Winter 2012
 

Robert Dobson Named
2012 Workforce Management
Professional of the Year

From left to right: Chad Andree of CenterPoint Energy, Workforce Management Professional of the Year Robert Dobson of InterContinental Hotels Group, Michael Ellis of Suddenlink Communications, and Cynthia Stevenson of Citi. Not picture: Kristin Goldman of Ameriprise Financial.

The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced Robert Dobson of InterContinental Hotels Group as the winner of the 2012 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry.
The other finalists for the 2012 award include Chad Andree of CenterPoint Energy, Michael Ellis of Suddenlink Communications, Kristin Goldman of Ameriprise Financial, and Cynthia Stevenson of Citi.

“We continue to be amazed by the quality of nominees for this award,” said Vicki Herrell, Executive Director of SWPP. “We are so thrilled to recognize Robert as this year’s winner. He possesses all of those qualities unique to the workforce management professional, and is a valuable asset to both his company and the industry as a whole. He has achieved great results for both his company and their customers.”

Bob Dobson has been working for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) for 17 years. He began his career as a Reservations Sales Agent in Salt Lake City, and went on to serve as a Priority Club Rewards and Guest Relations agent before moving to the Finance Department in 1997. Bob joined the Resource Planning Department as the Planning Manager in 2003, and was promoted to Director of Workforce Management in 2008. Bob manages a team of more than 70 workforce management personnel across 12 global call centers with more than 2,300 agents and 27 million annual contacts, delivering almost $2B in annual revenue. The centers process phone, white mail, email, and chat interactions with the help of Avaya ACD with Best Service Routing and Genesys skill-based routing and workforce management.

Bob has the ability to think strategically and understand revenue, costs, and service level impacts on workforce management decisions. In addition, Bob learns quickly, continuously looks for improvements, challenges the status quo, understands root cause analysis, and how workforce management integrates with Operations teams and impacts employee engagement. This knowledge also allows him to provide actionable insights to the Operation teams to continue to improve the Guest Experience. Through Bob’s leadership the workforce management team’s Employee Engagement index has increased from 35% in 2009 to 65% by the end of 2011. In 2011 Bob led the workforce management team and IHG to accomplish many different projects and initiatives while reducing payroll costs by $3 million and reducing cost per call from $1.42 in 2009 to $1.27 in 2011. Over the last three years, the team has faced budgetary constraints reducing overall agent variable payroll spend from $25 million in 2009 to $24 million in 2010, and to $21 million in 2011. Throughout these three years, Bob has made strategic decisions around when and where to hire agents across the enterprise to balance revenue, costs, and service levels. All of this was done while changing the workforce management system to the current Genesys platform.

In 2011, Bob led a “Call Center Management 101 – Back to the Basics” workforce management initiative, providing clear financial accountability across the IHG call center organization. Specifically, he led an Accountable Shrink initiative enabling operational and workforce management teams to work better together and accomplish 25 different project or training initiatives. These included an Accountable Shrink scorecard which provides the operational teams the prior week’s performance broken down by code, and the next four weeks forecast. The forecast includes Agent Development hours and other Accountable Shrink hours forecasted and actually booked in to the workforce management system. The scorecard provides critical insight for the Operations managers to know how their teams are working toward scheduling their Accountable Shrink activities two to four weeks prior to the week starting. The Agent Development forecast is critical to IHG’s success ensuring that each scheduled agent receives 60 minutes of Agent Development each week. This enables the workforce management team to prepare and understand the staffing levels for the coming four weeks and they are able to book additional time off for the agents when staffing levels allow. The process also provides clear cancellation guidelines to both the workforce management and Operational teams based on business needs.

In addition, Bob does a great job helping the WFM teams understand their importance to IHG’s organization and how to collaborate with each of the Operational teams, ensuring maximum efficiency and professionalism. Bob’s leadership has earned him and his team a reputation for integrity and accuracy, both within IHG, and among his professional peers.

Bob is always looking for ways to bring continuous improvement to IHG’s Workforce Management team. He is rarely satisfied with the status quo, and is known to challenge assumptions and demand real results. Bob’s creative thinking continues to help IHG achieve and complete many projects and initiatives each year while maintaining cost objectives. Bob’s partners throughout IHG know to turn to Bob to help them find the best solution to difficult problems by utilizing all available resources effectively and efficiently across all IHG business units.

The SWPP Board of Advisors selected the five finalists from nominations submitted on the SWPP website. The Workforce Management Professional of the Year award is chosen from the five finalists by the Board of Advisors and announced at the SWPP Annual Conference.

 
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