Workforce Management 201: The Link Between Cost, Burnout, and Experience

Workforce Management 201: The Link Between Cost, Burnout, and Experience

Workforce management is often treated as a scheduling function.

In reality, it’s a leadership decision with lasting consequences.

In this episode of CX Roundtable, host Sarah Caminiti is joined by workforce management leaders Dan Smitley and Arlyne Pardo to unpack how staffing decisions quietly shape three things every organization cares about: cost, burnout, and customer experience.

This conversation moves beyond definitions and tools to examine what actually happens when demand and capacity are misaligned—and why those effects show up later as attrition, absenteeism, missed revenue, and degraded trust.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why labor is one of the most misunderstood cost drivers in CX
• How bad schedules directly contribute to burnout and absenteeism
• The hidden revenue impact of missed demand
• A practical framework for balancing customer experience, business outcomes, and agent wellbeing
• How reclaiming autonomy in scheduling can improve engagement without breaking operations

Episode 1 laid the foundation.

Episode 2 is where the tradeoffs get real.

If you lead CX, Support, or Operations, this episode gives language to decisions you’re already making—and clarity on how to make them more intentionally.

🎧 Listen now and stay with the series.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Workforce Management Series
• 1:01 Why Workforce Management Matters
• 2:02 Why Workforce Management Matters
• 4:13 Understanding Cost and Capacity in WFM
• 8:26 The Impact of Accurate Staffing
• 13:23 Balancing Customer Experience, Business Outcomes, and Agent Needs
• 20:42 Real-World Examples of WFM Benefits
• 26:33 WFM's Influence on Burnout and Engagement
• 28:11 Communication Between Agents and WFM
• 30:17 Improving Agent Autonomy
• 36:08 Balancing Fairness and Accountability
• 42:29 Impact of WFM on Community and Engagement
• 48:29 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

​[00:00:00]

Introduction to Workforce Management Series

Sarah Caminiti: Welcome to the CX Round Table. This is part two of our Workforce Management series. I am so happy that this was. The first series that we decided to create and I was able to do it with such experts because after the first conversation, I feel like I have such a foundational understanding of, of what workforce management is or WFM and things are gonna evolve over the next couple of episodes are going to be possible because. forced ourselves to just stick with the foundational pieces that needed to be defined. This episode today is. The one that I think all three of us were the most excited to, to dig [00:01:00] into. 

Why Workforce Management Matters

Sarah Caminiti: But we're gonna be talking about why does WFM matter? And you're talking about an area of a business that some people may not totally understand, hopefully they do now because they listened to the first episode.

But but really starting to. Dig into why is this so important? Why should companies invest in this? Why do teams need this to, to be able to deliver the results that they should deliver? How does it show itself? Like all of these different layers are questions that most of us have, we don't really know how to ask.

Or we don't. Have people that we feel safe enough to ask. And I'm so lucky that I have two people that I feel very safe in asking a lot of questions to. 

Meet the Experts: Dan and Arlyne

Sarah Caminiti: So let's you guys re introduce yourself just so that everybody knows who, who's joining me today. We'll start [00:02:00] with you, Dan.

Dan Smitley: So not to repeat the exact same intro. So Dan Smiltley founder of two three consulting, WFM per professional um, Leo Myers-Briggs. I'm an INTP on. Um, Enneagram on a nonconformist and then on six types of working genius. My geniuses are wonder and discernment, so bit different.

Sarah Caminiti: What, are you gonna bring to the table next episode? My gosh, I it. I'm putting you on the spot here, Arlyne, and that's gonna be a, a tough one to follow. I'm so sorry.

Arlyne Pardo: I need to prepare for this, I wasn't. All right. Hello everybody. My name is Arlyne Pardo based in Panama. Right. What was we talking about? Oh yeah, I'm cancer. So probably that's some of the explanations why we get along. Probably, I guess. Yes, I have like more than [00:03:00] eight years of professional experience in the contact center, which is a passionate for me.

And recently I got my diploma in Bachelor of Administrator. Yes.

Sarah Caminiti: I saw that. Congratulations. Well,

Arlyne Pardo: A long, long journey. Yeah.

Sarah Caminiti: I bet. But you stuck with it. And I think that the amount of time that it takes to complete something doesn't matter. What matters is that you did it and that is something worth celebrating. So I

Arlyne Pardo: The consistency. Yes.

Sarah Caminiti: You

Arlyne Pardo: Yes. Exactly. I was so excited that moment when I was, you know, at the stage receiving my diploma. So yes.

