11 Top Reasons Why You Should Join the WFM Team!
Summary:
Joining the Workforce Management (WFM) team can be one of the most brilliant moves of your career!
Whether you are a fresh graduate, a current contact agent, or any role in between, we want you!
You may ask, WFM? What is that?
You may have heard of HR, Finance, Marketing, IT, Strategy, Operations, Sales departments… but not the WFM department.
WFM is a relatively new functional area in companies. WFM stands for WorkForce Management. Business Process and Service companies such as contact centers, retail trade, hotels and the like, see WFM as a critical department. It is also an essential function in high-growth and high-technology companies such as e-commerce, food delivery, video streaming, and smartphone manufacturers to prepare them for product launches and after sales customer service and support.
What does the WFM team do exactly?
It has various functions that include:
Workload forecasting
Long Term manpower capacity planning
Scheduling of employees
Monitoring work in queue
Performance reporting
All these functions have been aggregated to the department called WFM. Different companies have slightly different ways on how they have these functions configured but the essential setup is the same. WFM allows companies and employees to be at their most productive as they work at the right time, at the right place and with the right skill. (For more details on WFM work, you can check the link at the end of this post).
So here are the top 11 Reasons Why YOU should join the WFM Team!
- You will never get Bored!
There is constant learning on a daily basis due to the multiple workforce solutions that WFM teams have to provide for different departments that include Operations, Recruitment, Training, Sales, Strategy and Finance. And given WFM has multiple functions that include Forecasting, Scheduling, Real Time Management, Capacity Planning and Reporting- you can always find a new area to learn more.
The knowledge and processes that WFM is accumulating to make work productive is applicable in so many other industries outside of contact centers, that you can add this further to your “no boredom” career requirement.
- You would be one of the lucky few!
Most of those already in WFM now just sort of stumbled upon it. WFM as a knowledge domain barely existed in its current form 20 years ago. Even today, it not yet even a subject nor a course in any of the main Universities anywhere in the world. So joining WFM now makes you a pioneer. As WFM expertise and contribution becomes more well known beyond the contact center, you have a say in its further development.
Add here the bragging rights. When “outsiders” ask me what I do in WFM, the answer has to be a long one as WFM does so many different things and they would say, “Wow!”.
- You would find work very very quickly!
You may say “all departments and functions also have many job openings”. But if you count all job openings in WFM relative to its current industry reach – mostly in contact centers at this time – the proportion of available WFM jobs is staggering.
Search Google, Indeed, Jobstreet, LinkedIn, etc using the terms “WFM”, “Resource Planner”, “Scheduler”, “Forecaster”, “Staff Planning” and the number of job openings across countries that would list up would give you goosebumps!
A great thing is that contact centers serve most industries including video gaming, e-commerce, banks, technology, video streaming, social media, electronics, internet service providers, food delivery, retail and many others.
- WFM loves diversity!
Given the breadth of WFM functions, you can easily find a great spot for you! From math lovers to math haters, you can find your niche here! From introverts to extroverts – welcome!
Forecasting – do you have a math related, statistics, or economics background? You are welcome! Given the emerging trend of machine learning in WFM where forecasts can be made more accurate – computer science experts are also so much welcome!
Scheduling – those who like problem solving and analyzing information are welcome! Do you like assisting people with their work schedules and humanizing the process? You are welcome!
Capacity Planning – those who like strategic thinking and interacting with different departments and leadership teams. Do you love spreadsheets or similar tools – welcome to you!
Real Time Management – those who like to annoy people and call out bad employee behaviors.. Haha. Those who likes to analyze real time and provide Operations with the information and guidance to make work move smoothly. Interact with many folks remotely or face to face – this is for you!
- WFM offers one of the highest paying jobs out there!
The pay of WFM team members are above the mean in most companies because of their uniquely developed skills and expertise.
Salary ranges for you (in PHP / P / Philippine pesos):
WFM Real time analyst – P 21k to P 28k
Scheduler – P 25k to P 33k
Forecaster – P 35 to P 70k
WFM supervisor – P 30 k to P 45k
Capacity planner – P 30k to P 70k
WFM Tools Admin – P 40k to P 70k
WFM manager – P 50k to P 120 k
Sr. WFM manager – P 92k to P 160 k
WFM director – P 120k to P 230k
Sr. WFM director – P 230k to P 300k
VP for WFM – P 250k to P 400k
Huge pay ranges depending on your location as well as skill set, potential, work attitude, education and/or experience.
If you also do not plan to become a WFM manager (you do not like managing or leading people so much), you can still easily go from a scheduler individual contributor to capacity planner individual contributor with a PHP 10k to 40k bump in pay!
