How to Handle Shrinkage in Workforce Management

June 19, 2026 in Wfm
How to Handle Shrinkage in Workforce Management

How to Handle Shrinkage in Workforce Management

Shrinkage is the percentage of talent you estimate not to become available for the planned shift. Statistically, it is around 20-30% of the workforce. Common reasons are;

  • unplanned absence, sick leave
  • lack of access to the tools for the shift swap
  • missing the shift schedule, being late
  • working on another skill; resource requirements on a higher priority skill
  • environmental factors such as weather, traffic etc.

Concepts like dynamic shrinkage are reactive solutions and often do not focus on preventing or reducing shrinkage. There are better ways to proactively handle shrinkage issues;

Agent Autoskilling

Using Autoskill, you can create backup resources from other teams by assigning them secondary skills. In normal operations, secondary skills are not enabled. You can create a logical chain of conditions based on real-time and daily key performance indicators such as;

  • Longest waiting is higher than four minutes
  • calls waiting is more than six
  • average speed of answer is higher than three minutes
  • daily answer rate is less than 70%
  • service level is less than 60%

You can cascade and group these conditions using logical AND and OR operators. If your group of conditions are met, the secondary skills of the target agents are enabled. This extra temporary resource should help to handle contacts faster. Once your condition group is no longer valid, secondary skills will be disabled automatically. Click here to learn more.


AI Agent Assist

A better option than Agent autoskilling is AI Agent Assist. It is a great use case to have AI as a co-pilot to your customer service reps. The call or chat transcript is generated automatically for each contact and AI creates a list of potential resolutions from the knowledge base. Even though the agent is not fully trained for that particular skill, they can handle the contact by using the knowledge base articles and action plans recommended by the AI Agent Asisst.

Because you will have a single pool of agents, you can have more flexibility on managing shrinkage.

Working with an Overflow Partner

In some cases, even when you have AI Agent Assist, you may not have sufficient resources. In this case, working with an overflow partner can help to handle calls. Instead of going through a comprehensive vetting process for an overflow partner, you can work with NoTime. NoTime is a marketplace that you can create your talent pool from various BPO providers. You can review the past performance of each agent available, you can listen to their sample recordings and pick agents from multiple BPOs. You do not need to commit to a specific outsource partner. You can swap agents easily, if the performance of an agent is not up to your standards.

Mobile Notifications from WFM Mobile App

In some cases, agents mix up the date or time of the shift schedule. Comstice WFM mobile app can send mobile notifications the day before the shift and few hours earlier to avoid this common issue.

Reporting Unplanned Absence from WFM Mobile App

You can make shift swaps and reporting absence easier with Comstice WFM Mobile App. Sooner the absence is reported by the agent, easier you can remedy these resource requirements.

Shift Swaps from Mobile App

Similar to reporting absence, shift swaps using Comstice WFM Mobile App speeds up the process. Team leaders can easily review and respond to shift swap requests and finalize the shift change.

Remote Working

You can also build an infrastructure to make your agents work remotely when and if needed.

Comstice offers Comstice Orbit; cloud contact center that you can also run on your network or private cloud. It helps remote working scenarios.

If you have Avaya or Cisco contact centers, Comstice also offers Avaya Agent Portal that can integrate with Avaya AES and Cisco Finesse Webphone Gadget.

Comstice Mobile Agent Softphone App

In other cases, you can also introduce resources who are not full-time contact center reps but who can handle calls if resources are needed. Comstice Mobile Softphone app helps to login as an agent, retrieve calls from the queue and also make calls, without disclosing the mobile phone number of the agent.

Conclusion

Shrinkage in legacy call center world was a challenge. However, today there are many options to prevent or at least minimize the effects of the shrinkage. Comstice Orbit is the solution that offers a system of customer engagement and a system of customer records.

Success!