Podcast

Discover the power of WFM: Failing to plan is planning to fail

André Leitão, co-founder, CEO and podcast host at weWFM, talks to Chris Dealy about how the WFM industry has evolved and why planning is crucial to achieving success. Learn how to make strong recommendations and help your business make the right decisions on the journey to effective workforce planning.

Listen to the entire episode

Topics covered include the real purpose of WFM, maturity of the WFM industry, tips for a successful planning career, common planning mistakes, and more.

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Digestible bite-size chunks

Sometimes there isn't enough time to listen to an entire podcast from beginning to end. So we have broken it down into digestible bite-size chunks. Now you can listen to what matters to you most and get answers to your most burning questions.

How do you describe workforce management?

You can’t beat the definition of WFM by Brad Cleveland, “WFM is about having the right number of people in the right places at the right times, doing the right things."

Read more about:
What is Workforce Management

How would you rate the evolution of WFM?

WFM has been part of the landscape in call centers almost since they existed. In other sectors and even departments of organizations with contact centers, there are still opportunities to benefit from WFM in…

Find out more in our success story from Tructyre.

What defines a good WFM planner?

Must-have skills for the planner are numeracy, tech-savviness, and being good at collaboration and teamwork. In each case, there’s more to it than at first meets the eye.

Read more in this blog:
What Does a Top Performing Contact Center Workforce Planner Look Like

How important are soft skills in the role of a planner?

Good planners are detail-oriented individuals with an analytical mindset. But they need soft skills too. Planners sometimes have to deliver a mixture of good and bad news.

Read more in our blog:
How to Balance Business Agent and Customer Needs as a Planner

What do you see in the near future for planners?

Despite rumors to the contrary, planners can look forward to more innovation in WFM tools. Get the most from hybrid working, harnessing AI, and saving time.

Download our eBook:
Workforce Management Trends 2023

Best practice for continuous improvement

Controversial statement: Forecasting is important, but by itself, it has no value. The magic happens in scheduling - but it won’t happen unless…

Read more in our blog:
7 Tips for Transitioning from Fixed Shifts to Optimized Schedules

Common WFM myths to debunk

Real-time management is not a reactive discipline. It should be subject to the same discipline and forward-thinking as the rest of the WFM process. And you need to think about different time frame...

Read more in our blog:
How the Best Contact Centers Approach Real-Time Management

WFM career development

There’s no substitute for knowing WFM technically, but don’t neglect the people side. Today is a great time to embark on a career in planning, for lots of reasons, but the required skills are evolving…

Read more in this eBook:
How to be a Call Center Workforce Management Superstar

What one thing you would fix for the WFM industry?

Planning requires technical skills and there’s no shame in being a WFM nerd. But don’t forget that WFM has a major impact on business outcomes. Planners shouldn’t settle for being an afterthought…

Find out:
How You Can Become a WFM Nerd!

About the speakers

Chris Dealy

Host

Chris has specialised in WFM for call centres for 20 years, helping organisations of all sizes to up their game with workforce planning. Be it inaccurate forecasts, failing consistently to hit SLA, firefighting on the day, getting poor schedule adherence or just struggling with time-consuming and error-prone manual processes - Chris has seen it and can help find a solution.

André Leitão

Speaker

With over 10 years working and studying Workforce Management, his career started by studying to become a Software Developer soon falling in love with the Operations world. André is a strategic planning enthusiast across his career managed WFM for different businesses from Telecommunications, Banking, Retail, Gaming, and E-commerce.