In May 2002 West Midlands Police formed a special project team, ‘UNITY’, set up to address the growing number of problems associated with call handling including call abandonment, improving the average time-to-answer and reducing repeat calls.The West Midlands Police is the second largest police force in the United Kingdom behind London’s Metropolitan Police Service, serving a population of almost 1 million households. The central switchboard staff at police headquarters answered more than 2.6 million calls last year. A dedicated team of 61 full and part time operators and six supervisors staff the department 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
In 2002, as part of a major review of the way that it wanted to manage call handling at its central switchboard, West Midlands Police was keen to revamp its historic rotating shift patterns. Almost 50% of call centre staff are carers and 68% of the staff surveyed said that would like more flexibility in their working hours. On analysing working patterns, it became clear that supervisors were spending the majority of their time resolving staffing issues, but options for the staff were still too restricted and overtime spending needed to be controlled.
In addition, West Midlands Police faced challenges from the huge demand of data outputs from their ACD management information system and were manually trying to resource against demand. West Midlands Police have been extremely proactive in recent years, in introducing policies for flexible working and to improve work-life balance. They needed a way to incorporate these principles, yet still provide a responsive 24/7 service to the citizens of the West Midlands and meet strict budget requirements for I.T. expenditures.
In May 2002 West Midlands Police formed a special project team, ‘UNITY’, set up to address the growing number of problems associated with call handling including call abandonment, improving the average time-to-answer and reducing repeat calls.
In evaluating solutions, it became clear that to overcome challenges, a tool was required that would support the West Midland Police’s strong worklife balance ethos whilst meeting the high levels of performance required. GMT Planet® was chosen for its features and functionality, and especially for particular strengths such as powerful, robust and accurate forecasting; easy to follow graphic displays; and the ability to schedule staff based on availability, skills and proficiency.
Since deploying GMT Planet Workforce Management, staffing demand is better understood and schedule fit has improved from 49% in November 2003 to a target of 85% in 2006, making a net saving of £94k in the first year. Since implementation, the overtime budget has only been necessary to cover public holidays, with an approximate annual saving of £50k. GMT Planet’s self-service Employee Time Centre has succeeded in reducing the amount of time supervisors spend organising and resolving staffing issues, and can now focus on more productive tasks, such as supervising calls within the call centre. The activities of six supervisors manually organising rotas has been replaced by one resource planner covering both the switchboard and the emergency call centre.
Additionally, the introduction of flexible working has been successful because GMT Planet provides an easy-to-use tool that enables resource planners to analyse the impact of each request. Staff confidence in both the system and more choice in flexible working hours have improved attendance and morale on all shifts and reduced employee turnover.
The implementation of GMT Planet has also contributed to West Midlands Police central switchboard winning the Best Public Sector Call Centre Workplace Award in July 2004. The newly improved West Midlands Police Call Centre also won the prestigious ‘Innovation of the Year Award’ given by the Professional Planning Forum at their annual conference.