Sarah Caminiti: Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Congratulations. I'm so happy that everybody that listens to this episode will be able to celebrate with us. And I mean, it just adds to all of your, your credentials of why it's so important that you're here. So let's dive in. [00:04:00]

Understanding Cost and Capacity in WFM

Sarah Caminiti: I am going to first start with understanding cost and capacity. And there's another part of this that I think we'll end up spending way more time on, but I wanna just make sure we touch on this at the very beginning just to kind of continue to build on this foundation. So. I think the first thing that we should address here is where does WFM directly protect revenue or reduce cost in ways that most leaders miss. Dan, I'll start with you.

Dan Smitley: I would, so I think, again, trying to think of the context of the environments that we've often in as startups or in like justifying of WFM, I think leaders will eventually see it. So this whole, like where do they miss it? Let's like position it in the beginning. Why? What are they missing? The value of WFM and around revenue and cost, and the simplest answer is what's likely your biggest cost center? It's [00:05:00] probably your labor in almost every organization, right? Depending upon your product, your service might be very large, your servicing might be very large, and again, a huge portion of your cost. WFM simply put helps you manage those people efficiently. we go back to the how and the what, what we do, we're aligning resources to volume.

We're aligning resources to customer interactions, and without WFM. You're kind of just guessing. And I, we, we talked a little about forecasting as just fancy guessing, but you're dumb guessing. Not fancy guessing. We at least give you fancy guessing. We give you a little bit better guessing. And really, I mean, simply put. We're going to help align those resources so that you're not carrying a bunch of unnecessary headcounts that you know the cost that you're investing in being able to interact with your customers isn't because 80% of the time they're sitting twiddling their thumbs, or that the customers are sometimes coming in and not getting serviced appropriately because [00:06:00] you have your staff misaligned, and in a sales organization, staff

Arlyne Pardo: Yeah.

Dan Smitley: Customer demand is missed Revenue. whether it's a service team where you're just handling service volume or it's a sales team handling revenue generation. The bottom line, both environments want their people exactly where the customer wants to be. That's WFM. We're the ones that are helping you align the forecasted demand with the forecasted need.

Sarah Caminiti: Such a great answer. And, and it, it reminds me, I was, I was on a walk with my husband after our first our first episode, and I was just kind of marveling at. How empowering this role is for leaders that, that are leading their teams because you have data that is proving that this is what you need, or you have what you need, or this is how things should [00:07:00] be organized.

And so that, that, that just mental gymnastics, of. Am I, I leveraging my team the way that is the most effective? Am I utilizing their skills in the way that is the most effective? I right with my gut feeling telling me we are understaffed? Like all of these things you have support and, and I, we talked about this a lot last week or, and it was about, you know, how. How you have, you, you have the opportunity to play kind of like the, the negotiator, and offer that support to, to the teams that you're working with. And so, yeah, I think that that's such a great angle of you. You're hiring, you, you're hiring this leader to manage these teams, and you're also then hiring them too. Understand the future, and in under trying to figure out the future, they're not gonna be able to think about the future from a strategic, this is the, these are the trends. Let's figure out how we can be [00:08:00] proactive. Let's figure out all these, it's you're trying to convince people to see the future of volume of all of these little things that aren't necessarily in their wheelhouse. okay that it's not in their wheelhouse because there's folks like you that are able to use this and really lift them up and leverage things in the way that makes the business as efficient and effective as possible. 

The Impact of Accurate Staffing

Sarah Caminiti: Arlyne, in the BPO space, how do these conversations kind of role with, with the know, proving your value?

Arlyne Pardo: For the BPO, it depends a lot on the pricing model that we will have with our customers. So, for example, at the end, everything will translate into having the right headcount because either if our pricing model is by logging hours, we need to make sure that we have the right amount of people.

Otherwise it will cost us more. To be over staffed. [00:09:00] And if we are understaffed, there are several impacts that we could have in the accounts, in the customer experience, in our own revenue as well. So having these early conversations with everybody that needs to be involved. Training quality operations managers, and align on what's the hiring plans that we need to make sure that we have the right amount of people or headcount, and not be reactive. Because if we are late on giving our recommendation, either because we are over or under it will have negative impacts. So it's like we are the quarterbacks of on this board, like quarterback of the money.

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah, it's, it's totally true. That's, that is what it, the role that you're playing in, in this space. And from your experience, Arlyne, like, do you have any examples that you can think of where, where you were [00:10:00] really able to see what the true cost. Of having those under-resourced teams within those spaces.

Arlyne Pardo: we used to have an account that we started with a small headcount soon after we had a great performance, so they give us more business, but given the fact of the attrition was too high, um. we never had the right amount of people, so this will directly impact us on having penalties because we are not meeting the hours behind that.

