Case study - Tourism & Leisure

Advanced Planning Efficiency Thanks to Requirement-Oriented Workforce Management

Problem description

General

After initially operating using fixed working hours with additional manual planning effort for marginal periods, it quickly became clear that, due to the increasing number of agents, and the expansion of the call center, requirement-oriented planning with the least amount of planning effort could only be achieved with a special Workforce Management solution. Following a selection procedure, a decision was made in favor of the Staff Planning System (SPS) from InVision Software.

Aims

TUI's requirements were clearly defined in this context. Taking all secondary aims into consideration, requirement-oriented Workforce Management would achieve two main parallel aims.

• Over and understaffing would be avoided in order to raise efficiency at the call center and at the same time,
• employee job satisfaction would be promoted by integrating employees into the planning process.

"The aim of staff scheduling at TUI is to man individual hotlines with suitable employees while taking working hours regulations, commercial viability, and the individual preferences of employees into account", explained Ingo Bernstein, Scheduling Manager at the TUI call center.

Project description

The Planning Process

Maintaining Master Data

Close consideration of the planning process makes it quite clear that complex job-related problems can only be solved with the help of the SPS. One prerequisite here is the continuous updating of master data, and in particular data relevant to agents. Information such as personnel changes, further qualifications, or changes in regulatory times are updated in the system on a regular basis. In addition, it is possible to specify jobs for which agents are suitable.

Forecast and Requirement Calculation

Daily and weekly distribution curves are proofed and adapted at regular intervals for each planning unit. Taking current events into consideration, such as mailings and booking approvals, linear trend calculations assist in calculating call volumes for the week being planned for. Following this, these are broken down into 30 minute intervals via weekly and daily distribution curves. A service level of 70 percent in 30 seconds forms the basis of the calculation for the personnel requirement at TUI’s Erlang C unit. The result is an ideal employee requirement level per 30 minute interval. Despite an average call volume of around 30,000 call per week in the core working area, the job of analyzing data, making forecasts and calculating the requirement takes less than half an hour to complete.

Shift Planning and Scheduling

Basic planning begins with the maintenance of data on absences, vacations, seminars etc. An absenteeism quota is specified by call center planning for vacations and authorized absences from the work place. Among other things, company agreements regulate the use of the InVision SPS and working hours at the TUI call center. "This is to ensure that employee rights are respected, while keeping day-to-day operations in the unit on an even keel", explained Ingo Bernstein.

After basic planning, employees with fixed working hours (mainly part-time) are then planned in. The subsequent generation of shifts is based on a series of TUI-specific shift models. The InVision SPS defines the difference between requirement figures per 30 minute interval and requirement coverage for part-time employees planned in on a fixed basis in the previous step. The SPS calculates shifts using a genetic algorithm (usually in the first week of a month) and these make up the schedule for the following month.

Employee Preferences

Shifts generated are advertised to employees on several Infothek terminals. Each employee has about a week to enter his/her preferred working hours. Entries are made in time slots adapted to call volumes in team-specific Infotheks. Entries made by several employees at the same time cause absolutely no problems and actually define the norm.

The Lottery

After the "advertisement" period has come to an end, each Infothek is "closed" so that individual preferences can be matched to the series of shifts generated. In situations where the number of preferences is larger than the number of shifts required, the SPS randomly decides who is to be allocated preferred shifts. In the last stated case, the SPS switches over to employees’ secondary preferences. As a procedure which is based on the fair allocation of shifts, this leads, as a rule, to over 90% of all employee preferences being fulfilled. Or put into other words: each individual schedule generated is nearly 100% self-determined.

Allocation

Automatic allocation is also available as an alternative. This is of advantage when employees need to be allocated to unmanned shifts, for employees who still have a plus in their working hours account. Besides individual agreements in this context, making sure that the contractually agreed maximum number of working hours is not exceeded is also taken into account along with all relevant company agreements. "In this respect, the Workforce Management solution from InVision offers extremely flexible support for scheduling", explained Bernstein. Integrated security mechanisms warn planners when specific limits are exceeded during allocation. This automatically avoids violation of regulations.

Daily Planning

After the shifts have been planned in, the InVision SPS transforms these into ones based on half hour intervals. Employees are allocated to jobs for which a requirement was determined at the beginning of planning in accordance with their skills. This procedure ensures that jobs – and this is particularly relevant to skill-based routing environments such as the TUI call center - are carried out by employees with appropriate qualifications. Before each employee receives his/her schedule, breaks are automatically inserted. The day planner is the medium where short-term shift exchanges, changes in start and end times, and many other things are entered and documented.

Results

"Introducing the InVision SPS has provided us with a software tool for optimizing the whole Workforce Management process in a flexible, rapid and user-friendly manner", stated Ingo Bernstein finally. The former process of planning everything by hand has been automated with the help of a software-supported solution. Planning effort has been reduced considerably even though the number of agents has doubled to-date. Planning efficiency and flexibility, and employee satisfaction have increased significantly as a result.