themself. So what.

Aaron:

I've been in both environments. Again, a long time, so I think that WFM can have direct contact with the agent population, but it needs to limited to those things that WFM should have some control over. we can communicate out, hey, volume are down. We're giving, some extended lunches, we're doing some extended break, breaks. Anything that we can to help, get people off the floor. Things along those lines. I've also had to where everything had to go through the supervisor at the time, but it was hard to get ahold of supervisor. And half the time the supervisors are like, oh, go ask WFM. So we've had it where the policies are, agents don't approach WFM, go through your supervisor, go through your leader. and that's been a lot of face-to-face and, when everybody was on site again, nowadays there's more of the Slack channels and the communication channels that are. Wide open across the board, so kind of anybody could be posting in there and asking questions and things along those lines. So it depends really how you set it up and how you feel like, the center should be run and the site director is gonna be the one that's helping to dictate some of those items. So that's where you gotta communicate, saying, Hey, I would go in and say, Hey, in my experience. having WFM having contact with the agents not only allows us to not be bothering a supervisor all the time because they've got 15 people underneath them. So instead of talking to them about 15 different people, we're talking to the individuals, and keeping that and, but also lets us have that pulse and really what's going on the floor. What is, if, it is the volumes, they are really, high things along those lines. Okay. Getting an idea of what's causing that will allow you to go, okay, this is something we've had before. We know it's gonna be a short outage. need to move things out half an hour. I. Or we're gonna be say, Hey, this is gonna be all day. Let's just not move anything because we're gonna suffer the whole day. So it's getting that idea of what's going on. So I think that communication can be at the agent level. It just needs to be, that expectation needs to be set up at the highest level of the center directorship. So I think that's definitely a that has to happen.

Irina:

I think it's, it is exactly as you mentioned. There should be a process or a policy in place, either or, in my case when I started working and doing real time as well. At some point the team leads were so disconnected from WFM that somehow the management decided, okay, you know what? It would be much better to filter everything through the team leads so they know what's going on with the agents. From my perspective, that was. I, don't know. It just didn't work because it happened exactly what you mentioned. Team leaders are not doing what they're supposed to be doing because they have to constantly go and say, Hey, put yourself on, email instead of phone, blah, blah, blah. Or No, you can't do this. Why are you on after cowork? But on the other hand, they were getting so stressed out and burnout out themselves that they started saying, ah, the WFM team said, so go to them. And in the end, it created more work and more frustration for me. But the other perspective is, and I love that you mentioned the post on the floor, because a lot of time in WFM we're very focused on dry numbers, but not on what behind these numbers. And a typical example for this is AHT. I'm curious to understand. AHT seems to be one of the KPIs that is wide, wildly put out there as a metric to, evaluate agents. What, do you think about this one and how do we create a, how do we know what AHT is healthy from an agent perspective, if.

Aaron:

So for me it's what the business is. you could be, let's say you're in healthcare. So in healthcare, those calls can be all over the place, so don't think AHT should really be the biggest factor. you gotta look for definitely outliers, but it's gonna go up and down. If you are, let's say, new to the floor and you're doing nothing but password resets, yeah, your handle time should be very, your, HD should be very measured Those calls should take approximately around the same time anything else. so I really do think it's the line of business that you're in as well as the overall industry that you're, covering. I've been in a few BPO spaces, so I've had agents that kind of crossed multiple areas depending upon the season. we used agents in, during open enrollment that were temp agents, but we also used the agents from other lines of business that were slower during that time, so they would cross over. If they would have different goals. And again, it's communicating what those goals are. But I do think that handle time, AHT is a good measurement, but sometimes it's just a measurement for outliers. because you're gonna get some crazy calls. and if somebody's got one outlier here and there, it's not a big deal because it's the average over time. If you're looking at it daily. you're gonna drive yourself nuts. looking at it weekly, you know you're gonna have a better overall view. Yeah, they may have had three really long calls, but their average is still gonna be fairly low because every, everything else was within goal. So it just really depends on the scenario.