There were other metrics impacted, such as the service level, for example, the AHT as well because since we were doing a lot of hiring, basically half of the population was new, so we have more time of these agents talking rather than the 10 year ones. At the end, not having the right amount of people cost [00:11:00] us for four months consecutive around $100,000.

And after that, like having the right amount of people not having that type of penalties. That will that help us as to secure the business as well? So not having the, the right amount of people when you need them definitely has a lot of zeros involved. I.

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah. Holy moly, you are. Are not kidding. That is, that's feeling the pain right there in many different places of the business. Dan, when you have come across situations like this, how do you have these conversations that you're under-resourced?

Dan Smitley: People know it. challenge isn't having a question of if we are under resourced, it's the value of appropriately resourcing. [00:12:00] Right? So I think. If we're, if it's under the pain that we're feeling or coming from the customers and, and, and in most environments, if we're supporting customers, we have some way of understanding their experience, whether it's a post call survey, an NPS or even simply wait time or abandon rates, like regardless of our. Channel, we probably have some way of saying our customers are suffering. if we are under-resourced, we see it that way. We might be feeling it to some extent from our agents saying they're burnout and that they're kind of, their workload is heavy, but we at least see it on the customer side. So the conversation typically isn't, we need more resources. The conversation is how do I make sure that I'm not overstaffing? Because more than likely, if we're feeling the pain, it's because budget's tight, because their money's tight. Because we're trying to be frugal with it and we don't have a lot. So the idea of like, oh, we've got 40 and you're telling me we need another 10 ten's a lot, what if I give you four? Can, can, can? What does [00:13:00] four look like? And I think it's the negotiation for. How much do we really wanna go after the pain of the customer? And I think an important framework that I use a lot in thinking about WFM, and I think it'll be helpful for our conversation. 

Balancing Customer Experience, Business Outcomes, and Agent Needs

Dan Smitley: For me, there's kind of a a three point, weight scale.

And it's not that they all need to be imperfect balance, but the three, the three pieces on that scale, our customer experience, business outcome, and agent needs. And it's appropriate at different points for any one of those to be way more important of the culture, because of the finances, because of we're about to have, you know, go public, whatever it is.

There's appropriateness of saying business outweighs agent right now. Agent Outweighs customer, customer and agent are more important than business right now. And I think. I think going back to your question of simply how do you have these conversations? It's understanding the conversation that you're in and the the focus right now. So right now we money might be tight [00:14:00] and we can't. Have customer experience be this great, wonderful thing we're we need 10 and we're gonna have to make do with four. The, the, the money on the business side is way more important. The profitability is way more important. What, what can we do now to give, maybe breaks to our agents so that way we can boost up their experience a little bit better?

We can't get 'em more bodies, but can we give 'em a little more breathing room? Is that something we can do? And I think it's the negotiation of saying, I can't get all three to where I want 'em to be, and one's just getting destroyed. But how can I help support another with a second one, the second priority?

Because obviously the first priority is fine business is gonna get their profitability. How can I, maybe in this example, how can I maybe take care of the agents, right? So. Simply put, understand the conversation that you're having. The pain is there. The question I think really becomes how can you advocate for the, for that secondary priority of boosting it up a little bit more. Because the, the most important, the least important probably aren't up for debate inside of [00:15:00] your organization. But that second one, you might be able to play with a little bit and get creative.

Sarah Caminiti: I think that's such an important thing, not even just in like the WFM space. I think just in general, when you are having. Conversations, I mean, especially about headcount, but really anything related to, to budget. It's, I've made this mistake many, many times, especially early in, in my leadership Like you, you, you, you fight. In a way that's like you're passionate about it. Like you, you fight from that, that place of I know this is the right thing to do. I know that this is what has to happen. I know that this is important and. The framework that you just laid out, I think is such a good way to make people pause and [00:16:00] acknowledge what bucket that fire inside of them exists in. Maybe write it out so that it's not screaming in their head when they're going into these spaces because it finds its way out even when you don't want it to come out otherwise. But, but just kind of maybe. Write out what the conversation is for each bucket so that you know where each thing exists, and then the one that makes sense for your audience.

And really, I really think that that's such an important thing that you just explained because easy to just lean into your heart and. This is business and it you can have your heart be there to get you to where you need to go, but the way that you explain the situation, the way that you advocate for this situation needs to be spoken in the language that is the most appropriate [00:17:00] for the people that are right in front of you.

Dan Smitley: Yes. So yes, it's about knowing your audience. Yes, it's about understanding how to adjust. And again, I think it's honest to say, and we're having this why conversation about w fm, why does w FM matter? It's because we do impact the customer experience, we do impact the business profitability, we do impact the agent experience.

