What is call center shrinkage?
Call center shrinkage is the percentage of paid agent time that is not available for handling contacts. Paid breaks, training, coaching, meetings, holiday, sickness, no-shows and system downtime all count toward it. The formula is shrinkage = hours lost / hours paid x 100, and the staffing adjustment divides the agents you need on the phones by one minus shrinkage.
Workforce planners care about shrinkage because Erlang C and similar staffing models return agents who must be logged in and free. Shrinkage is the gap between that number and the people you pay. Get it wrong by a few points and every interval runs short, and the shortfall shows up as missed service level before anyone traces it back to the roster.
The shrinkage formula
Use paid hours as the denominator and keep using it. Some teams divide by logged-in hours instead, which gives a different number for the same roster, and a plan that mixes the two definitions understaffs. Leave unpaid lunch out of both sides: it is neither paid nor lost.
Planners usually split the total in two. Planned shrinkage is time you put on the roster yourself, such as breaks, training, meetings and approved holiday. Unplanned shrinkage is time you lose without notice, such as sickness, no-shows and outages. You control the first when you build the schedule; the second you can only forecast from history.
Worked example
An agent paid for 40 hours a week loses 2.5 hours to paid breaks, 2 to training and coaching, 1 to meetings, 3 to holiday, 2 to sickness and no-shows and 1 to system downtime. That is 11.5 hours lost, so shrinkage is 11.5 / 40 = 28.75 percent and each agent gives you 28.5 productive hours. If the Erlang calculator says you need 14 agents on the phones, you schedule 14 / (1 - 0.2875) = 19.6, rounded up to 20.
Those are the calculator's default inputs and they are illustrative. Of the 28.75 percent, 21.25 points are planned and 7.5 are unplanned, which tells you where a reduction could come from. Cutting a weekly meeting from one hour to 30 minutes removes 1.25 points; getting sickness and no-shows from 2 hours to 1 removes 2.5.
How shrinkage changes the schedule
The same 14 agents on the phones need a different roster at each shrinkage level. The relationship curves upward: going from 20 to 25 percent adds one seat, and going from 35 to 40 percent adds two.
| Shrinkage | 14 / (1 - shrinkage) | Agents to schedule |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | 17.50 | 18 |
| 25% | 18.67 | 19 |
| 30% | 20.00 | 20 |
| 35% | 21.54 | 22 |
| 40% | 23.33 | 24 |
What shrinkage benchmark should you plan with?
Call Centre Helper puts the industry standard for shrinkage at 30 percent. Its team says most centres they visit calculate shrinkage at around 30 to 35 percent, while the average figure entered into its Erlang calculator is 26.6 percent, a gap it puts down to confusion over what counts (Call Centre Helper, call centre industry standards). For the absence slice alone, ContactBabel's 2024 US guide reports a mean short-term absence rate of 9.4 percent of contracted days, with a median of 6.5 percent (ContactBabel, The 2024 US Contact Center Decision-Makers' Guide).
Treat those as sense checks. A figure measured from your own roster and absence records beats any benchmark, and it moves with the calendar: holiday season and new-hire training weeks run higher than a quiet month, so plan those periods with their own number.
Common shrinkage mistakes
- Multiplying instead of dividing. Fourteen agents x 1.30 = 18.2, which rounds to 19, one short of the 20 that 30 percent shrinkage actually needs.
- Mixing denominators. Shrinkage against paid hours and shrinkage against logged-in hours are different numbers for the same team.
- One annual figure for every week. Holiday peaks and training blocks need their own shrinkage, or those weeks run short.
- Counting only planned time. Sickness and no-shows are part of shrinkage even though nobody schedules them.
Shrinkage and occupancy are easy to confuse. Shrinkage is paid time lost before an agent is available; occupancy is the share of available time spent on contacts. The occupancy and shrinkage guide covers how the two interact.
FAQ
What is shrinkage in a call center?
Shrinkage in a call center is the percentage of paid agent time that is not available for handling contacts. It covers paid breaks, training, coaching, meetings, holiday, sickness, no-shows and system downtime. Planners use it to convert the agents a staffing model says must be on the phones into the number of people to schedule.
How do you calculate call center shrinkage?
Add up the paid hours agents spend unavailable for contacts, divide by total paid hours, and multiply by 100. An agent paid for 40 hours who loses 11.5 hours to breaks, training, meetings, holiday, sickness and downtime has 11.5 / 40 = 28.75 percent shrinkage. Use the same denominator every time, usually paid hours.
What is a good shrinkage percentage?
There is no single good number, because shrinkage depends on your break policy, training load and absence. As a reference, Call Centre Helper puts the industry standard at 30 percent and says most centres its team visits calculate 30 to 35 percent, while the average entered into its Erlang calculator is 26.6 percent. A lower figure is only better if it comes from less absence or leaner meetings, not from skipping training.
Is lunch included in shrinkage?
Unpaid lunch is not included, because shrinkage measures paid time and an unpaid lunch is neither paid nor lost. Paid breaks are included. If your agents are paid through lunch, count it as lost time like any other paid break.
How does shrinkage affect staffing?
Divide the agents you need on the phones by one minus shrinkage and round up. With 14 agents needed and 30 percent shrinkage you schedule 14 / 0.70 = 20. At 35 percent the same requirement becomes 22, so five points of shrinkage cost two seats.
What is the difference between shrinkage and occupancy?
Shrinkage is the share of paid time an agent is unavailable for contacts, such as breaks, training and absence. Occupancy is the share of available, logged-in time an agent spends handling contacts rather than waiting for the next one. Shrinkage decides how many people you schedule; occupancy tells you how hard the ones logged in are working.
Keep going
Feed the result into the Erlang C calculator to size the whole schedule, and check the handle time it uses with the AHT calculator. If absence is high because people keep leaving, measure it with the attrition rate calculator. Compare the rest of your floor in the call center KPI benchmarks, or browse every free tool on the tools hub.