Workforce Management Lead

The WFM Team Lead – Scheduling & Intraday leads the end-to-end tactical execution layer of Workforce Management, integrating schedule optimisation, weekly workforce steering, real-time operational control, and incident response under a single, cohesive leadership structure.

This role ensures that approved capacity strategies are translated into structurally sound, compliant schedules (0–30 day horizon), proactively adjusted through weekly tactical steering, and actively protected through disciplined intraday performance management.

Beyond operational oversight, the role operates as the Workforce Command Center lead — providing governance, decision control, and service protection during both stable and volatile operating conditions. It ensures workforce decisions are data-informed, risk-quantified, and aligned to service, productivity, and cost objectives.

As part of the WFM Centre of Excellence (CoE), the role is accountable for embedding standardised workforce governance, decision frameworks, incident protocols, and execution discipline across Scheduling and Intraday functions. It drives the transition from reactive workforce administration to structured, analytics-driven workforce control at scale.

This position closes the loop between Forecast → Capacity → Schedule → Intraday → Continuous Improvement, ensuring execution learnings systematically improve tactical and structural planning quality.

Key Responsibilities

A. Team Leadership & Capability Development

• Lead and develop Scheduling and Intraday WFM Specialists.

• Define clear accountability boundaries across tactical and real-time scopes.

• Elevate analytical maturity beyond administrative execution.

• Coach team members in Scenario modelling, Workforce risk quantification, Structured incident response

• Build succession strength and capability depth.

• Foster a culture of data-driven decision-making and ownership.

 

B. Tactical Planning & Schedule Governance (0–30 Day Horizon)

• Own end-to-end schedule publication governance.

• Ensure schedules reflect approved capacity plans, are interval-accurate and structurally optimised, comply with labour and contractual obligations

• Oversee scenario testing and trade-off validation prior to release.

• Balance service protection with cost efficiency and schedule stability.

• Approve short-term workforce interventions (OT, VTO, temporary uplift).

• Identify systemic schedule weaknesses before operational impact.

 

C. Weekly Workforce Steering

• Lead weekly tactical workforce performance reviews.

• Identify structural and emerging risks across 1–3 week horizon.

• Drive proactive adjustments to reduce intraday volatility.

• Align closely with Forecasting and Capacity Planning on emerging shifts.

• Ensure continuous feedback loop from execution into planning assumptions.

 

D. Intraday Performance & Operational Control

• Oversee real-time service level, occupancy, and productivity monitoring.

• Ensure structured and rapid deviation diagnosis.

• Guide stabilisation interventions to prevent performance oscillation.

• Maintain disciplined escalation protocols with Operations leadership.

• Safeguard service performance during peak volatility.

 

E. Incident Management & Command Center Leadership

• Act as the Workforce Command Center lead during operational disruption.

• Own structured workforce response to demand surges, high absenteeism events, system/tool outages, service-level degradation

• Quantify operational risk exposure and recovery timelines.

• Coordinate cross-functional workforce interventions.

• Ensure incidents are managed through defined protocols, not reactive decisions.

• Lead post-incident reviews and embed systemic improvements.

 

F. WFM CoE Governance & Standardisation

• Enforce WFM execution standards across Scheduling and Intraday.

• Drive adoption of workforce governance frameworks, incident playbooks, tactical review cadences, decision documentation standards

• Reduce dependency on ad hoc, spreadsheet-driven processes.

• Strengthen system-based optimisation and automation.

• Ensure auditability, reproducibility, and structural integrity of workforce decisions.

• Contribute to maturity uplift of the WFM operating model.

 

G. Continuous Improvement & Execution Excellence

• Identify recurring volatility drivers.

• Improve shrinkage modelling and break optimisation logic.

• Increase automation and reporting maturity.

• Reduce emergency interventions and reactive staffing.

• Improve alignment between planning accuracy and operational execution.

You are passionate about leading people, building teams, and making a difference in your work, while also having a strong understanding of operational teams and processes. You have experience working across global teams, across different functions and you understand how to communicate cross-culturally. You get it done. You can identify and resolve issues independently, taking initiative even under unfamiliar or ambiguous circumstances. You’ve worked with BI tools before like Looker etc. and your Excel/Spreadsheets skills are advanced! SQL and Python skills are a plus.

• Experience as a people lead: At least 3 years of experience leading teams and 2 years in a Workforce Management role.

• Independent problem solver: Ability to identify and resolve issues independently, even in unfamiliar or ambiguous situations.

• Self-starter: Proven track record of taking ownership and creatively solving problems, while improving efficiency.

• Strong understanding of WFM: Knowledgeable in forecasting and different forecasting models, capacity planning, scheduling, and real-time management.

• Strong relationships with stakeholders: Ability to connect and maintain relationships with various internal teams.

• Strategic and data-driven: Ability to think strategically, translate strategy into operational plans, and analyse and interpret data.

• Process Expert: Lean Six Sigma experience to green-belt level, understanding how to formally document processes, automate, improve efficiency, and reduce waste and cycle times across WFM practices

For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders  — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.

We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences.

Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.

If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit https://www.wise.jobs/ Wise.Jobs.

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