Those are all true. And I don't think it's us talking out of both side of our mouth that we change the topic and change the approach depending upon if we're talking to HR versus the finance team versus Right. I think, I think it's still being honest. I think for me at least, you're talking about kind of what's that fire and which one's kind of passionate for you and which one's connected for you. I think there's an argument to be made that regardless of which one's your natural passion, they are all still interconnected. If you are driven by profit, having a good agent and. Experience and customer experience will drive your profitability. If you care about your your employees, you need to have a profitable organization to pay [00:18:00] them.

Well, if you care about the customer experience. Having and caring for the agents to be able to provide, right? Like I think regardless of where you sit. You have to pay honor and respect to all three and realizing that yes, maybe I care more, quote unquote, about the agent experience, but I can't have a really positive agent experience if our company can't get the profitability that needs to be sufficient in our raises continue to be 1% because our profit margins aren't there.

Like maybe the best way for you to care for your people is to improve the profitability of the organization.

Sarah Caminiti: It's so good. That's

Arlyne Pardo: No.

Sarah Caminiti: because, I mean, I don't disagree at all and it's, and it's important to have that reframe of. You know, it's not that finance team doesn't care about the agent experience. They are all intertwined and uh, and, and [00:19:00] it's, it's seeing the business as a business, seeing the different areas of the business that make these things kind of domino from there will allow you to. To kind of articulate what needs to be articulated in a much more grounded way. So I'm so glad that you shared that. Thank you. I think that that ties really well into, I mean, we kind of already touched on the link between accurate staffing and customer trust because it is all so connected. I mean, we all know this from building teams and leading teams. If the agent not able to be present, if they do not have the tools they need to be successful, the customer is going to feel it. If the agent is able to be present, if they have the tools they need to be successful, the agent is going to be able to deliver. The results in the way that the customer feels it and ex [00:20:00] excited about it. Do either of you have any examples in your experience where like you were able to like really see this result of. Okay, we're talking about how we need to have things staffed. We're saying this is the efficient this is the efficient like plan for us to meet. The customer needs to meet the profitability needs to meet the agent needs. Look at the increase in customer experience because we just did this.

Real-World Examples of WFM Benefits

Dan Smitley: If you're looking for an example in Arlyne, and I definitely wanna get you in on this, but if you're looking for an example of like when WFM basically is the, is the question when WFM improve the customer experience or is it okay? Yeah, so in an organization I was with, There, there. This is interesting because I, and I hope to try not to bleed too much into like other topics that we wanna hit on, but their [00:21:00] scheduling was really static. So they were forecasting out their demand, they understood kind of where they were, what they were going to need, and really they had one or two levers and that that was simply, Ooh, are gonna be understaffed of the whole week in general, generically. Okay, slap mandatory overtime on people. Like it normally was a last minute resort, but like we can't, we know it's going to be a bad week, not a bad interval or a bad day, but a bad week.

So it's five hours across the board for everyone. It's slow. We'll pull back five hours, and that was kind of the two levers that they had. The impact to the business. We can talk about how it was misaligning resources because it was just flat over time, or flat reduced hours across the board. But from a customer experience place, it was almost too late oh, I'll, I'll reframe it. What it is, is we're giving ourselves a placebo effect. We are saying we're doing something by [00:22:00] adding hours, kind of willy-nilly wherever, but the reality is the customer isn't benefiting from this. The customer is having a disproportionate drive of volume at these hours, and we're not adding the hours there. And so the impact of the customer is during those, those prime hours, the customer experience is still horror. It's, it's still abandoning at 15%, 10%, 30, whatever that number was. And simply readjusting the practice of overtime, as an example, shifted, not just the profitability. ' cause now we're using fewer overtime hours 'cause we're only honing in on the actual busy periods.

But the customer experience is improving because instead of saying, adding ourselves in the vaccine, we put overtime hours at 8:00 AM when no one's calling. And not helping us at all. We're actually putting where the customers are calling us and the experience is simply better. They're, they're waiting on the line, they're getting a better experience.

And a, a simple pulling down an banner rate, especially in a sales line from 7% down to 3%, [00:23:00] be a massive game

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah.

Dan Smitley: For an organization. And, that was a real story, a real, real environment for me of like, just shifting the practice of overtime hours makes a big difference.

Arlyne Pardo: Remind me, I'm so sorry. This reminds me.

Sarah Caminiti: Go.

Arlyne Pardo: To an example to a scenario that we had prior. We used to have this account that their busy period was November and December. So through the year, we will have a very steady headcount, maybe around 10 to 20 agents through the whole year. When it comes to November and December, this will increase 10 times.

