5 Resource Planning Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

When you’ve spent enough time in resource planning, patterns start to become more visible, not only in customer demand, but in how planning itself is approached in the organisation. You see the same mistakes and practices across different organisations, industries, and team sizes.

It’s easy to assume that this happens because planning professionals are unaware or uninterested in the outcomes. But that’s not the case. Most planners I’ve met are desperate to achieve great results. They’re just expected to deliver them without a clear foundation to build from, stretched thin, and with limited visibility into the rest of the WFM cycle. That’s when mistakes start to happen.

Here are five of the most common mistakes I’ve come across in my career - and how to avoid them:

1. Treating forecasting as a task that is completed and left

Forecasting isn’t something you do once and move on from. In most contact centers, forecasts are given little thought or effort. A number is produced, shared, and then left to run its course, even as actual volumes move further and further away from the forecast. Learn more about what damages your forecast accuracy here.

The problem: Decisions get made on assumptions that are no longer true. Everything is built on this incorrect forecast, from recruitment and training plans to device purchases and even opening up in another location.

How to avoid it: Treat forecasting as a continuous process. A forecast should be reviewed and changed as new data becomes available. Review your numbers, understand variances, recognize what constitutes a short deviation, and what needs to be built into future weeks.

2. Planning capacity without fully understanding your model

Most capacity plans look right on paper. We inherit our models and trust that the person who used them before us had them correctly set up. Shifts are created, coverage appears balanced, and everything looks smooth.

The problem: There’s a mismatch between workload and resources, which is where both overstaffing and service issues begin. This is due to the incorrect formulas hidden within the document - ones that don’t surface until performance slips.

More times than you would expect, I’ve seen productivity percentages added on rather than calculated correctly. This leads to understaffing that planners struggle to quantify.

How to address it: Build your capacity model so you can compare forecasted performance against actual performance; the two should track closely. When they don’t, walk through step by step until you spot where it is failing. Do this regularly to keep ahead of issues.

Understand:

• Your formulas
• Your assumptions - don’t forget occupancy
• Your arrival profiles - changes here can leave you wondering why performance dipped even when the right number of calls landed. Spikes in contacts can destroy even the best plans

3. Forgetting to bring operational leaders into the conversation

One of the biggest challenges for planners is to work alongside operations as one team to achieve a shared goal.

The problem: Most planning professionals will smile when I say this - when things go off plan, people look at planning for what they’ve done wrong. Finding someone to blame comes before finding a resolution to the problem at hand, and planners are left to face the consequences.

How to address it: Bring operational teams along the journey, include them in sign-off meetings where you tell the story of how you created the forecast, what sits behind it. Include other demand-driving departments to sign off on any extra demand they expect to create.

As you do this, you will automatically move from a blame culture to a collaborative culture. And when things move away from what was expected, you will see a shift from finding someone to blame to finding the best way to deal with the changes.

Collaborative relationships need:

• Clarity on what sits behind the numbers
• Regular reviews
• Sign-off process
• Clear expectations from both resource and operational teams

This gives a clear understanding of what is expected and holds both teams accountable to deliver against the plans. Learn how the right way of reporting and analysis can set you up for success as a planner.

4. Ignoring shrinkage until it’s too late

Shrinkage is often treated as something to adjust after problems appear. By that point, the plan is already under pressure.

The problem: Plans look achievable - until reality hits:

• New groups going live will not be as productive as a tenured agent.
• New systems going live require more training.
• Sickness will trend differently across different times of the year as well as days of the week.
• Absence, training, and meetings all reduce available capacity.

How to address it: Build shrinkage into your planning from the start. Profile it against anything that can impact it, and phase in productivity expectations as new starters go through training. Forecast absence around days of the week and times of the year.

For example, have you accounted for this year’s World Cup match times? Most planners will miss the impact - now you don’t have to.

Be realistic. Understand the drivers of shrinkage in your operation and factor them in early, not reactively.

5. Staying stuck in firefighting mode

Many planning teams spend their time reacting. Fixing today’s issues and recovering from yesterday’s problems.

The problem: No time is left to improve what happens next. No learning takes place, and the mistakes that create the noise of today happen again and again.

What to do instead: When things become crazy, it becomes more important to learn from what is happening so it doesn’t keep becoming an endless loop. Yes, put the actions in place to create the best performance possible, but also get ahead of the game by learning as you go.

Even small changes make a difference:

• A consistent forecasting process
• A clear planning cycle
• Structured performance reviews
• Clear storytelling around what is happening

As planning teams take this approach, they see a shift in planning from reactive to proactive - and that’s where the real value sits.

Key takeaways

None of these mistakes is unusual. In fact, I would go as far as saying they’re incredibly common. And most of them come back to one thing:

A lack of clear, practical understanding of how the full planning process fits together.

When that foundation is in place, everything becomes easier:

• Better decisions
• Stronger plans
• More confidence in delivery