Shrinkage
The portion of paid time agents are not available to handle contacts, from breaks, training, meetings, and absence.
What it means
Shrinkage is the share of paid time an agent is not available to take contacts. It covers the planned (training, coaching, meetings, breaks) and the unplanned (absence, late starts, system outages). A schedule built without it will always be short, because it staffs to headcount rather than to the hours those people can actually spend on the phone.
How it is calculated
Shrinkage = (total paid hours - hours available for contacts) / total paid hours
Why it matters
Shrinkage is the difference between a schedule that holds and one that misses service level every afternoon. Most contact centres sit somewhere around 30 to 35 percent, and the number varies enough by program that a single global assumption quietly under-staffs some queues while over-staffing others.
Common mistakes
- Using one shrinkage rate across every client and line of business. Programs with heavy certification requirements carry far more training time than steady-state queues.
- Excluding breaks because they are short. They are paid, recurring, and large in aggregate.
- Setting the rate once a year. Shrinkage moves with ramp cycles, seasonal absence, and any new training push.
See also
- Schedule adherenceHow closely agents follow their published schedule, minute to minute.
- OccupancyThe share of logged-in time agents spend actively handling contacts rather than waiting.
- FTE: Full-Time EquivalentA unit of staffing equal to one full-time agent, used to size headcount independent of shift length.
- AbsenteeismUnplanned missed shifts, a primary driver of intraday shrinkage.