So we will have more than 100 agents. And this was a sales line because of November and December, right? So we used to have at the beginning 10% of abandon on this sales [00:24:00] line while. Distributing the schedules in a better way and understanding how the customer interacts with us. Like that will help us to reduce that from 10% over to 3% and some days to 0%, like 0% on an abundance on sales line.

So it has to, it's, it's linked and also you will see the, the, the impact as well on the surveys or the NPS while you were talking them. That's what comes to my mind because now we have an an account. That all of our agents were coming trained on only boys. But as well, we have a chat channel for these customers.

And it would take us more time to like a cross train to have these agents, the capacity, the tools, the understanding to how to manage sheds [00:25:00] right? And have them comfortable enough to move being, being moved to shed. Just by saying or reviewing the numbers and say, Hey, instead of doing these real time movements.

From these cross-train agents, let's have a baseline of chat agents available for our customers. And we see a direct correlation in that because the MPS or the CSAT will be horrible when we had to do the scaling on real time, it was very reactive rather than proactive on that part. And when it's like.

Down with this baseline of staff agents assigned to she there was an improvement on the CSAT and NPS. Definitely, like whenever we see like very negative surveys, it was whenever we are doing the previous strategy that we had place. So for me, it's like no matter if you are a 24 [00:26:00] 7 operation, like the same interaction should be.

If you call us at 2:00 AM in the morning, or if you call us at 6:00 PM in the afternoon, so.

Sarah Caminiti: Those are two great examples. Thank you so much for sharing both of those. And Arlyne, I'm gonna stick with you here to get to the thing that I'm most excited for us to talk about. 

WFM's Influence on Burnout and Engagement

Sarah Caminiti: And I think everything we've been talking about so far has really touched on this, but we're gonna dig deep. But how does WFM influence. Burnout and engagement and predictability or fairness.

Arlyne Pardo: Wow a lot. Honestly, like if we get the run schedules, it automatically will decrease the morale of the agents. There could be an effect or dominant effect as well that will increase absenteeism because people doesn't want to show up because they have a horrible schedule. This remind me, when we open [00:27:00] operations in South Africa we were not used to these two days off together, and we were given to all the agents a split days off.

And it was not something that they were happy about it because they had 10 hour shift lengths. So only one day between that it was not enough for them to be rest to disconnect from the role maybe. And our absenteeism was high back those days. We work allowed, we work allowed to be more creative and we find a way to, on our rotational model, to give the two days consecutive to the agents.

And immediately we see an improvement on adherence on an attendance and employee engagement. So. Sometimes WFM doesn't want to realize [00:28:00] that, but they have a direct impact on the wellbeing of the agents directly.

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah. 

Communication Between Agents and WFM

Sarah Caminiti: How does that information travel to the WFM team? From the agent? Like if, if they had a terrible schedule, how does that travel?

Arlyne Pardo: On different ways they could complain directly to the supervisors and they will relay the message to us. Some of them have the courage to directly send a teams message or an email to WFM. I know that on some companies there is like a sort of survey to the employees about the scheduling satisfaction.

And as well, just by looking at the data, like if we start looking to very bad numbers and we start to dig in what's happening on this, we will find out the answer and. [00:29:00] I, I, I did that exercise like a few, a few months ago for attrition. There was an account that has a high attrition, and I wanted to find out what's the cost of this attrition, and one of the top 10 reasons that the agents put there was the schedule.

That they were not having like a rotation or maybe the, because the account was 16 hours operating hours. Like they will have like the same schedule for, for two months in a row. They haven't seen the light or something like that. They will put it there. Like if you take the time to try to understand why your numbers are not looking good and you use.

What you have available in my case was the exit form. You can find the, the reasons why people is leaving or as well if you go onto another or focus on another [00:30:00] metric as well.

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah. Dan, what about you? 

Improving Agent Autonomy

Sarah Caminiti: What's your experience? Air.

Dan Smitley: So the question has like three or four different components inside of it, like

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah.

Dan Smitley: And, and I think give you any answer on, on, on each piece. I think the piece that I'd love to highlight is just the engagement piece. In a lot of contact centers, agents. Don't have autonomy. I think that varies in a lot of different environments, right?

So some environments, you barely have a schedule. You come in when you want, you say what you want, you pick the calls that you want and, and there's a high sense of autonomy. I think that those are out there. It's rare. I think for the majority though, if we're gonna fault one way or the other, it's probably gonna be on the other end.

Sarah Caminiti: Yep.

Dan Smitley: not only do you have a schedule, we also track of your attendance down to a minute or two of you being late. We keep track of whether you're going to your bathroom at the right time or not. If you're taking too many breaks to get water we might script you. We. [00:31:00] So it's not just from a legal, you know regulation perspective, but because we don't trust you to say the right things.

