Change is the only constant in your contact centre. From new products and evolving service channels to updated systems and reshaped processes, no day looks exactly like the last. However, despite the attention given to product planning and project and change management, we find one key team is often left out of the loop: the Workforce Management (WFM) Team.

When you exclude the WFM Team from change initiatives, it causes real problems. Your forecasting becomes inaccurate, schedules become misaligned and service levels suffer as a result. Worse still, you can increase agent burnout and pay for it in your service level. But, for the most part, you can avoid all of this if you involve your WFM Team early. Involving them early and consistently in your change management process is crucial for maintaining operational stability and ensuring customer satisfaction. I’m hoping this blog post elevates your view of the WFM team and gives them a seat at the proverbial change table (trust me, it’s in your best interest)!

WFM is More Than Just Schedules

Too often, people view WFM as the team that just manages shift changes and runs schedules. Anyone working in the field understands it’s far more than that. An adept WFM team is a crucial component of your contact centre.

Consider WFM the central nervous system of the contact centre. Just as your nervous system processes information, coordinates responses and maintains balance throughout your body, WFM processes customer demand data, coordinates staffing responses and maintains operational balance across the entire operation.

Your WFM Team:

• Forecast customer contact volumes across your channels
• Build schedules that balance business demand with employee preferences
• Monitor live adherence and adjust to the unexpected
• Analyse trends in occupancy, shrinkage, AHT and many other KPIs
• Provide you with the insights and reporting you need to explain your performance
• Support strategic initiatives with scenario modelling and recommendations (backed by data)

That means any change affecting your frontline, volumes, routing or handle time directly affects WFM’s planning, strategy and performance outcomes. Without visibility into upcoming changes, WFM teams are forced into reactive mode, scrambling to adjust after the fact.

The Real Impact of Leaving Your WFM Team in the Dark

Here are some real-world examples that illustrate the risks:

1. You hit send on a marketing campaign. WFM wasn’t briefed. Your contact volume doubles overnight. Rosters aren’t ready for the spike, your frontline is overwhelmed, customers abandon in frustration and your service level tanks.
2. You deploy a new routing system. Contact flows change, average handle time increases by 20% and queues grow. WFM is on the back foot, relying on outdated assumptions for forecasting and staffing, both for schedule runs and long-term capacity planning. You’re understaffed without a plan B.
3. Half your frontline is pulled off the floor into a new training program. WFM wasn’t included in scheduling these. Adherence drops, service levels tank, leadership starts asking tough questions and your WFM team are left to explain.

You could have avoided or at the very least understood the impacts of, these issues with simple, early engagement with your WFM Team.

What WFM Brings to Your Change Table

Your WFM team are trained to anticipate demand, allocate resources efficiently, and identify risks before they become issues. That makes them incredibly valuable partners when you’re designing, testing, and rolling out change.

Here’s how WFM adds value:

• Forecast impact modelling: Your WFM teams can estimate the effect of a change on contact volume, handle time, service quality, and more. Whether it’s a new system or a shift in process, they can help you understand what the downstream effect will look like.
• Scenario planning: WFM tools enable the testing of “what-if” models, allowing leaders to explore the impact of different timelines or operational changes before committing.
• Shift and contract knowledge: No one understands the limits of award rules, break timing, part-time patterns or weekend rostering like WFM. Their input helps ensure changes remain within workforce constraints and that you don’t create costly inflexibility in your scheduling.
• Launch day support: Your real-time analysts can prepare for intervention management like organising extra coverage, ensuring break timing optimisation and monitoring live adherence and contact data to spot issues early.
• Reporting and post-implementation reviews: WFM tools hold the data that helps measure your success. This includes metrics like adherence, queue performance, shrinkage trends and agent productivity.

The most successful change initiatives recognise that transformation happens at the intersection of strategy and execution. Your WFM team sits precisely at this crossroad; they translate your grand vision into granular reality. They are the bridge between what leadership imagines and what the frontline can deliver.

Why WFM Gets Left Out

No one comes to work to do a bad job, so leaving your WFM team out of the loop is rarely ever deliberate. More often than not, project owners or change leads exclude WFM because they don’t realise how relevant and, frankly, beneficial it is to include them.

The most common reasons I’ve found are:

• WFM is frequently seen as operational rather than strategic: Many organisations regard WFM as purely an administrative function. This perception results in late or missed involvement.
• Lack of change governance: In businesses without structured change frameworks, teams are left to manage their own initiatives. Without a clear checklist of stakeholders, WFM is often overlooked.
• Assumption that WFM can “just adjust”: With what data? Some leaders assume WFM can simply fix things later. But reactive adjustments are rarely efficient and often come at a cost to customers or staff.

When Should WFM be Brought In?

A simple rule of thumb: If the change touches the frontline or customer experience, engage your WFM team. Anything to do with contact volume, handle time, or people (customers, frontline, leaders – anyone in the contact centre ecosystem).

That includes changes like:

• Channel changes (e.g. introducing chat, or moving from phone to digital)
• Queue structure updates or routing redesigns
• Product launches or new service lines
• Technology changes (CRM, knowledge tools, IVR)
• Training programs or certification requirements
• EBA changes that can affect availability
• Policy or process shifts (e.g. new escalation steps, new payment processes)

Even if the change seems small to you, it may have a hidden impact on staffing levels, break placement or intraday demand and adjustments. Even a quick conversation with WFM can help validate your assumptions and improve planning.

What Best Practice Looks Like

In mature contact centres, WFM is a trusted business partner that supports your strategic initiatives and daily operations. Here’s what strong WFM involvement in change typically includes:

• A seat for WFM on change advisory boards, change councils, change impact assessment or steering committees
• Early discovery meetings with WFM to validate assumptions
• Forecasting for the “what-if” to understand the change impact
• Scenario testing in the WFM platform
• Joint scheduling reviews with you and the WFM team before go-live
• Intraday planning and readiness check-ins on launch day
• Debriefs using WFM metrics and frontline or customer feedback

These practices ensure your change initiatives run smoothly and performance stays on track.

How to Get Started

If you’re in a leadership, project, or change management role, here’s how to begin involving WFM in a meaningful way:

1. Create visibility: If you don’t already have a change calendar, map out the types of changes that you’re planning and ask WFM if any need their input.
2. Standardise your change audience: Make WFM part of the stakeholder list in project processes, governance frameworks, and change councils.
3. Educate your project and change leads: Help other teams understand what WFM does (send them this blog article and discuss it in your next team meeting) and discuss how they can support smoother execution.
4. Ask for feedback: Ask the WFM about pain points in previous rollouts so you can avoid repeating mistakes.
5. Celebrate shared wins: When projects succeed with WFM involved, tell that story. It reinforces their role as strategic partners.

Change in contact centres is inevitable, but the chaos that can ensue isn’t. When WFM is introduced early, your organisation avoids surprises, the frontline stays informed and supported, and your business maintains momentum without compromising the customer experience.

So, before your next change, I want you to pause and ask: “Have we brought in the people who manage the most complex part of this change, our workforce management team?” If not, now’s the time.

Speak to us.

Written by Jamie Powderly, WFO Consultant Team Leader