How to improve employee attendance in call centers

Monday, July 7, 2014


Attendance issues in a call center can have an impact on its overall productivity. Open Access BPO, outsourcing provider of contact center solutions in the Philippines, lists down some tips that can help managers improve schedule adherence among agents.


As call center managers, the time and effort you invest in staffing and scheduling your workforce are wasted if your agents are not at their stations during production hours. It is important that your agents show up for work on time and follow the prescribed employee schedule since schedule adherence can affect your call center’s productivity.

The key to better service levels is making sure your agents adhere to the staff schedule. Here are some ways how you can improve attendance in your call center:

1.     Make your call center agents understand the importance of having complete attendance. Some of them may not realize how their absence or tardiness can affect the team’s productivity.

By devoting time to explain to them how tasks are passed on to others or how long call waiting times and queues get when they are not around, you can make them visualize the effects of lack of schedule adherence.

2.     Be a good example to your agents. Make sure that all trainers, supervisors, and managers in your call center end training sessions, meetings, and coaching sessions on time. As much as possible, don’t use the break time of agents in making announcements or extending production.

3.     To avoid human errors, make use of systems that can capture log in and log out times of agents instead of assigning supervisors to take note of them every day or requiring your agents to do it manually. Agents should also have access to their log times and be allowed to raise dispute when there are discrepancies in the capturing of data.

4.     Include attendance in the evaluation criteria used in gauging your agents’ performance. Agents that are habitually late or absent should have a special coaching session dedicated to identifying causative factors and designing an action plan to improve poor attendance.

5.     Reward agents with good attendance record. Maintaining a perfect attendance is a form of hard work. Hence, it must be acknowledged in order to reinforce the behavior and to inspire other members of the team to follow.

Making sure that your call center has the right number of people during hours of operation is a task that demands a strategic people management approach. By following these tips, you can avoid the detriments of poor employee attendance and make your agents become more dedicated in contributing to the team’s productivity through schedule adherence.