And so we, we scripted, and maybe if it's not scripting, maybe it's just quality, but we still require you to say the experience of an agent. I think unfortunately, at the core is one of a real lack of autonomy that as leaders we often forget. We can kind of come and go as we want. We decide what meetings we wanna go to. and so for me. I think WFM actually is one of the few places that can give back autonomy to the agents without many negative consequences. And, and what that's looked like for me in the past I referenced kind of an environment that was just blanket reduced hours over time, hours. I was able to build a, a program there that allowed the agents to actually adjust the schedules themselves based upon that staffing. So. We need everyone to pick up five additional overtime hours. We've made that available to you guys. Here's the [00:32:00] calendar. Here's all the intervals we need help. We're 10 short here, five short here, three short here, 30 short. Here. Go grab the hours. You grab those hours and their schedule's up. Update automatically. Based upon if we needed their help or didn't need their help. And the benefit was clear to us, we're getting the hours exactly where we needed, the customer was benefiting from it. We are controlling our overtime hours where we're only putting them exactly where we need them to be. As an example that for the agents, some control finally. I have to fight with WFM about take the hours here, put them here. I can't do additional hours. I've got this, I've got class after here. I've, I could say, oh, there it was a remote environment. I wanna do all five hours on a Saturday. Never would've thought to ask someone to give up one of their week, you know, days off. It feels better for this person. And the simple that choice can have such an impact to feeling like you have some sense of control, sense of autonomy at work. And I'm, I'm a [00:33:00] fan of Daniel Pink and, and autonomy is a big important variable for internal motivation. And I think w FM misses that and we say, oh, we're just aligning numbers to numbers.

We're just trying to figure out how to better, and we're still doing that with them, but by simply saying, instead of me. Adjusting your schedules to the demand, letting you adjust your schedule to the demand. I get my numbers match. Numbers benefit, right? But you feel like you have a voice and I think that's huge for so many people just to have something of saying. I'm not just getting put upon, but I'm contributing. And it was a big, it was a big shift in our culture and it had a, a huge benefit to the organization into the, into the engagement scores, to the attrition, to the Glassdoor reviews. It was pretty impactful.

Sarah Caminiti: Well, because they're able to have a life, they're able to, they're able to be present when they need to be present in [00:34:00] spaces and not be like, I have to do this. I have to not go to this thing. I have to call out of class. I have to do. Or I'm at risk of getting fired. Like all of these fear-based things that exist underneath, know, not having control or not having a say in, in how you're utilizing your free time, which is what working overtime is. Mean, of course that's gonna have an impact. And, and I love that you noticed that. And as you were talking about it too, I was thinking like. Being able to prove the impact of this autonomy within a contact center space is such a great data point in so many other places where leaders don't have autonomy.

I mean, just thinking like for headcount, instead of saying like, this is what you can pay this person, this is what you can pay this person like here is a bucket of money. I trust you [00:35:00] use this the way that you see fit when it is correct for you. And this can be used for a spot bonus as well as hiring a new person.

This can be used, so it's, it's like. Having, not having autonomy forces so many people in so many different roles to have to beg, and that kind of a power dynamic is never one that is healthy. And it's never one that makes you feel safe. It's never one that makes you want to have your friends come and work for these companies or support these businesses because you don't feel like you. Are valued enough to actually do what you were hired to do. And so to give them that sense of autonomy in how they choose to spend their time, know that they will show up in this time that they have chosen to, to, to work. Like, [00:36:00] mean, that's just saying an adult, we, is what we need.

Balancing Fairness and Accountability

Dan Smitley: And it touches on another piece inside of your question around fairness. So the environment that I created was not come and go as you wish. It wasn't, we need everyone to pick up overtime and it doesn't matter where you apply the overtime, just pick it up. Right? There was these rules that

Sarah Caminiti: Mm-hmm.

Dan Smitley: During these periods and once, if I'm 10 over and you're trying to get the 11th and 12th spot, it's going to decline.

You don't get that spot. My, my, my need is met. You have to find your hours somewhere else and if everyone else is picking up five hours of overtime and you're not, the fairness approach is. There's consequences. So this isn't like a, you can just come and go and there's no rules and there's no regulations and there's no, you know, consequences of, of coming into work late. I think for me about communicating clearly the expectations, being able to hold them accountable and then holding them [00:37:00] accountable to say, this isn't everyone that applies. Three, this is five hours of overtime. And if I miscalculated, that's on me. And then I'll come back and tell everyone, if you've picked up five and you only wanna do four, four is the new number.

I'll peel it off if you want. I'll, I'll readjust. But I think that comes back to that fairness piece. It's not asking certain individuals to work a bunch more just because you got to them first, and it's about communicating clearly what I'm expecting out of everyone. Something as simple as attendance. It's

Sarah Caminiti: Yep.

