Director, Workforce Management & Contact Center Optimization

The Director, Workforce Management & Contact Center Optimization is responsible for building and leading Guild Mortgage Servicing's workforce management capability across its customer-facing contact center operations. Supporting more than 120 employees across four inbound and outbound call centers, this leader will establish the forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, real-time management, analytics, and workforce optimization practices necessary to deliver an efficient and consistent customer experience.

This position provides strategic and operational leadership for workforce management across Servicing, with accountability for establishing a unified workforce planning framework, optimizing staffing investments, and supporting service delivery across multiple departments. The Director will serve as a shared resource across Customer Service, Collections, Single Point of Contact (SPOC), and Bankruptcy operations, ensuring each area receives appropriate support, visibility, and consideration in workforce planning and decision-making.

The Director will influence resource allocation, operational priorities, and technology decisions that significantly impact customer experience, employee productivity, and operating costs. While operational leaders retain accountability for their respective teams, this position will provide centralized workforce expertise, consistent methodologies, and objective, data-driven recommendations across Servicing.

This is a highly visible, hands-on leadership role. Initially established as a standalone leadership position, the Director will be expected to build a mature Workforce Management function while working effectively within Guild's current technology environment. The successful candidate will be equally comfortable developing long-term workforce strategy, influencing senior leaders, analyzing call and staffing data, troubleshooting operational issues, and personally building solutions when tools or resources are limited.

The Director will also play a critical role in Guild's Servicing Transformation, representing contact center workforce management and operational needs as Guild designs and implements its future-state servicing and customer engagement capabilities.

1. Workforce Management Strategy & Capability Building

• • Lead the development and execution of Servicing's workforce management strategy, building the function, operating model, standards, processes, and governance from the ground up.
  • Establish consistent and equitable WFM practices across Customer Service, Collections, SPOC, and Bankruptcy, recognizing the unique operational requirements, regulatory considerations, and service expectations of each function.
  • Develop short-, medium-, and long-range workforce forecasts using historical volumes, contact patterns, handle times, seasonality, portfolio changes, business events, and operational trends.
  • Own the workforce capacity planning framework, translating demand forecasts into staffing, hiring, scheduling, and resource allocation recommendations that balance service expectations, operational efficiency, and financial performance.
  • Develop staffing models that incorporate shrinkage, attrition, training, PTO, absenteeism, skill requirements, and other capacity considerations.
  • Establish regular workforce planning and performance routines with contact center leadership, Finance, Recruiting, Training, HR, and other key stakeholders to ensure transparency, alignment, and shared accountability.
  • Develop scenario and sensitivity models to support peak periods, unexpected volume events, operational disruptions, and changing business conditions.
  • Provide strategic recommendations to executive leadership regarding staffing investments, capacity requirements, workforce priorities, and operational risks across all supported contact centers.

• • Develop scheduling strategies that align staffing to customer demand while balancingb service levels, productivity, employee experience, and business requirements.
  •  Establish effective intraday and real-time management practices, including monitoring volume, staffing, adherence, service levels, abandonment, occupancy, and other key indicators.
  • Identify emerging capacity risks and work with operational leaders to take timely corrective action.
  • Develop consistent processes for overtime, voluntary time off, schedule adjustments, meetings, training, coaching, and other off-phone activities.
  • Evaluate opportunities for skill-based routing, cross-training, schedule flexibility, and resource sharing across contact center functions while respecting operational specialization, regulatory requirements, and management priorities.

• •  Establish meaningful WFM KPIs, reporting, dashboards, and performance routines, including forecast accuracy, schedule adherence, occupancy, shrinkage, utilization, service level, speed to answer, abandonment, productivity, and staffing variance.
  • Translate complex workforce and contact center data into clear recommendations for senior leadership.
  • Partner with Operations leaders to identify the root causes of performance gaps and develop sustainable solutions.
  • Identify and quantify opportunities to improve cost efficiency, workforce utilization, staffing productivity, customer experience, and overall cost to service.
  • Partner with Finance and Operations leadership to develop annual staffing plans, labor expense forecasts, and workforce investment recommendations.
  • Assess the financial and operational impacts of workforce decisions, technology investments, and process improvements, including anticipated benefits and return on investment.
  • Provide consistent reporting and actionable insights across supported contact centers, enabling leadership to evaluate performance, identify opportunities, and make informed decisions while accounting for differences in operational objectives.
  • Develop reporting and analysis using available tools while helping define requirements for improved future-state capabilities.

• • Serve as a subject matter expert for workforce management, telephony, routing, dialer, and related contact center capabilities.
  • Partner closely with Technology, Operations, vendors, and other stakeholders to optimize existing systems and processes.
  • Identify opportunities to improve automation, reporting, forecasting, scheduling, routing, outbound campaign management, and real-time visibility.
  • Support evaluation and implementation of future WFM and contact center technology.
  • Participate in vendor discussions, requirements definition, testing, implementation, and ongoing optimization.
  • Maintain a practical, solution-oriented approach and be willing to work directly with data, systems, reporting, and configuration when necessary.

