Shrinkage-aware scheduling

Free visual lesson · about 5 minutes · short quiz at the end

ccPlanning academy · scheduling

Shrinkage-aware scheduling

Rostering for the people who actually show up — and handing over the day.

The big idea

Roster gross, cover net.

The requirement is net — bodies on contacts. But people on shift go to breaks, training and meetings, and some are off sick. You must schedule more bodies than the requirement so that, after shrinkage, net coverage still lands on the line.

The classic mistake

Scheduling the net number.

Roster exactly to the requirement and you’re understaffed the moment the first person takes a break. Coverage looks fine in the plan and collapses in reality — because the plan forgot shrinkage exists.

Scheduling the shrinkage

Put the “off-phone” time where it hurts least.

Training, coaching, team meetings and 1-to-1s are shrinkage you control. Schedule them into the quiet intervals, not the peak. The same hours of off-phone activity can be invisible to coverage or devastating to it — you choose.

Building in the buffer

Plan for the unplanned.

Unplanned shrinkage — sickness, no-shows — is forecastable in aggregate. Roster a sensible buffer for it (and lean on standby or overtime), so an ordinary sick day doesn’t become a service incident.

The handoff

Then the day goes live.

However good the schedule, the actual day always drifts — a sickness spike, a volume surge, an outage. At that point the plan hands over to real-time management: the discipline of defending the plan as reality unfolds.

Closing the loop

Real-time feeds tomorrow’s schedule.

What real-time learns — where adherence slipped, where the forecast missed, which intervals always run hot — should flow back into the next schedule and forecast. Planning is a loop, not a relay with a finish line.

Do the gross-up

Need 30 on the phones? Roster 43

The requirement says 30 net at the peak. At 30% shrinkage, only 70% of rostered staff are on contacts — so 30 ÷ 0.70 ≈ 43 bodies on shift.

Roster the 30 and you’re short the instant someone breaks. Worse, slot a team meeting into that peak and you’re short even with 43 — place the off-phone time, don’t just count it.

The takeaway

Schedule gross, place shrinkage wisely, then hand over.

Roster more than the requirement so net coverage holds, push controllable off-phone time into the quiet, buffer for the unplanned — and remember the schedule is the start of the live day, not the end of the job.

That’s the track — now test yourself ↓

1 / 8

Slides done? Here’s the same idea in a bit more depth — the part worth keeping.

In depth: rostering for the people who actually show up

The requirement is a net number — bodies on contacts — but the people on shift go to breaks, training and meetings, and some are off sick. So you have to schedule more bodies than the requirement, enough that after shrinkage takes its share, net coverage still lands on the line. Roster gross, cover net. Get this wrong — roster exactly to the requirement — and you’re understaffed the instant the first person takes a break: the coverage looks fine in the plan and collapses in reality, because the plan forgot shrinkage exists.

Place the shrinkage you control

Not all shrinkage is equal. Training, coaching, team meetings and one-to-ones are shrinkage you control, and when you schedule them is a coverage decision: drop them into the quiet intervals and they’re invisible; drop the same hours onto the peak and they’re devastating. The unplanned side — sickness, no-shows — you can’t place, but you can forecast it in aggregate and roster a sensible buffer (leaning on standby or overtime), so an ordinary sick day doesn’t become a service incident.

The schedule is the start of the live day

However good the roster, the actual day always drifts — a sickness spike, a volume surge, an outage — and at that point the plan hands over to real-time management, the discipline of defending it as reality unfolds. The loop closes when what real-time learns (where adherence slipped, where the forecast missed, which intervals always run hot) flows back into the next schedule and forecast. Planning is a loop, not a relay with a finish line.

The principle to remember: schedule gross, place controllable shrinkage in the quiet, buffer for the unplanned, then hand over to the live day — and feed what the day teaches back into tomorrow’s plan.

Shrinkage-aware scheduling