Lead, Workforce Strategy, Forecasting & Scheduling

Mashreq Careers; Pakistan; On-site; PKR 1,800,000 - 3,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Mashreq Careers in Pakistan seeks an experienced Workforce Planning lead to design and own demand forecasts, scheduling, and real-time management for its contact center. You will translate business plans into capacity needs and drive data‑driven decisions.

You will build forecasting models, lead annual planning, monitor variance, and provide insights to leadership while ensuring service targets and cost efficiency across voice, email, chat and social channels.

Responsibilities

• Develop and own long-term, medium-term and short-term demand forecasts across voice, email, chat, social media, complaints and emerging digital channels.
• Translate business strategy, growth projections, marketing campaigns, product launches and customer behavior trends into workforce demand plans.
• Design and maintain forecasting methodologies, assumptions and scenario models to improve forecast accuracy.
• Lead annual workforce planning cycles, budgeting exercises and headcount justification processes.
• Conduct capacity gap analysis and recommend hiring, outsourcing or multi-skilling interventions.
• Develop contingency staffing models for seasonal peaks, regulatory events, service disruptions and unexpected volume surges.
• Monitor forecast variance and perform root-cause analysis to continuously improve planning accuracy.
• Provide strategic workforce insights to Contact Center leadership for decision-making and resource allocation.
• Design workforce schedules that balance customer service targets, employee wellbeing and operational efficiency.
• Optimize shift structures, break plans, leave allocation, training schedules and offline activities.
• Develop and manage shrinkage models covering annual leave, absenteeism, training, meetings, coaching and system downtime.
• Ensure optimal staffing distribution across all service intervals and communication channels.
• Lead intraday workforce management activities to ensure achievement of service level, response time and customer experience targets.
• Monitor real-time demand, staffing levels, queue performance, adherence, backlog and operational risks.
• Direct immediate corrective actions including resource reallocation, skill reassignment, overtime activation and queue management.
• Establish workforce escalation protocols for service restoration during operational disruptions.
• Manage workforce response during system outages, high-volume incidents and business continuity events.
• Partner with operations teams to minimize service degradation and customer impact.
• Drive adherence management and intraday performance governance across all teams.
• Ensure regulatory and service commitments are consistently achieved.
• Develop executive-level workforce dashboards, scorecards and performance reporting frameworks.
• Analyze key workforce metrics including service level, occupancy, shrinkage, adherence, productivity, forecast accuracy and capacity utilization.
• Identify performance trends, risks, opportunities and improvement initiatives through advanced analytics.
• Produce strategic workforce insights and recommendations for senior management.
• Lead monthly, quarterly and annual workforce performance reviews.
• Ensure data integrity, reporting consistency and governance standards are maintained.
• Automate reporting processes to improve speed, accuracy and decision-making capability.
• Support data-driven decision making across Contact Center and CX leadership.
• Establish workforce governance frameworks, policies, procedures and planning standards.
• Ensure workforce management practices align with bank policies, regulatory requirements and operational control frameworks.
• Develop workforce-related risk assessments and mitigation plans.
• Design and maintain Business Continuity workforce plans across Karachi, Lahore and alternate recovery sites.
• Lead workforce readiness planning for crisis management and disaster recovery scenarios.
• Conduct workforce stress testing and capacity resilience assessments.
• Monitor workforce-related operational risks and proactively escalate emerging issues.
• Maintain workforce management documentation, SOPs and audit readiness.
• Optimize staffing costs while maintaining agreed service and customer experience standards.
• Develop workforce business cases, staffing models and financial impact assessments.
• Monitor productivity, staffing efficiency, utilization and cost-per-contact metrics.
• Identify opportunities for cost avoidance through forecasting accuracy, automation and workforce optimization.
• Assess outsourcing versus insourcing opportunities and support workforce-related investment decisions.
• Drive improvement initiatives to reduce overtime, idle time and unproductive activities.

Job description

Mashreq Careers in Pakistan seeks an experienced Workforce Planning lead to design and own demand forecasts, scheduling, and real-time management for its contact center. You will translate business plans into capacity needs and drive data‑driven decisions.

You will build forecasting models, lead annual planning, monitor variance, and provide insights to leadership while ensuring service targets and cost efficiency across voice, email, chat and social channels.