Head of Workforce Management

foodpanda is part of the Delivery Hero Group, the world's pioneering local delivery platform, our mission is to deliver an amazing experience—fast, easy, and to your door. We operate in over 70+ countries worldwide. Headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Delivery Hero has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 2017 and is part of the MDAX stock market index.

The Head of Workforce Management leads Pandora's global WFM engine across EU, APAC, and Turkey, This role owns the full planning ecosystem for Customer Service, Partner Service, Rider Service, and Vendor Operations, ensuring stability, efficiency, and cost control while supporting the operational transformation. You will architect the strategy, operating model, and execution framework for forecasting, scheduling, capacity planning, real-time management, and performance analytics. Your work directly shapes Service Levels (SL), cost-per-contact, cost-to-onboard, BPO ramp-up/down, and the long-term sustainability of Pandora's contact operations.

Key Responsibilities: 

1. Global Strategy & Operating Model

• Lead the end-to-end transformation of WFM across EU, APAC, and Turkey into a single standardized operating model.
• Define planning principles, frameworks, and governance for all channels (chat, call, non-live) and all personas (CS, PS, RS, Vendor Ops).
• Build a multi-country forecast and capacity model that adapts to seasonality, promotions, language-mix shifts, and operational changes.
• Partner with Service Directors to steer long-range workforce strategy, cost targets, and headcount optimization.

2. Forecasting & Capacity Planning

• Own volume forecasting across all regions using historical, seasonality, language distribution, promotional impact, and business drivers.
• Build advanced capacity models using Erlang, Monte Carlo simulations, concurrency modelling, and scenario stress-testing.
• Define global planning parameters (shrinkage, productivity, occupancy, attrition, AHT targets).
• Drive country-level SLA protection through proactive planning, early risk identification, and mitigation scenarios.

3. BPO Management & Cost Optimization

• Oversee partner performance across BPO Partner in EU/APAC/Turkey.
• Lead the modelling for BPO cost-per-contact, cost-to-onboard, forecasted HC requirements, ramp plans.
• Ensure performance stability through buffer strategies, hiring curves, training throughput, shrinkage control, and productivity targets.
• Establish a unified approach to forecasting, scheduling, and reporting across all BPO sites.

4. Language-Mix, Routing & Experience

• Design and drive the overall language-mix and skill-mix strategy across all supported markets, ensuring the right balance between cost efficiency, operational flexibility, and customer experience.
• Oversee routing logic, overflow rules, and workforce allocation frameworks to ensure seamless distribution of contacts across skills, queues, and locations.
• Leverage analytics to optimise cross-language handling, concurrency levels, response times, and service-level outcomes, enabling scalable and resilient multi-country operations.

5. Vendor Operations Workforce Planning

• Build workforce planning frameworks for operational workflows across multiple functions, ensuring every task type has clear capacity assumptions, quality checkpoints, and throughput expectations.
• Develop weekly and monthly capacity models that incorporate handling times, training output, shrinkage, backlog behaviour, and ramp-up/ramp-down scenarios to maintain stability and predictability.
• Partner closely with Operations leadership to drive efficient resource allocation, protect turnaround times, and ensure all service-level commitments are consistently met.

6. Real-Time Management (RTM)

• Build a global RTM function capable of managing multi-country queues, shift adherence, intraday rebalancing, and SLA assurance.
• Define escalation rules, contingency actions, and playbooks for spikes, outages, and operational risks.

7. Reporting, Analytics & Performance Insight

• Lead analytics for volume, AHT, shrinkage, occupancy, concurrency, workforce distribution, and SLA.
• Deliver executive-level dashboards and insights for COO, CFO, SD Directors, and country heads.
• Standardize reporting across regions, ensuring accuracy, transparency, and consistency.

8. Leadership & Organizational Development

• Build and mentor a distributed WFM team across multiple countries and time zones.
• Champion a culture of ownership, transparency, and simplicity — ensuring everyone understands the "why" behind plans.
• Enable progression, skills development, and high performance across WFM specialists, analysts, and RTM leads

• 8–12+ years in Workforce Management, with at least 5 years leading WFM across multiple regions or large-scale operations.
• Strong experience in forecasting, scheduling, capacity planning, and real-time operations.
• Strong analytical capability with proficiency in advanced modelling (Erlang, Monte Carlo, concurrency models).
• Experience in multi-language, multi-country customer operations (Nordics/Central Europe/APAC preferred).
• Familiarity with contact center systems (CRM, Telephony, WFM suites), BI tools, and SQL/Sheets/Excel modelling.
• Ability to navigate complex stakeholder environments and influence COO/CFO-level decision-making.
• Comfortable leading transformational change across regions, teams, and operating models.