Description
This award recognises a high-performing Resource Planning Team that plays a critical role in delivering operational excellence, customer outcomes and organisational performance through effective forecasting, planning and resource management.
This category is open to teams responsible for workforce planning, forecasting, scheduling, real-time management and capacity planning across one or more customer channels, including voice, email, digital, social media, correspondence, payments and billing.
The team should demonstrate a clear approach to working with operational and support functions to forecast demand, optimise resources, provide actionable insight and ensure the organisation achieves service levels, customer expectations and business objectives.
The nominated team should describe the most significant contribution they have made during the previous 12 months and demonstrate the difference it has made through planning excellence, operational support and organisational impact.
The winning team will have demonstrated outstanding achievement against some, or all, of the following criteria:
Achievement & Contribution
• Delivers accurate forecasting, effective planning and resource optimisation across the organisation.
• Demonstrates a clear contribution to achieving operational objectives, service levels and business performance.
• Provides valuable insight and recommendations that support strategic and operational decision-making.
• Challenges existing processes and ways of working to improve efficiency, performance and value.
• Successfully supports a multi-channel customer operation through effective planning and resource management.
Impact
• Delivers measurable improvements in service levels, customer experience, operational performance or productivity.
• Demonstrates positive impact through improved forecasting accuracy, resource utilisation, efficiency or business outcomes.
• Provides evidence of sustained results and organisational value.
• Supports the organisation in balancing customer demand, colleague experience and operational performance.
• Clearly demonstrates how planning activities have contributed to achieving key business objectives.
Collaboration & Teamwork
• Works effectively with operational, support and leadership teams across the organisation.
• Builds strong partnerships to understand business needs and deliver practical solutions.
• Shares knowledge, expertise and best practice to support organisational success.
• Creates a positive, engaged and high-performing team culture.
• Demonstrates a genuine commitment to supporting colleagues and enabling frontline success.
Innovation & Differentiation
• Introduces new ideas, approaches, technologies or methodologies that improve planning effectiveness.
• Uses data, insight and analytics to identify opportunities and drive continuous improvement.
• Adopts best practices and learns from other organisations or sectors.
• Goes beyond expected standards to deliver meaningful results.
• Acts as a role model for professionalism, collaboration and operational excellence.
The strongest entries will demonstrate not only technical planning expertise, but also measurable impact, strong business partnership and a clear contribution to customer, colleague and organisational success.