• •  Serve as the Workforce Management and contact center operations SME for Guild's Servicing Transformation and other strategic initiatives, representing the requirements and priorities of all supported contact center functions.
  • Lead the evaluation of complex workforce and contact center challenges spanning multiple business functions, developing scalable solutions where established processes or technology capabilities may not exist.
  • Define future-state business requirements for workforce management, telephony, routing, dialer, reporting, analytics, scheduling, real-time management, and workforce optimization.
  • Influence future-state technology and operating model decisions to ensure solutions support workforce efficiency, scalability, regulatory considerations, and customer experience across inbound and outbound operations.
  • Evaluate the workforce impact of digital self-service, automation, AI, changing contact channels, and evolving customer behaviors.
  • Help design a scalable future-state operating model that connects customer demand, workforce planning, technology, and service delivery.
  • Participate in solution design, vendor evaluation, requirements development, testing, operational readiness, implementation, and stabilization activities.

• • Serve as Guild Servicing's senior subject matter expert and trusted advisor for Workforce Management.
  • Establish trusted, collaborative partnerships with the leadership teams of Customer Service, Collections, SPOC, and Bankruptcy, ensuring each operation has an equal voice in workforce planning, priorities, and future-state decisions.
  • Build strong relationships across Servicing Operations, Finance, HR, Recruiting, Training, Technology, Analytics, Compliance, and other business partners.
  • Demonstrate strong emotional intelligence, sound judgment, and the ability to navigate differing leadership styles, competing priorities, and complex organizational dynamics while maintaining productive relationships.
  • Confidently challenge assumptions and provide fact-based recommendations while maintaining strong working relationships.
  • Bring structure and clarity to complex situations involving multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, and differing perspectives.
  • Facilitate alignment and resolution of competing workforce priorities through transparent communication, objective analysis, and collaborative decision-making, escalating material trade-offs when appropriate.
  •  Influence leaders at multiple levels without relying solely on positional authority.
  • Establish accountability for workforce management standards and practices while respecting the operational ownership and decision-making responsibilities of individual contact center leaders.
  • Build and lead the Workforce Management function through hands-on execution, cross functional coordination, and the development of scalable processes, tools, and operating practices. Evaluate future organizational and staffing needs as the function matures, supported by demonstrated business requirements and measurable value.

• Bachelors degree in business, analytics, operations management, finance, mathematics, statistics, or a related field preferred. A combination of education and experience may be considered in lieu of the Bachelor’s degree.
• Minimum five years demonstrated experience leading workforce management for a complex, multi-team or multi-site contact center environment.
• Deep expertise in forecasting, capacity planning, staffing models, scheduling, real-time/intraday management, shrinkage, adherence, occupancy, service levels, and workforce analytics.
• Strong understanding of both inbound and outbound contact center operations, including dialer strategy and campaign management.
• Demonstrated ability to build or materially mature a Workforce Management function, rather than solely operate within an established model.
• Experience with WFM, ACD, telephony, dialer, and contact center technologies; experience with platforms such as NICE, Verint, Genesys, Cisco/Webex, Aspect, or comparable solutions preferred.
• Strong analytical capabilities with advanced Excel skills and experience working directly with large operational datasets. SQL, Power BI, or similar data and visualization experience strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to translate operational data into executive-level insights and actionable recommendations.
• Experience defining business and technology requirements and participating in major contact center technology implementations or transformations.
• Exceptional relationship-building, communication, negotiation, and stakeholder-management skills, with demonstrated success influencing senior leaders across multiple operational functions.
• Ability to build consensus, constructively challenge established practices, and maintain credibility and neutrality when balancing competing business needs.
• Mortgage servicing, financial services, banking, or another highly regulated consumer contact center environment.
• Experience supporting both customer service and collections operations.
• Experience with outbound contact strategies and regulatory requirements affecting outbound communications.
• Experience building a WFM capability in an organization with limited or evolving technology.
• Experience selecting, implementing, or significantly enhancing enterprise WFM and contact center technology.
• Experience supporting a major platform conversion or operational transformation.
• Experience with digital self-service, automation, AI-enabled contact center capabilities, or workforce modeling associated with digital channel adoption.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills required.
• Highly organized and detail-oriented; ability to work in a fast-paced, metrics-driven environment required.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, Word, Excel, Wiki, collaborative cloud-based programs, and third-party software applications required.
• Commitment to company values.
  • Customer Service - Proactive attention to each person
  • Integrity - Do and say what's right
  • Respect - Treat others with dignity
  • Collaboration - Listen and work together
  • Learning - Seek knowledge and strive for improvement
  • Excellence – Deliver the unexpected

• Work is primarily sedentary; mobility in an office setting.
• Ability to operate standard office equipment and keyboards.
• Regularly required to accurately perceive, distinguish and interpret information received visually and through audio; e.g., words, numbers and other data broadcasted aloud/viewed on a screen, as well as print and other media.
• Office environment – moderate noise, no substantial exposure to adverse environmental conditions.
• Travel: 5-10%
• This role requires effective adaptation to workplace stressors, including customer service complaints, security responsibilities, and competing priorities.
• Work is primarily performed during the business week, Monday - Friday

Guild offers a pleasant work environment, competitive compensation and excellent benefits package; including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, AD&D, LTD and 401(k) with employer match.

Guild Mortgage Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

REQ#: DIREC018597

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