Planning calculator

Call Center Shrinkage Calculator

Calculate call center shrinkage from breaks, meetings, training, PTO, absence and other paid time agents cannot handle contacts.

Editorial review: 2026-09-10Method: evidence firstCommercial influence: none

Shrinkage represents paid time when an employee is unavailable for customer workload.

Shrinkage = Unavailable Paid Hours / Total Paid Hours

If 300 of 1,000 paid hours are unavailable, shrinkage is 30%.

To convert required productive FTE into paid FTE:

Paid FTE = Required Productive FTE / (1 - Shrinkage)

For example, 70 productive FTE at 30% shrinkage requires 100 paid FTE.

Track planned and unplanned shrinkage separately. Shrinkage is not occupancy: shrinkage measures unavailable paid time, while occupancy measures how much of available contact-handling time is consumed by work.

Calculate staffing requirements.

INTERACTIVE PLANNING MODEL

Run your scenario

Change the assumptions to see the result. Decimal rates use 0.80 for 80%.

PLANNING OUTPUT

17.5%Shrinkage
Paid FTE
18.2
Assumptions and limits

Shrinkage is not occupancy.