As the summer vacation season approaches, it’s important to start planning and scheduling vacation time for your contact center agents – heck, you may already be knee-deep in planning, arranging and rearranging vacation schedules! Vacation planning for your contact center agents doesn’t have to be difficult or stressful.

Here are six (6) helpful reminders that can help you optimize resource allocation and keep your contact center operations running smoothly during the upcoming summer months:

1. Plan and schedule vacations in advance

We don’t need to tell you, but it’s always good to be reminded – one of the best ways to ensure a smooth vacation planning process is to schedule vacation time well in advance. This will allow you to better forecast staffing needs and plan accordingly to ensure adequate coverage and avoid unnecessary disruptions. It will also give your agents plenty of time to request vacation time off (VTO) so they can plan when they prefer to take their vacations. This is especially important considering the increased stress agents have been under during the pandemic and the associated mental health concerns.

When it comes to vacation planning, advance planning is critical.

2. Encourage agents to plan and take their annual vacation

While it’s important to plan and schedule vacation time in advance, it’s also important to encourage vacation planning so that your agents feel empowered to take the time off they need to re-energize themselves. One way to do this is by offering flexible vacation policies that allow agents to choose when they want to take vacation time.  This will not only help them to better manage their work-life balance, but it will also allow them to take advantage of vacation opportunities as they arise.

Another way is to offer incentives for vacation planning, such as giving agents priority vacation time if they submit their vacation requests early. This will not only help with operational planning, but it will also show your agents that you value their well-being and appreciate their efforts in planning ahead.

3. Use vacation scheduling software

There are several vacation scheduling platforms that can help you better automate and manage vacation requests and approvals. These tools can also help you keep track of who is out on vacation and when they are scheduled to return. This can be a highly valuable resource when it comes to forecasting staffing needs and ensuring adequate coverage.

Vacation scheduling software can also help you keep track of vacation accruals so you can better manage vacation budgets. Today’s vacation scheduling solutions provide powerful capabilities with better forecasting and validation tools, the ability to easily approve requests and so much more. It’s just important to ensure that you are using these solutions to their fullest potential to gain maximum results.

Depending on your workforce management solution, a vacation scheduling model may be included in your platform or can be implemented as an add-on. Otherwise, many stand-alone solutions can be integrated with your solution. It’s worth investigating the various options.

4. Encourage vacation rotation

Another way to optimize vacation planning is to encourage vacation rotation among your agents. This means that not everyone is taking vacation at the same time and can be accomplished by staggering vacation days or weeks so that there is always adequate coverage.

Vacation rotation can be especially helpful if you have a large contact center with many agents. It can also be helpful if you have agents with different skill sets so that you can maintain coverage in all required areas.

5. Establish an annual vacation bidding process

As stated in our first reminder, it’s critical to start early – many, many months in advance – by conducting a scheduled annual vacation bid. Not only does it allow agents (and their families) to plan ahead, but it also allows the contact center organization to minimize carryover and pay out of vacation time not taken during the year it was accrued. An annual vacation bid also allows schedulers to take into account shift differentials, time-off requests and holiday vacation blackout periods.

6. Vacation bidding rules

If you do decide to establish an annual vacation bidding process, it is equally important to determine and communicate your bidding rules to ensure a fair, transparent and equitable process for all agents.

Some common vacation bidding rules include:

• Agents must submit their vacation request a certain number of weeks or months in advance
• Vacation requests are approved on a first come, first served basis
• Vacation requests are approved based on length of service or seniority
• Vacation requests are approved based on performance
• Vacation requests are approved based on customer demand and/or, business requirements

Scheduling vacation time for contact center agents can be a challenge, but there are many ways to optimize vacation planning so that your agents feel empowered to take the time off they need without stressing out schedulers and managers.

By offering flexible vacation policies that allow agents to choose when they want to take vacation time, establishing clear policies and procedures with a predefined vacation bid period months before the summer vacation rush, and utilizing vacation scheduling software – you can take the guesswork out of vacation planning and create an optimal system that works well for everyone involved.

Looking to optimize, automate and improve your vacation planning? Require expert consultation? Give us a call!