Irina:

I'm looking at it from the perspective of a real time analyst or a floor manager, or a team lead, whoever is managing the floor currency and my issue with, components like AHTs. Yes. First in the WFM team. It's one of the most important things, but I've been in a situation where, productivity is a part of the bonus and how can you get more productivity when you're extremely fast? For me, as a real time professional, it is very good because when I put my fastest people out there, I'm handling more calls, I'm handling more emails, and I was pushing everyone to be like them and at some point. We understood that the people who were the fastest, who were getting the biggest bonus were the ones who were savaging every single call hanging up on customers. The quality was absolutely ridiculous, and overall, they were benefiting from doing a bad job. But when I was not involved with the quality department, for me it was like, I'm, responsible, making sure that we're meeting service levels and stuff. We're not abandoning goals. I made sure it's perfect, but if you zoom out and start digging deeper, you're seeing that. It's not that picture perfect situation. And I feel like in a lot of places we're missing that involvement of WFM team to understand exactly what's happening during those conversations. why is the performance of search certain agents as such? And we're often getting just the overall AHT. But maybe sometimes thereafter, call work is, three times longer than the actual talk time with customers. So is that fair? Is it okay or are they taking advantage of the system? So how do we incorporate that kind of process or that, desire from the WFM team to engage with different departments more and be more a part of the process.

Aaron:

Yeah, so I definitely recommend doing a weekly touchpoint. That's, the QA QM team. It's WFM, it's training and it's operations. So maybe there's, 10 supervisors on the floor. They report up to one operations manager. the operations manager, probably isn't the one to come to the meeting because they're looking at it at that 10,000 foot view. But you need to have, a delegate from the supervisors to come in and discuss, hey, here's what WFM saying, what is QA seeing? Okay, what is training saying? Because we're gonna get things, and I'll just use an example of an environment I was in, I saw a large uptick in, in handle time, just across the board for everybody. Not new agents, not anybody. It was just everybody. come to find out there was a change in the CRM that the client had put out and they were struggling with it. training. Really wasn't aware of it because they hadn't seen it yet. The four supervisors hadn't paid enough attention to really see what it was. So it was just a matter of fact it going out, sitting with a couple agents. Seeing where they were struggling and then getting together with training, getting together through operations and saying, Hey, here's what I saw. Have you guys noticed this? And then. Training going, okay, we're gonna cover that in more detail at our next training session.'cause we didn't realize it changed. And for the supervisor to say, okay, we're gonna have to do briefings to get everybody else up to speed. let's get those briefings scheduled and work with real time to, get, people through that and then, two weeks later handle time's back down to where it should be. So it's. It's paying attention, it's, going on the floor. even as a WFM director, I would go in and just to listen on calls or go sit down just to get up my finger on the pulses. When it came to bringing people into the WFM world, I tried to bring them from the floor. I would bring people that have been agents and we did, almost like a mentorship program where they could come sit with WFM for a couple hours a week if they're interested in it, and learn what WFM does. It gives them a better understanding when they're back out on the floor of really what WFM's there for. They're not there to be the overlords of numbers to, whip them into shape. they're there to help run the business. And then on the other side, then the WFM team who's working with these agents who are learning what WFM is all about, get a better feel for what's going on the floor. having some of that cross. I guess is a good way to say it is a way to help things get resolved.

Irina:

I love that cross-contamination, and I've always, thought and suggested even if you're discussing just the usual rift between now WFM and team leads goals suggest that you do a swap, be a team lead for a day, and the team lead, be a planner for a day. And you tend to understand that once you're walking in someone else's shoes, the grass is not necessarily greener and we're always having the perspective that oh, they're doing this and this, and that's not their job. And they're ruining everything. They're taking agents, they're not asking us, but they do have deliverables and they're stressing this way as well. And for me, the biggest issues over and in every single conversation that I'm having is the silos. Why? Why are they such siloed? These teams? I don't get it. I really do not get where it's originating from.

Aaron:

I think WFM is going, oh, you're the numbers guys. Yeah, but we gotta take that human factor into it. And so that's that customer service factor. So that's always been where I've had been at. I have worked with WFM leaders that were just numbers, and they weren't real successful with working with the operations team'cause the operations team is. They're worried about the numbers when it comes to making sure calls are answered, stuff like that. They're also working with that human factor. They're, hopefully they're concerned about their agent's health and looking at, the burnout rates and trying to help prevent attrition by. Being that, that support structure. so they're looking more at the human side versus number side. So I think that's where the biggest rift has come from, which is, numbers versus feelings. We'll put it that way. and I think that, just like you said, if you can some of that over, Hey, come be an RTA for a day. Hey, we'll come and work the floor for a day. you suggested, that's gonna be helpful with that. I do think that it really does start at the overall contact center director, which, everybody should be reporting up to. so person can help drive that environment. So I think where, they need to also step in and help. bring that environment to fruition. because once everybody's working together, it goes a lot smoother. And I've been in centers that are like that. It took a while to get there, but once we got there, things were good. Attrition rates went down, we weren't getting the burnouts, we weren't getting the amount of FMLA and leave requests and things along those lines, just'cause everybody felt healthier about their jobs.