Dan Smitley: Appropriately and consistently applying that. I think that's how WFM helps with fairness.

Sarah Caminiti: Totally well. The accountability and also like the empowerment of knowing what the expectations are. that doesn't mean you can't talk about consequences. You should talk about consequences because otherwise they're going to have to make an assumption of what could happen should. Not go the way that [00:38:00] it's supposed to go, and you're then able to have a conversation.

So if you're setting up this system and you're noticing, oh hey, this one person, every single time they try and do it, they keep trying to grab slots that aren't there because it's already filled up now. You're not going to go to them and try to figure out how you're gonna weave that in. It's no, we've already established this is the expectation. This is what happens when you wait five hours to log in because you know you were doing something else. And do you wanna talk about it? Is there something that I need to know so that I can better support you and we can help figure this out together? It's, it's respectful. And and I love that that was just kind of woven in to what you were, what you were building out.

Because again, that's giving them the, the, you are treating 'em like an [00:39:00] adult. Like at the end of the day you are treating them like an adult. And it is really easy to feel like you are not being treated like an adult in a lot of these situations. And, it's good to be reminded. Arlyne, do you have any situations where, if you wanna touch on any of, like the other, like the burnout, the engagement, the predictability that you've experienced in, in your space over the years?

Arlyne Pardo: Yes, definitely. While we were talking about this one I just tied this point to the first thing that we talk about on this episode. If we don't get the right head count as well, if we are constantly missing the right amount of people that we need as an overall. It means that our agents will have additional workflow every single time they can breathe.

They will have back-to-back interactions, and that definitely can be directly impact [00:40:00] on the burnout of the agents, and we as WFM should be conscious about it as well. We know that we have been over understaffed for the last four months or something. We need to stand our grounds and talk to the persons that we need to get the approval for the additional headcount, if that's the scenario, because it's impacting our agents.

And yes, we can have, a lot of agents are, are willing to do overtime, but there will be a a point. On time that they will just say, no, I'm exhausted.

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you're not getting a raise, it's, you know, like it's, are you, yes, overtime is additional money at a different rate, but like they are doing you a favor. Every time someone's doing overtime, they're doing you a favor and they're compensated. [00:41:00] Accordingly and, and I think that a lot of that burnout potential exists because that resentment kind of starts to build up.

It's like I'm going above and beyond all the time. I am always saying, yes, I am always here. What's happening? to have that kind of conversation is important.

Arlyne Pardo: Yes, a pizza party is nice, but it's not nice after the the third time because we are asking for overtime. It's not because the agents as well are saying no to any family responsibility to not attend to the movie theater with their husband or wife, like they're saying no to something in their personal life to be at work and how we are compensating that if the next month that they are sick or something, we are putting penalties on them.

Sarah Caminiti: [00:42:00] Yep. Yeah. It's like give, give, give, give, give. You're expecting of the agent, but then you're still policing their bathroom break. You are still, you know, you're not giving them any grace to be a human. That is going above and beyond all the time. 

Impact of WFM on Community and Engagement

Sarah Caminiti: And I think this ties seamlessly into what you were talking about in the last episode, Dan, that's really stuck with me about how much WFM impacts communities and is there anything you'd like to add about that for this type of, of topic?

Dan Smitley: The The point is still the same, which is w FM does impact the community and IWFM leaders as a whole get stuck in the trap of assuming what they know, what people want.

Sarah Caminiti: Yep.

Dan Smitley: I, hear it all the time. If you simply let the agents choose whatever they want, all of 'em are gonna want banker hours, they're all gonna want Monday through Friday, eight to five. Everyone wants that, and you can't just give that because we need help on the nights [00:43:00] and the weekends and blah, blah, blah. That assumption. Short circuits the opportunity to have a creative conversation with people because their community and their lives look so different. I, I think if you ask those exact same leaders that were like, everyone wants Monday through Friday, eight to five be like, okay, but what night's free happens in your family?

Like, when are you, you as the leader? When are you busy in the evenings? Because I bet you it looks different than my schedule. And, and I bet you our gym workouts look different. You probably go, you know, I go with this. So if we're different as leaders in an organization, why do we assume that all of our agents are the exact same thing and they all have the exact same needs? Like how hard is it to simply look at one team of 20 people? You're probably not gonna all have. families. You're not all gonna have married couples. You're not all gonna have people that even want to go out. You're probably gonna have some people in there that wanna grind and [00:44:00] burn and take up. Why don't we have a conversation with them that says, This is what we need as an organization. Here are the boundaries for fairness what's appropriate. Here are the options. Here's what we're thinking about and what works best for you. How can we accommodate what you need of having Arlyne, you referenced earlier, right?