- Flexibility and options!
Given the specialization as well as the niche skills of WFM team members, some unexpected characteristics have developed within this knowledge domain:
- Very quick to be promoted due to high WFM leadership needs. The average time to fill a vacant WFM manager is a long 3 months as there are too few available staff with the WFM skillset and the want to be a manager
- Supervisors and managers in WFM command a better pay than supervisors of other departments
- WFM front-line staff can more easily move to Operations as a supervisor because of the leadership knowledge gained in WFM work such as service level management and campaign level point of view
- Work time flexibility – Given the nature of most work in WFM where the tasks have to be done and not the timing of it, you can take a very long lunch and still finish a task by end of day
- If you do not plan to become a WFM manager (you do not prefer managing or leading people so much), you can still easily go from a scheduler individual contributor to capacity planner individual contributor with a HUGE bump in pay!
- You become a spreadsheet master and can use this knowledge gained in WFM for many other areas of any industry and function – from Data Science to Predictive Analytics to Reporting to HR to Strategy and Operations
- Best chance to Work from Home!
For those who like to Work from Home, being in WFM offer you one of the best chances. The information and data that WFM folks use are general and not customer specific (ex. no social security or credit cards numbers).
Each company setup and culture is different but you can more easily negotiate WFH as need to. I asked around and some WFM folks are WFH in the province even as their base office (and pay) is in Metro cities!
- WFM is the department that would bridge current work practices to the future world of Industry 4.0 of big data, artificial intelligence and workforce automation.
The work of workforce management is precisely that – make the workforce more productive through predicting work time requirements and how it is used. WFM is a department that is connected to the day to day of Operations; and hence can use its expertise and coverage in this future of Industry 4.0. This includes Big data where it is not just contact center agents movement that is tracked but all employees from all departments including managers; from the time they punch in to the movement of their computer mouse.
In areas where Operations in a service company have to focus on people relationships and customer satisfaction, WFM would handle and analyze these areas of big data and numbers calculations – a domain where it has historically been proficient.
Many parts of organizations are subject to future automation but the nature of WFM work in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world would always require a live and thinking human being to adjust and build more appropriate workforce management solutions.
- Easy to unstuck yourself
A great thing about WFM is you can more easily unstuck yourself in a campaign / account / program / line of business you are handling that is starting to become routine for you. You can be reassigned to a different campaign per request or stay in the same one for a long time. Unlike in Operations where it can be very difficult to switch campaigns as the knowledge, expertise, people and client relationships of a member are very specific to that campaign.
- You can be a teacher or trainer one day and a high paying one at that
WFM’s trajectory in University education would be happening soon as part of the contact center management and service worker productivity courses. Instructors and professors on Workforce Management would one day be a big demand from all college and Universities as education and industry realizes the importance of this knowledge domain’s application beyond the contact center to other service based businesses in a volatile and fast changing world.
- You in WFM contributing to the world of workforce happiness!
Service business workers (versus those in manufacturing) generally need a lot of more improvement in terms of their efficiency, effectiveness and productivity at work. Aside from more training on leadership, time management and technical skills, companies can make more use of WFM processes such as workload forecasting, balanced scheduling, and work queue information management to improve productivity at work especially for service businesses.
Studies show that the most productive workers are the happiest because they get to contribute more to the organization and they get better pay due to higher productivity. They need help though on how to improve productivity.
With WFM at the forefront of analyzing big data and humanizing solutions, you are well positioned for this purpose of happiness at work! WFM has to step in to provide a balance between the efficiency goals of Finance to the humanistic goals of Operations through analysis of both forecasted and real time Big data. I am getting ahead of myself but very excited on the future of Work with Workforce Management at the center. 😍🧠
So.. You have decided to join WFM. What next?
Glad you are here!
WFM Philippines’ vision is to facilitate the increase of WFM Talent pipeline from Universities to contact centers to all other Industries across the Philippines and beyond.
We are here to assist in your transition to WFM!
WFM Philippines is the go to site as we help you move to this department and function wherever you are coming from – fresh graduate, out-of-school youth, contact center agent, Operations TL, Trainer, folks outside of the industry, math experts, computer science experts – we will help you navigate to move to the world of WFM!
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We will update you whenever we have blogs, materials, articles and/or video lectures on WFM geared to those starting in WFM, as well as advanced topics on Workforce Management for those already in.
If you are in WFM and want to be better at your current role or to explore other career paths within WFM, you can click on any of the roles in our home page and see related information.
*** Additional info on WFM work from a contact center blog link here.