# Call Center Shrinkage Calculator - Complete Guide

> Calculate internal, absence and total call center shrinkage, and how many agents to roster so the right number are on the phones.

Source: https://edesy.in/docs/tools/voice-ai-tools/call-center-shrinkage-calculator

The [Call Center Shrinkage Calculator](https://edesy.in/tools/call-center-shrinkage-calculator) works out how much paid agent time is lost to breaks, meetings, training, admin and absence, and how many agents to roster to cover it.

## How to Use

1. Enter **Paid hours per agent per day**.
2. Under internal shrinkage, enter the average minutes per agent per day for **Breaks**, **Team meetings and huddles**, **Coaching and training**, and **System downtime and admin**.
3. Under external shrinkage, enter **Leave and absence** as a percentage of days.
4. Optionally enter **Agents needed on the phones**, for example from the Erlang C calculator. Leave it at 0 to skip the roster count.

## Inputs

- **Paid hours per agent per day**: the paid shift, including breaks. Decimals are fine.
- **Breaks**: paid breaks, and lunch if lunch is paid.
- **Team meetings and huddles**, **Coaching and training**: averaged per day. A 1-hour weekly session on a 5-day week is 12 minutes.
- **System downtime and admin**: logins, outages, emails and other off-phone work.
- **Leave and absence**: share of rostered agent-days lost to planned leave, sick leave and unplanned absence.
- **Agents needed on the phones**: how many agents must be taking calls at once.

## Reading the results

```
Internal shrinkage = (breaks + meetings + training + admin) / paid minutes
Total shrinkage = 1 - (1 - internal) x (1 - absence)
Agents to roster = agents on the phones / (1 - total shrinkage), rounded up
```

- **Total shrinkage**, **Internal shrinkage** and **Absence shrinkage** as percentages.
- **Simple sum**: internal plus absence, shown for comparison. It double counts, because an absent agent takes no breaks or training that day.
- **Agents to roster** and how many of them are cover for shrinkage. If the simple sum would roster more agents, the tool says how many more.
- **Productive hours on a working day** (paid hours less internal shrinkage) and **Productive hours per rostered day** (also averaged over absence).

## Things to know

- If the minutes add up to the full paid day or more, or absence is 100% or more, no roster count is shown.
- No benchmarks are built in. Shrinkage varies widely between centres, so use your own data.
- You can enter the total shrinkage figure in the Erlang C calculator to turn agents on the phones into agents to schedule.

**Related:** [Erlang C Calculator](https://edesy.in/tools/erlang-c-calculator) | [Call Center Cost Calculator](https://edesy.in/tools/call-center-cost-calculator) | [AHT Calculator](https://edesy.in/tools/average-handle-time-calculator)