This is one of my favourite resource planning charts. I use it to study each future week and determine if we’ll be over- or under-staffed in each week. Actions can be taken to close the gaps in the weeks with poor match.
The benefits of achieving a close weekly resource match include good cost control, protection of CX and revenue, plus high employee engagement. A poor resource match may lead to excess cost or revenue/CX deterioration and poor employee engagement, all harming commercial performance.
The weekly requirement (the line) is the net productive hours required, based on interaction forecasts, process times and also the desired service levels. The interaction forecasts themselves should be informed by such things as seasonality, marketing activity and future automation.
The stacked areas on the chart represent the actual planned resource, also in net productive hours. The blue area represents in-house staff, where recruitment & attrition have been used to estimate future hours. Sensible shrinkages have been estimated into the future. The yellow and the green areas are net hours that are planned to be supplied by two outsource partners.
Looking into the future, we can see in which weeks we are over- or under-staffed, and then agree actions to fix with the operational management team. For example, we can increase or decrease recruitment. We can bring intake forward or push it back. We can alter outsourcer hours (contract permitting). There may be options to alter unbooked holiday allowances. In fact, there are many actions we can take to ensure the requirement line meets the stacked area.
Many things can happen from day to day to thwart a close match. Recruitment intake can come up short, and attrition & sickness can show a sustained increase. Maybe historical automation assumptions used to make the forecast have proven to be optimistic.
Therefore, regular updates are essential. This isn’t a task for occasional attention. A regular weekly discipline is crucial to react promptly to changes and achieve commercial benefits, so performance doesn’t get out of control.
💡 Pro Tip:
Include some weeks of actual historical data in the chart to validate and refine the model. If it doesn’t align with past experiences, review your assumptions.
✂️ Tailor to Your Needs:
Each operation is unique. Tailor your weekly chart to fit your specific situation.
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At Atlantic Insight, our mission is to help Customer Operations achieve sustained improvements in operational effectiveness and customer engagement. We would be delighted to partner with you to improve performance. To start a conversation, please email us at hello@atlanticinsight.com, or call us on +44 (0) 161 438 2009
Philip Stubbs is Partner of Atlantic Insight, and has over 25 years’ experience of improving performance within operational areas within a wide range of industries.
