Vacation and Holiday Planner

Managing time off requests quickly and fairly can be a huge administrative task for contact centers. Every decision can directly impact operational costs and affect employee morale.

The TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner feature from IEX, a subsidiary of NICE Systems Ltd., allows you to respond quickly and fairly to time off requests by streamlining the entire process, from selection to approval, saving management time, ensuring objective, rules-based approvals and improving agent morale by letting them have more control of their scheduled time off.

Designed with customer input, the TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner feature reduces the amount of time you spend managing schedules, verifying agents' available time off and ensuring that the contact center will be adequately staffed if the time off is approved. The feature also allows agents to request time off through an online system and enables automated approval of agent requests.

Flexible Time Off Categories
The TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner feature manages multiple types of time off -- vacations or holidays, sick time, personal time, or others -- each with unique accrual rates and limits. Time off rules determine how many agents can take time off on a given day, whether partial-day time off is allowed, and date ranges for which time off can be requested. Time off rules can be unique for different areas of the contact center, so that certain skills, shifts or sites can manage the availability of time off independently.

Time Off Requests
Agents or supervisors can access the vacation bidding screen on designated workstations, using the intuitive, color-coded calendar and easy-to-use screens to help them make or modify selections. The screen displays an up-to-date summary of their earned, taken, selected and remaining time off. The color-coded calendar clearly shows which days can be selected, and how much time off is available to the agent.

A color key is always handy to identify which colors apply to the type of time off requested. In addition to managing ongoing time off requests, the TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner supports a bidding process that allows agents to periodically bid for time off based on a seniority, rank or first-come, first-served priority.

The system can be configured to use a series of bidding rounds, permitting agents to bid for a specified maximum amount of time off in each round. If the requested time is not available, agents can place themselves on a waiting list for that specific time slot. The bidding and wait list screens can also be accessed directly by agents or managed by a supervisor.

In addition, supervisors can establish vacation groups to view total time off requests by selected agents. This gives management greater visibility into managing the business goals of individual departmental functions.

The TotalView system provides customized options for handling changes to selected time off, such as a cancellation. A cancelled time slot may automatically become available to agents, or it may be reserved until management releases it or grants it to an agent on a wait-list for that time.

Full Integration with Scheduling
The TotalView system automatically includes granted vacation time when creating schedules. By integrating vacation data into the schedule, the contact center does not compromise service levels or risk being understaffed.

If vacation time is inserted directly into an agent’s schedule, the information automatically appears on the Vacation and Holiday Planner screens as well.

Additional Features
The TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner offers these additional capabilities:

• Supports partial-day, full-day and week vacations
• Allows weekends prior to and following the selected vacation week to be forced off
• Permits holidays to be set up individually or in groups for fair rotations
• Enables fair, automatic holiday assignment rotations by taking previous holiday work history into account
• Provides a view of vacation data in hours or FTE days
• Maintains vacation time carry-over

Supervisors can override the amount of time off earned by an agent to "loan" vacation time. Supervisors can enter comments for approved, rejected or cancelled time off and generate reports on active and inactive time off entries.

Vacations and holidays are important to everyone. The comprehensive TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner feature makes it easier to manage and control these vital assets.

Take a step toward a happier, more productive workforce by letting Vacation and Holiday Planner help your employees participate in the process of planning their time off.

Benefits:

• Simplifies schedule management through automation
• Promotes fairness in the workplace
• Improves employee morale
• Integrates with TotalView scheduling and existing human resources and payroll systems
• Easy-to-use intuitive online calendar tool