Workforce Planning & Insight Manager (6093)

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We're a national law firm with a local reach. Our legal experts are here for you. Whether it's personal or business, we understand that everyone's situation is different. But we're more than just a law firm - we're a team of people working together to help individuals and businesses navigate life's ups and downs. Working here you'll feel a part of our friendly and inclusive environment.

We'll value you for who you are and what you bring. We support each other and push boundaries to achieve incredible things and make a real difference to our clients and communities.

We're always looking to support our colleagues to work in a way that works best for them and everyone else, including our clients, the business and the regulators. Please speak to a member of our Recruitment and Onboarding team for more information.

Your Role and What You'll Be Doing

As a Workforce Planning & Insight Manager, you'll be responsible for leading demand forecasting, workforce planning, scheduling and insight across Contact and the Legal Helpline. The role uses data, analytics and market intelligence to ensure resources are planned and deployed effectively across all communication channels.

This role owns short- and long-term demand forecasting, forecast-vs-actual reporting, workforce insight, and scenario modelling to support confident decision-making and continuous improvement. By turning complex data into clear, actionable insight, the role helps the business understand demand drivers, effort, efficiency, and risk.

You'll ensure that scheduling and resourcing are optimised through the Dynamics Contact Centre platform, embedding expected levels of shrinkage and maintaining accurate, well-governed rosters. You'll also be supporting recruitment planning, business cases and change initiatives by developing robust resource models.

Overall, you'll be ensuring that the business has the right number of skilled people, in the right place, at the right time to meet forecast demand, deliver agreed service levels and quality standards, and protect the firm from reputational and financial risk.

This is a hybrid role, working 1-2 days per week in our Sheffield office location.

As a Workforce Planning & Insight Manager, you'll hold key accountability and responsibility for:

Demand Forecasting

• Producing and maintaining a rolling 12-month demand forecast for each communication channel, using historic trends, known market intelligence and future business plans, supported by the Workforce Management module and Dynamics Contact Centre analytics.
• Producing and maintaining short-term, interval-based demand forecasts for each communication channel, reflecting current trends, market intelligence and corporate plans.
• Developing and leading initiatives to identify the proportion of failure demand versus value-adding demand and quantify the financial impact to drive targeted performance improvements.

Reporting

• Producing and sharing daily interval, weekly and monthly reporting comparing forecast versus actual demand, to continuously improve forecast accuracy and build operational confidence.
• Producing insight-led operational reporting that shows the effort required to service different types of customer interactions and actively support ideas to improve efficiency.
• Designing and maintaining clear workforce dashboards and reporting tools that turn complex data into actionable insight for Customer Service Managers and senior leaders.
• Benchmarking expected levels of internal and external operational shrinkage and ensure these are built into all scheduling and resource planning outputs.
• Producing regular reporting on planned versus actual shrinkage levels, highlighting risks and variances.
• Supporting the Recruitment and Selection process in line with agreed resource budgets and forecasted business demand.

Scheduling

• Conducting scenario modelling to illustrate and assess future resource needs under varying business conditions
• Automating scheduling and shift optimisation through Dynamics Contact Centre tool
• Taking call forecasts and existing resource plans and ensure that resource to requirement is optimised, escalating any significant variation on a weekly basis.
• Producing daily and weekly rosters for all Contact Centre team members, incorporating scheduled times for breaks, lunches and other essential and approved internal shrinkage activities so that these consistently support an objective of having the right number of skilled people in the right place at the right time to service an accurately forecast level of customer demand.
• Communicating all individual and team rosters 4 weeks in advance of the scheduled date
• Leading project initiatives, identifying costs and developing resource models to support the business case.
• Identifying opportunities to enhance and optimise our Dynamics Contact Centre platform capabilities, leveraging advanced features and integrations to drive improved performance.
• Ensuring that all Workforce Planning and Scheduling documentation exists and is up to date.

You'll also act as a Key liaison with HR and People Services in relation to monitor and supporting on People key metrics and change.

About You

As our ideal candidate for this role, you'll have:

• Strong workforce planning capability, including forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling and real-time performance management
• Confidence in analysing MI and performance data to identify trends, risks and improvement opportunities
• The ability to translate insight into clear actions, recommendations and decisions
• Experience managing demand vs capacity and escalating issues early
• Strong attention to detail with a clear focus on quality and accuracy
• The ability to identify operational issues and drive practical, data-led improvements
• Good understanding of governance, controls and documentation
• Strong communication skills, able to explain complex data simply
• The ability to lead, motivate and develop team members
• Strong organisational skills with the ability to prioritise and manage competing demands under pressure

It would be desirable if you also have:

• A professional qualification or accreditation in workforce planning
• Experience implementing or working with WFM, Dynamics Contact Centre or reporting tools
• Experience supporting operational change, optimisation or test-and-learn activity
• Comfortability working with ambiguity and evolving operating models

Our Benefits - What We Can Offer You

• 25 days holidays as standard plus bank holidays - You can 'buy' up to 35hrs of extra holiday too.
• Generous and flexible pension schemes.
• Volunteering days - Two days of volunteering every year for a cause of your choice (fully paid)
• Westfield Health membership, offering refunds on medical services alongside our Aviva Digital GP services.

We also offer a wide range of well-being initiatives to encourage positive mental health both in and out of the workplace and to make sure you're fully supported. This includes our Flexible by Choice programme which gives our colleagues more choice over a hybrid way of working subject to role, team and client requirements.

We have been ranked in the Best Workplaces for Wellbeing for Large Organisations for 2024!

Our responsible business programmes are fundamental to who we are and our purpose. We're committed to being a diverse and inclusive workplace where our colleagues can flourish, and we have established a number of inclusion network groups across our business to support this aim.

Our commitment to Social Responsibility, community investment activity and tackling climate change is a fundamental part of who we are. It's made up of four strands: Our People, Our Community, Our Environment and Our Pro Bono.

Additional Information

As part of the Irwin Mitchell Group's on-boarding process all successful applicants are required to complete the group's employment screening process. This process helps to ensure that all new employees meet our standards in relation to honesty and integrity therefore protecting the interests of the Group, colleagues, clients, partners and other stakeholders.

We carry out pre employment screening to establish your eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record and financial checks with our trusted 3rd parties.

The employment screening process will fully comply with Data Protection and other applicable laws.

Irwin Mitchell LLP is an equal opportunity employer.