- Perpetually tardy
- Goof-off
- Rude
- Complainer
- Needy
- Oblivious
- Recruitment and onboarding
- Evaluation and improvement
- Time management
- Assistance and task management
- Metrics and recognition
- Voice of the employee

- Staggered and flexible scheduling: If your contact center still uses fixed scheduling, flexible scheduling might help your tardy agents. Just “how” fixed your schedule is might vary. I once worked in a very fixed-shift contact center where every agent started at 8 am and every agent ended at 5 pm (this is not very common). This was great for most agents, but not for my non-morning people and those who had morning childcare conflicts. So, we talked to our agents and began to stagger start times. Instead of having everyone start at 8 am, some began arriving at 8:15, 8:30, 845 and so forth. This not only made the difference between being late and on-time for agents, but it actually better mirrored our call arrival patterns, leading to better SLAs and agent utilization.
You can also consider more flexible schedules where agents come in at different times depending on the day and schedule – but this might not be a good answer to your tardiness problem if your tardy agents are also on the more scatterbrained side.
- Mobile workforce management capabilities: In many contact centers, agents only have access to view their schedules from their work computers. Or worse yet, they’re using a photo on their phone of the paper schedule hanging in the break room (only they don’t know the schedule in the break room was actually updated last week and they are working off an outdated copy!) When agents don’t have anytime, anywhere access to their work schedules, it’s inevitable that they are going to occasionally be late. They might forget what time their shift starts tomorrow but can’t double check, or they missed the memo that their start time tomorrow changed when the schedule was updated.
Using workforce management software that gives agents mobile self-scheduling makes sure agents always know where they need to be and when they need to be there. The best even gives agents the ability to initiate shift trades and other schedule changes when they have a conflict – making sure they have a schedule that better fits their work-life needs and ensures they won’t be late after all!
- Remote work. Now I know what you’re thinking, “I can’t get them to start on time when they actually have to be here! How will they ever start on time at home?!” Ironically, remote work can be the best thing for these tardy agents. I was recently speaking to a contact center manager who had her agents move to work-from-home (WFH) for the first time March 2020 in response to COVID-19. She shared an interesting story with me.
She had an agent who was on a performance improvement plan and on the verge of getting fired when they were in the office because she was ALWAYS LATE. Naturally, she was worried that things would only get worse once she started WFH. But the exact opposite occurred. The agent has not been late a single day in months! It turns out that all those excuses – getting stuck at lights, missing the bus – were true, and removing the physical obstacles and commute solved the issue. This agent is now not only on time – but one of her top performers!
- Incentivize schedule adherence. While there may be outside factors causing your agent to be tardy, the problem might just be that they don’t understand how their tardiness impacts the contact center as a whole. Schedule adherence can help with that. Make sure agents understand the direct relationship between adherence and SLAs – which all agents know is important. Once this knowledge is established, agents will hopefully be more accountable to their schedules and improve adherence. Nonetheless, it is only human nature to revert to old habits and slip up in adherence. The best way to keep schedule adherence top of mind is to use workforce management software that lets agents see their schedule adherence on an ongoing basis. Also, make hitting a certain threshold of adherence a requisite to earn other incentives in the contact center. Following your schedule is the bare minimum for doing your job, so an agent must do the bare minimum before they can start earning extra on top.
The goof-off agent
I remember in the second grade, there was this little boy who was always goofing off in class. He would interrupt and disrupt the teacher all the time. So, you can imagine that my little child-brain was really confused when one day he wasn’t in class anymore --- because he got advanced to the third grade. What? But he’s such a goof! Well, it turns out he was clowning around because he was not being challenged enough.
Fast-forward twenty years, and that guy could now be the contact center clown because, again, he’s bored and not being challenged enough. This agent might be the jokester playing pranks on his cubemates, or the gal who always seems to be up and walking around the contact center floor – while still hitting all her goals. Workforce engagement can help you harness that extra energy to work toward the contact center’s performance.
- Introduce gamification and create tougher challenges with bigger incentives for high-performing agents who have mastered the CC agent role. Performance management software makes it easy and sustainable to create different types of games depending on each individual agent’s tenure and proficiency level, keeping them challenged and focused.
- Give them additional responsibilities, like coaching peers, working on special projects, or serving on workplace committees. This not only gives them an extra challenge, but also gives them the leadership and development opportunities they might need to get to their next role.
- Show them how their performance directly impacts the greater organizational good. ICMI research on the state of agent experience in today’s contact centers shows that “having an impact on an organization’s goals” is the #2 motivator for agents, second only to “helping customers.” And together, the alignment of the agent’s role, responsibilities, and performance with overall business goals is the #1 contributor to high engagement levels within the contact center.

- Work together to create a career path. If this agent is consistently exceeding performance goals, but still has time to goof off, it might be time for this agent to explore a different role in the organization where they will face a fresh set of challenges. It’s important that you work with this agent to create a career plan sooner rather than later, though – before they get so bored that they leave the company altogether! According to that same 2019 ICMI survey, one of the two leading causes of agent attrition are lack of growth and advancement opportunities (45%).

