Manager, Workforce Management and Forecasting

Position Purpose:
The Manager of Workforce and Forecasting is a champion for improving associate work-life balance, while also supporting customer experience. Aside from strong workforce and forecasting experience, this role will require the development of strong relationships and effective communication skills between technically and non-technically oriented teams across the organization and external third-party groups. This role also requires the ability to quickly understand the different variables impacting the forecasts of different lines of business and is able to parse out the relevant factors and control them in future forecasts.
Major Tasks, Responsibilities and Key Accountabilities

• Workforce management (future dated):
  • Supporting 3 Workforce specialists who are scheduling 500 internal agents, pushing initiatives to increase agent work/life balance, e.g. flexible work options, reducing evening/weekend shift where possible
  • Utilizing weekly/daily/interval forecasts to ensure agent schedules are optimized for peak contact volume days and times, review KPIs by for previous days to look for opportunities to improve
  • Reviewing associate productivity and looking for ways to improve the labour model and exploring IT solutions, i.e. desktop analytics to improve capturing all work flows and forecasting
  • Lead team to select the WFM application that will allow for future associate self-management with scheduling, i.e. managing their own time off requests with auto-approval where FTE requirements are met
• Real Time Monitoring (same day workforce management):
  • Supporting a team of 5.5 Real Time Analysts (RTA)
  • Ensuring timely and relevant queue summary reports are distributed to leadership teams with current performance and opportunities.
  • Work with leadership teams to identify performance/compliance opportunities with specific agents.
  • Supporting the team in interpreting interval reporting and soliciting OT or VTO where appropriate, ensuring continuous feedback loop between WF and RTA teams to improve future scheduling
• Forecasting:
  • Partnering with finance to create/maintain multi channel (calls/webmessaging/text messaging) FTE forecasts for 5 different lines of business and 800 agents (500 internal and 300 3rd party), accounting for both internal variables such as attrition, handle time/productivity, interval demand, etc…, and external variables and contact drivers such as sales and order volumes.
  • Use forecast modeling in order to assist in setting realistic sales targets based on penetration rates and other relevant variables
  • Recommend workforce improvements and work towards a more flexible workforce model, e.g. cross-training across depts, exploring various PT/temp models, 32 hour work weeks, etc…
  • Ensure FTE forecast aligns with budget/plan and present updates/revisions to SLT
  • Work with Training/HR teams to help schedule training classes in order to meet customer demands, incorporating attrition into forecasting model.

Nature and Scope

• Typically reports to Senior Manager of Shared Services

Number of direct reports – 9 and supported by one financial analyst
Environmental Job Requirements

• Remote (WFH) with potentially some expectation of commuting to office for future meetings

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Competencies

• Statistical and forecasting skills, data modeling and predictive analytics experience and knowledge required
• Able to understand complex relationship in multivariate forecasts and be able to utilize available data in order to control variables and make adjustments to forecasts based on new information and/or trending
• Contact centre and retail experience is a definite asset, experience with interval based forecasting in a contact centre environment
• Experience with WFM applications and various features that can be used to improve the associate experience and enhance workforce management both same and future dated

• Solid track record of leadership and management skills.
• High degree of problem solving and decision making ability, directing (and following up) on the work of others.
• Proven ability to manage positive business partnerships and perform in complex cross-functional environment.
• Establishes and maintains two-way dialog with others on work and results.
• Excellent communication skills and comfortable presenting to SLT

Education Required

Years of Relevant Work Experience

• 2 years experience in workforce management and/or forecasting

Preferred Qualifications / Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Internal Candidates: Must fulfill minimum time-in-position (1 year) and performance management code requirements (M+ Meets Expectations)

3-5 years of analytical experience (ideally in a retail environment) with emphasis on workforce management and forecasting