Workforce Planning Specialist - Service Center

The Workforce Planning Specialist is responsible for forecasting, scheduling, and optimizing staffing levels to ensure efficient service center operations ongoing and during peak seasons. This role collaborates with leadership, operations, and WFM teams to balance service levels, efficiency, and employee experience while proactively addressing business needs.

The planner is accountable for multiple clients and client skills in a complex contact center environment.  The planner is tasked with monitoring, reporting, and analyzing staffing needs based on forecasted patterns to ensure adequate staff is trained and prepared to meet client SLA expectations. The planner role uses a variety of service center workforce management software’s and methodologies including NICE, Genesys, MCCH, Erlang and Microsoft Excel. This position rarely requires traveling. 

This role can be held remotely from any location in the United States.

Note: Employment-based non-immigrant visa sponsorship and/or assistance is not offered for this specific job opportunity.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop short-term and long-term staffing needs based on inbound call, outbound call, email and webchat forecasts and service level targets for a wide range of clients from small to large with varying complexities. 
• Analyze historical data, trends, and business drivers to collaborate with forecasters and ensure optimal resource planning. 
• Collaborate with business leaders to assess upcoming demand shifts, including annual enrollment (AE) periods, new client implementations, and seasonal trends.
• Adjust workforce allocation in response to changes in demand, unexpected absences, or surges in call volume.
• Work closely with supervisors and operations teams to ensure adherence to schedules and proactively mitigate coverage gaps.
• Track and report key performance indicators (KPIs) such as occupancy, adherence, service level, and average speed of answer (ASA).
• Identify trends and provide data-driven recommendations to optimize workforce efficiency. 
• Ensure compliance with contractual obligations related to staffing and service levels.
• Act as a liaison between WFM, operations, and leadership to align on workforce strategies. 
• Provide insights and recommendations to senior leadership regarding capacity planning and operational efficiencies. 
• Support escalations by analyzing root causes and proposing action plans for workforce challenges.
• Collaborative with forecasting, scheduling and Real Time Analyst team to identify staffing adjustments based on analysis of overage/ underage of forecasts. 
• Maintain MCCH ticketing system for all planning related needs. 
• Preliminary review of new client data – headcount requirements, pod assignment, and time of year integration analysis.
• Annual Enrollment / large project planning – review prior years’ successes and areas for improvement, assess changes for staffing needs by analyzing options to optimize staffing levels per pod and region.  
• Host ongoing pod calls to promote productive communication between WFM and Operations teams.
• Other related duties as assigned.

Qualifications 

• 2+ years of experience working in a call center.
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Excel including but not limited to working with external data, pivot tables, understanding, using and building complex formulas to perform statistical analysis and Microsoft Word required.
• Experience with the NICE and Genesys WFM platform preferred.
• Ability to gather and analyze statistical data and generate reports.
• Detail oriented with good organization and time management skills.
• Associate or bachelor’s degree a plus.
• Ability to communicate policies and procedures and ensure compliance.
• Strong interpersonal skills, both written and verbal. 
• Strong attention to detail and excellent organizational/time management skills to meet deadlines.
• Ability to work a flexible work schedule within core business hours, be punctual to work, and proactively volunteer for additional hours as business needs dictate.
• Ability to successfully work in a virtual team environment.
• Experience supporting high-volume service centers, especially in benefits administration or healthcare a plus. 
• Familiarity with fluctuating peaks IE annual enrollment (AE) workforce planning and scheduling strategies. 
• Knowledge of service level agreements (SLAs) and contact center metrics.
• Ability to build and maintain relationships