Create a staffing budget

Create a staffing budget to use as a basis for long-term decisions about staffing, for example recruitment. The staffing budget is based on the forecasted resource need and the number of agents employed. Both values are automatically loaded. Add more information manually to make the budget as accurate as possible.

You can create a budget and then use it to set up allowances for absence requests.

Prerequisites

You have the Budgets permission.
To import staff employed, the budget group needs to be assigned to the agents.
To import forecasted hours, there needs to be a forecast for the skills connected to the budget group.

Page location

Client > Budgets

Procedures

Open budget

Open a budget for the scenario and period to work with.

Right-click on the name of a budget group.
Select Open budget.
Select the period to work with. Select to open full months or weeks, depending on if you are planning to work on a monthly or weekly level.
Select the Scenario to work with. The budget is based on the forecast in the selected scenario. Select the default scenario if you plan on using the staffing budget to create allowances for absence requests.
Click Save.
Click OK.

The following table provides an overview of the terminology for the Budgets module.

Term	Description
FTE h/day	FTE stands for Full-Time Equivalent, and FTE h/day is the average number of hours per day for a full-time contract. This value is defined in decimal form. EXAMPLE For example, to set this value to 7 hours and 30 minutes, enter 7.5. It is recommended that you only enter the contract time. For example, if agents are scheduled for 8 hours but have a 30 minute lunch that is not part of their contract, enter 7.5. NOTE If there is a mix of agents who work various contract lengths, you must pick the average contract length or pick the length that most agents work. When Staff employed loads, it utilizes the contracts assigned to agents in the People module to calculate the gross number of staff.
Staff Employed	Select the Staff employed field to highlight the row and then click the Staff employed button in the ribbon bar. Confirm the FTE h/day and click OK. The number of FTEs that load is based on the number of agents who are assigned the particular budget group in the People Module in the Person Periods tab. If the agents are not connected to the budget group, add the Staff employed value manually.
Attrition rate %	Enter the yearly Attrition rate percentage. This is the percentage of agents leaving within one year. NOTE You must use the annual attrition rate even when you add the value on a weekly or monthly level. The weekly or monthly attrition calculation is based on the yearly value. The gross staff decreases by about 1/12 of the yearly attrition each month or with about 1/52 each week.
Recruitment	This is a number (head count) of agents. Add any planned Recruitment on the month or week that the agent starts.
Gross Staff	This is the calculated value of available resources based on the FTE h/day, staff employed, attrition rate percentage, and recruitment data.
Contractor (hours)	Enter the total number of hours that external resources contribute for each week or month. For example, the external resources could be from an outsourcer or BPO.
Shrinkage	Right-click the table and select Add Shrinkage to add information on the percentage of agents who will not work. You can add multiple shrinkage rows. For example, you can add one row for planned absenteeism and another row for unplanned absenteeism. Select the Include in request allowance check box to connect the shrinkage to one or more absence types. This is useful to follow up on the usage of these absence types, automatically or manually. After adding the shrinkage, enter the percentage for each of the shrinkages added.
Days off per week	This is the average number of days off for the agents. For example, if the contact center is open seven days per week and agents on average work five days per week, enter 2 in this field. If the contact center is open five days per week and agents on average work five days per week, enter 0 in this field.
Net Staff	This is the calculated FTE resources available after you take into account the contractor hours, absenteeism, and days off per week.
Overtime (hours)	Enter the total number of overtime hours planned for the week or month. If overtime is added ad-hoc, then the value must be 0.
Student Hours	This is the contribution from agents on hourly contracts.
Efficiency Shrinkage	Right-click the table and select Add efficiency shrinkage. You can use the efficiency shrinkage to account for adherence loss, planned breaks (if they are not taken into account for FTE), unplanned breaks, training, meetings, coaching, and so on. You can add a separate line item for each type of efficiency shrinkage, or you can add them all in one line item. You must add the percentages for each efficiency shrinkage. For example, if an agent works on average eight hours per day and is scheduled on short breaks for an average of 0:30h per day, add an efficiency shrinkage for short breaks and enter 6.25% to take the short breaks into consideration.
Forecasted hours	Select the Forecasted hours row and, then click the Forecasted hours button from the ribbon bar at the top of the screen. This loads all of the forecasted hours for the skills connected to the budget group for the selected period. NOTE The imported forecasted hours do not include the shrinkage set on the skill. This makes it possible to compare the available staff to the forecasted resource need. The distribution of the available resources within the week is affected by the week distribution of the forecast. The adjusted values never exceed the total number of available FTEs. The adjustments are done for the values in the Net staff FC adjusted row and the Budgeted staff row in the day view. As the allowance is calculated based on these six adjusted values, it is distributed according to the forecast distribution. In most cases this means that on a day with a lower forecast, the allowance is also lower.
Forecasted agents	The forecasted need is also shown as Forecasted agents. This is the forecasted hours divided by the FTE h/day. If there is no long-term forecast, you can add the forecasted hours manually.
Difference	This is the difference between the Net net staff and the Forecasted agents in the number of FTEs and in percentage.
Difference (%)	This is the difference in a percentage.
Budgeted leave	This is the number of FTEs that are predicted to be absent based on the shrinkages set up in the budget. Only shrinkages that are included in the request allowance are considered when calculating the budgeted leave. Budgeted leave = (Gross staff + (Contractors (hours) / FTE h/day)) * Sum of all shrinkages included in request allowance.
Budgeted Surplus	This is the difference between the budgeted staff and the forecasted staff when any budgeted absences and efficiency shrinkages are considered. If the skills are overstaffed, the budgeted surplus is the number of FTEs that you can grant time off to, on top of the planned budgeted leave. Budgeted surplus = Budgeted difference / (1 - (Sum of all efficiency shrinkage factors))
Extra	This is the possibility to add additional FTEs to your full allowance.
Override	This is the defined number of FTEs who you want to grant time off to, if you use the budget for time off allotments.
Full allowance	This is the total number of FTEs who you can grant time off to. Full allowance = Budgeted leave + Budgeted surplus + Extra
Threshold (%)	Enter the percentage of the allowance that you can use to automatically approve absence requests in the Threshold field. This is only useful if you automatically approve absence requests.
Allowance after threshold	This is the number of FTEs that you can use for automatic approval of absence requests. The specified number of FTEs or agents, depending on the absence request settings, can get their requests automatically approved for this day. Allowance after threshold = Threshold (%) * Full allowance