Irina:

I am really curious about your mentorship program and what you, said that you used to be doing with, the agents and if there is like a slow period, okay, let's just invite them to check the stats with us so they can start understanding more, and that's something that. I am not sure I have heard. I definitely have not seen because we tend to be looking at from the perspective, oh you know what, it's a slow period, shall we be offering days off, maybe hours off? And you can basically recuperate those hours in more, busy period, or we're suggesting more training and coaching. But we ourselves are not really suggesting anything on the table. So I'm really curious from that mentorship program, because it's something that's so smart and so valuable, and I wanna know how can we market that to WFM teams more?

Aaron:

Yeah. And you know what? And I bring it up in a lot of conversations, I can say probably 90% of the people that came through the program, and this has been a few years ago, but I still keep in touch on LinkedIn with a lot of them, still in WFM and have risen up through the ranks from the RTA and become the schedulers and then become the forecasters. it's something that people just need to think about and try because. WFM turnover can be high at times because of the stress factors that you can get. while we try to mitigate some of that stress and stuff like that, sometimes it's not possible. So when you're starting to get that turnover, if you can bring other people to help out, let's say, a couple hours a week and they're learning some of the stuff and then they start to pick it up and they actually start running real time. People get a little more of a breather, they may be able to sit back and help, almost service, observe the person while they're running. RTA, give suggestions, ride along. they're getting a little bit of a break, but they're also getting to do something that they don't get to do on a regular basis, which is do training. they're getting to pass on some of their skillset. So I was particular about who the. The people in the mentorship program worked with because I wanted to make sure that they were working with the, upper echelon of the people on the team. but I made sure that they also had experience with everybody at some point in time. But the people that were really running the training were the people that I was expecting to then see move to that next level. So you might be the RTA, guru at the time, but you don't know a lot about the scheduling and forecasting side. So that's your next step. So while we've got these people, out, and they're now running shifts for maybe, two or three hours a week. maybe that person is working with the forecaster to learn more of the forecasting side of the house. So it works its way up. got agents mentoring to rt, A, you've got RTAs, then mentoring to schedulers, you've got schedulers. Then mentoring to forecasters, you've got forecasters mentoring up to capacity planners. If you've got that set, then it's not in the forecasting arena. So they've got movement. and then depending on the structure, maybe they've then become the supervisor over that site, or, and they become the regional over fore sites. there's ways for everybody to move up. Some people think WFM can be a dead end, but if got the right leadership in place and helping to push them to that next level. may not stay at that company because there's nowhere else to go, but at least they can take the skill sets that you've helped ingrain in them to somewhere else and be successful.

Irina:

Yeah, I love that so much because what I'm really against is keeping people where they are just so you don't risk losing them, if they move up. the leather or stuff, and yes, maybe there isn't a position for them at the moment, but they're enjoying it much more because they get exposed to different things that they can learn. They do develop different skills, and one thing that, it's basically a mandatory thing that every company is doing, they start looking for people. At the moment, someone is promoted, or at the moment someone leaves. This is the moments when we tend to go around the agent pool and it is oh, who has a potential? Yeah, let's promote this or that. And I had very, great conversation the other day with, a guest that mentioned, oh, you know what? But some people think that it's great to work in WFM team, and then they get exposed to it and they're running away and saying, that's not my profile at all. I don't want that. The perception is different. Once you are in the inside and creating that mentorship program, you can also sift through everyone and see, okay, this. Person has a great potential and they're interested and we can basically develop them. So had an opportunity occurs, we have someone ready. And what great ambassadors are they amongst the other agents that are, for example, not really familiar with what are we doing and why we're so, grumpy as they perceive us.

Aaron:

Yeah.

Irina:

Okay. Oh, I, love that type of, mentorship idea. I think we need to explore it, in a wider scope. Maybe we can create a webinar on it. But, because we're at time, I wanna thank you so much, Aaron, for this conversation. And I wanna ask you, how do people find you if they wanna have a.

Aaron:

LinkedIn, obviously. everybody's there. it's AARON and last name is WOJTAK, but yeah, feel free to connect, reach out. any questions? concerns, ideas? I love new ideas. and, said, just get out there and help run the world.

Irina:

Let's network, let's make it better because I'm already feeling energized with that idea. So thank you Aaron, so much for being a guest on WFM Unfiltered.

Aaron:

Hi. Thank you.

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