Resources
A reference hub for contact centre and workforce planning. Each curated topic below is a working planner’s shortlist — the places, vendors, and sources we’d send a colleague to. Bookmark the page; we’ll keep adding to it.
Featured
The Academy
Eight tracks. Forty-plus lessons. Quizzes, end-of-track exams, printable CPP certificate. No video, no signup.
Open the Academy → DOWNLOADSThe white-paper series
Seven colour-coded white papers on the disciplines planners need to defend: accuracy, business case, maturity, forecasting, scheduling, real-time, MI.
Browse the series → MONTHLY CATCH-UPWhat’s new this month
The visitor’s monthly catch-up: every article published this month, plus a six-week preview of what’s queued. One page.
See this month →Learn
Structured trainingSkills-building material organised into discrete journeys you can work through.
20 Excel formulas every planner should master
Beyond SUM. The functions that do the real work in a planning workbook — SUMPRODUCT, INDEX/MATCH, XLOOKUP, FORECAST.LINEAR, PERCENTILE, POISSON.DIST. Each with a worked CC example, a diagram, and the trap to avoid.
Open the Excel skills →Free 5-day email course
Planning Foundations: offered load and Erlang, shrinkage, the intraday curve, forecast accuracy, and credibility — in five short daily lessons. Read now or get them paced by email.
Start the course →Maturity assessment
A 5-minute, 15-question assessment of your planning function across forecasting, scheduling, real-time, MI and leadership. Score per dimension, targeted article recommendations to close the biggest gaps.
Take the assessment →Reference
Look-up & benchmarkMaterial to come back to when a question lands — the planner’s reference shelf.
Frequently asked questions
Honest, opinionated answers to twenty questions workforce planners and contact-centre managers ask most often. Each answer links to the deeper article.
Open FAQ →Planning benchmarks — what’s normal?
Typical ranges for shrinkage, occupancy, attrition, service level, abandonment, adherence and forecast accuracy — with honest caveats about what the figures do and don’t mean.
See the benchmarks →Planning look-up tables
Printable Erlang C staffing tables at the conventional 80/20 target, plus shrinkage uplift tables — with the assumptions and caveats attached so the numbers travel safely.
Open the tables →Case studies — the disciplines in action
Five anonymised worked examples from three decades of planning practice — shrinkage by site, the Friday-afternoon surge, the surge that never came, the hidden vulnerable-customer queue, and the save nobody heard about.
Read the case studies →Knowledge sources
Practitioner publications, research and analyst firms, professional bodies, books, LinkedIn communities. The places planners actually read, train with, and learn from. UK/Ireland-leaning.
Open Knowledge sources →Industry calendar
The annual rhythm every UK and Irish workforce planner should have on their radar — events, reports, regulatory milestones, recurring operational moments. Month-by-month.
Open Industry calendar →Industry events & conferences
The events planners actually go to — The Forum, CCMA, Call & Contact Centre Expo, CCW, SWPP, ICMI — UK/Ireland-leaning, with what a planner gets out of each and 2026 dates where confirmed.
Open Events →Training & certifications
The qualifications that carry weight in CC planning — The Forum’s accreditation, SWPP’s CWPP, ICMI, vendor WFM certifications — plus the free options, starting with our own Academy.
Open Training →Podcasts & webinars
The shows and series worth a planner’s commute — WFM Unfiltered, weWFM, CX Files, Call Centre Helper and Forum webinars — with cadence and what each is good for.
Open Podcasts →Tools & templates
Hands-onThings to use, not just to read.
Technology & vendor directories
Neutral directories of the systems planners encounter — workforce management, quality assurance, and more categories coming. Logos, founding history, synopses, and links. Options, not recommendations.
Open Technology →Downloadable templates
Free starter templates planners can use right away — shrinkage tracker, forecast accuracy log, one-page MI pack. Excel and Google-Sheets friendly.
Browse templates →Open-source & free tools
The genuinely free tools worth knowing — Erlang spreadsheets, Python and R forecasting libraries, open datasets — with honest caveats about what “free” costs you in maintenance.
Open Free tools →Career
Into, through, onwardsFor anyone thinking about a contact-centre planning career — route in, ladder up, route out.
Jobs
A curated weekly list of CC workforce planning roles — forecasting, scheduling, real-time, capacity, leadership. UK and Ireland focused with selected European roles. Free to list for hiring managers.
Open Jobs →Planning roles compared
Who actually does what — real-time analyst to head of planning. The day-to-day, the skills that matter, routes in and routes onward, and the pattern behind the ladder.
Compare the roles →Career — into, through, and onwards
A curated set of articles for anyone thinking about a CC planning career — how to get in, the typical ladder, specialism vs generalism, skills that move you up, routes onwards from senior planning roles.
Open Career →How to use these pages
Each curated topic is built around the same discipline: editorial, not exhaustive. We focus on the players, sources, and tools most planners will encounter in practice, with a short neutral synopsis and an outbound link for each. We’re not paid by anyone listed.
- Use these pages as a starting point. The list is a map of the territory, not the territory itself.
- Suggest additions. If there’s a source we’ve missed that planners genuinely use, tell us in the discussion on LinkedIn.
- Tell us what you’d like next. If a category we haven’t covered would be useful, say so.
Page reviewed quarterly. Last reviewed: May 2026.