Staffing ratio rarely work effectively
Good advice from JamesRL. Staffing ratio is not a very effective model in today’s complex (not meaning necessarily big)opereations. When someone asks me what their staffing level should be I always say “depends”. There are always uniquenesses to an operation that makes it different and changes the mix. JamesRL gave a good indication of what some of those considerations are. The next best thing to a staffing ratio in the Gross Staffing Model. This model can be easly created in a spreadsheet and the process and calculation is as follows:
1. Gather the Necessary Information
Number of Incidents per year
Average Handle Time including After Call work time
Vacation, sick, holiday, breaks, training, projects, admin.
2. Determine Total Work Hours Required (TWHR) Per Year
[Number of Incidents per year] x [Average Incident Handle Time] = TWHR per year
3. Determine Work Hours Available (WHA)
[2080 Potential Work Hours (PWH)] – [Vacation, sick, holiday, breaks, training, projects, administrative time] = WHA
4. Determine Actual Work Hours Available (AWHA)
Determine the Utilization rate you will use for your model.
o A good industry average for an IT service desk is 75%but should not exceed 80% or the group will be faced with issues of agent burnout.
AWHA = Work Hours Available (WHA) X Utilization Rate (UR)
5. Determine Gross Staffing Level (GSL)
• [TWHR] / [AWHA] = GSL (number of staff required)
The problem here is that this model does not take service levels into account (arrival rate). To improve the accuracy you need to go to an Erlang-C based model. There are a number of those on the market, including ours (www.radarinteractive.com) however for smaller numbers I would go with the Gross Staffing Model(GSM). The GSM is flexable as well as it can be used for staffing for various tasks including: Email requests, desk side, etc.
These concepts are covered in the HDI certification training we deliver.
Source: http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-10878-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=178482&messageID=2035083