For your team, four tens was too much. I have found great success with four tens people. Some people love having that third day off and being able to have three in a row. They have a whole doctor's appointment day, they have a whole rest day, they have a whole family day or whatever it is. We do ourselves a disservice when we assume that the community and personal life needs of our agents are all of the same.

Sarah Caminiti: Yep.

Dan Smitley: I would simply encourage leaders and especially WFM professionals. lean into their curiosity and their creativity to not [00:45:00] simply match numbers to numbers, because we can do that and we will do that, but how can we match numbers to numbers having a conversation that says, how can I accommodate what you might find important today, this week, this season? Me know when we, I need to have this conversation again. I can't always promise I'm gonna give it to you, but we can have a conversation because we might be able to get creative and I just. I, I get goosebumps. That literal goosebumps thinking about how good, how much good we can do

being open to those conversations and adjusting to their life demands that still

Arlyne Pardo: I

Dan Smitley: us, still benefits the business, still

Arlyne Pardo: that part.

Dan Smitley: But simply 'cause we listened. The agents benefiting too. It's, it could be fun.

Sarah Caminiti: That's like such a great thing for us to end on too. It's, I mean, it's. The exact same thing as as the overtime hours. You are explaining what the expectations are. [00:46:00] You are explaining what the needs are, why would you hire all of these people to do this job and never think that it is appropriate to have a conversation about what a good schedule for them to be as present. As possible can look for them because are so right. If you are in a like fixed system that you have, you have no opportunity to make any changes. You have no say in anything aside from taking like the four days of PTO that you have all year. Then when you do ask for something, like let's say you wanna go to your kids' field trip.

Hey, is it okay if I work a late shift because there's something really important. And the answer is no, because you know, they just, they don't have that. Okay. But if you were entering in saying, these are the buckets, everybody has the opportunity to [00:47:00] choose what works best for them and then. You go, that person goes to their boss and they say they just opened up a slot for another parent on the field trip.

Like, is there anything that we can do? Only do you now have the tools to open this up to the rest of the team to see if someone can switch with them, but also if you can't, they understand the system. They understand how things work because you. You let them in. And so it's not, my boss hates me, it's not my boss.

You know, only ever does this to this person over here. It's, ah, this time it just didn't work out. Next time I, I've got a good feeling about it and, and that's what makes people stay.

Dan Smitley: You get.

Arlyne Pardo: She is ready.

Sarah Caminiti: I love it. I love it. I love it. What's gonna happen by the end of episode four of this, I'm going to be like [00:48:00] running the show. No, I'm not at all. I have so much more to learn. 

Arlyne Pardo: Definitely. Yeah.

Sarah Caminiti: I feel

Arlyne Pardo: You are? Yes. Who knows By the, the part number four. Then you will be like a ninja spreadsheet assigning and calculating requirements and all of that. So.

Sarah Caminiti: I, I taught an Excel class in college, so this is my language right here and I'm very excited for everything to come. Thank you both so, so much for this round two. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Sarah Caminiti: I'm even more excited for round three. And there anything you would like to. on for this episode specifically today, or do you think we really hit the core of what we wanted to talk about?

Dan Smitley: Arlyne, I'll let you go first.

Arlyne Pardo: I think we hit, but I want to remark something

Sarah Caminiti: I.

Arlyne Pardo: That. Ask your agents, probably they know the answer, either You need to improve a [00:49:00] process. If you want to pilot a scheduling rotation or scheduling changes there are more chances if you ask them and they feel that they are being here, they will be willing to participate and come to the party.

So maybe your people knows the answer.

Sarah Caminiti: I love that.

Dan Smitley: The episode is why does WFM matter? And I, at the beginning I try to set up kind of these three-pronged weighted system and, and that is the answer for me. So in every environment it's a little bit different. But why does WFM w fm matters? If you care about the employee experience, you wanna retain your talent.

You wanna engage your employees, you need creative, well structured, well thought out WFM if you, if you care about your profitability, you care about aligning your, labor costs to your demand, and making sure that you're maximizing your opportunities. WFM matters and if you care about the [00:50:00] customer experience, making sure that they get a seamless experience, a consistent experience when interacting with your organization. WFM matters. I'm biased, but I think we're kind of important and I think we do a lot of good in organizations and hopefully by the end of this podcast, others

Arlyne Pardo: Objection.

Dan Smitley: Are listening will agree with us.

Sarah Caminiti: I think they will. I definitely think they will. Thank you both again, so very much, and I'll see you soon.

Dan Smitley: Sounds good.

Arlyne Pardo: Yes.