4 Workforce Management: Scheduling Call-Center Workers
Students are positioned to consider the regulation of Workforce Management Systems. Students explore how forecasting and scheduling algorithms can lead to unstable and unpredictable work schedules. Such schedules, while perhaps economically advantageous to business, might negatively impact the wellbeing of workers and their families with potentially major implications for the public interest.
INTRODUCTION
Timers, clocks, stop watches; the work hour, the shift, the schedule: For hundreds of years such tools have been used to guide, and often control, the rhythms of work and everyday social life.
Employers depend particularly on schedules. Schedules essentially forecast the amount of work needed to be done and organize workers to carry out the work at set times. But workers, quite obviously, have multi-faceted lives and identities, with roles outside of work—student, parent, caregiver, for example. A work schedule, especially one that changes frequently and unexpectedly, might make it difficult to fulfill such roles, with consequential ripple effects throughout society.
So called “crazy” schedules can wreak havoc on the personal lives of workers in high paying jobs. People on video game development teams, for example, often work 100-hour work weeks during “crunch time.” Investment bankers, and their staffs, often need to be continuously on call for several weeks when finalizing a business deal. The impact of problematic work schedules is likely to be even more acute for workers in low wage jobs, such as restaurant, retail, and call center workers, jobs often held by women and ethnic minorities.
Consider this advertisement, which promises worker input into the creation of work schedules:
Job: Retail Sales, *Flexible Scheduling Option!*, Part-Time
Opportunity:
This position uses a scheduling plan that allows an associate to participate in the creation of his/her work scheduling by managing availability and identifying a preferred work schedule. This position allows the maximum amount of scheduling flexibility.
Qualifications:
Ability to work a flexible schedule, including mornings, evening, and weekends, and busy events such as the day after Thanksgiving, special Big Event days, and the day after Christmas, based on department and store/company needs.
The key term is “flexibility,” that is, allowing the worker to create a schedule that meets his or her preferences. Things get murky, however, in the qualifications section of the ad, where we read that the employee should have the ability to “work a flexible schedule.” In short, even in this ad, we can see that the employee’s and the employer’s view of “flexibility” appear to be quite different. What is at stake with this apparent tension and how might it be addressed?
Workforce Management Systems make flexible scheduling on an hour by hour basis feasible. One key component of these systems is a forecasting algorithm. Based on machine learning tec