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SWPP Announces Rita Davis of Rogers
Communications as the 2017 WFM
Professional of the Year
“We are continually amazed by the quality of nominees for this award, and are so thrilled to recognize Rita as this year’s winner,” said Vicki Herrell, Executive Director of SWPP. “Through her leadership and vision, she was able to achieve great results for her company and their customers in the workforce management arena.”
The other finalists for this prestigious award included Carson Fulde of TELUS, Jessica Harris of Cardinal Health, Joe Muehlhauser of Sage, and Cynthia Stevenson of Citibank.
Rita Davis is the National Workforce Manager for Rogers Communications, which is the largest telecommunications company in Canada with 10,000 agents across 25+ sites. She has been in WFM for five years after starting out as a frontline agent. There are 52 members on the WFM team, and Rita moved through various roles showcasing her passion for innovation before becoming a manager.
Rita has used her point of view and experience as a frontline agent to lead from the front and connect with employees when rolling out innovative tools. Her knowledge of the business and frontline experience has helped to roll out technology that has a positive impact on frontline employee satisfaction and WFM.
Rita is an innovative thinker and saw the value of rolling out a social media application to interact with agents that has reduced daily email interactions with the WFM team by 40%. Now agents can help each other through this platform. She also contributed to the development and deployment of a workforce mobile app and web portal linking to existing WFM technologies that gave frontline staff the flexibility to view schedules and apply for voluntary time off (VTO) or voluntary overtime (VOT) from anywhere. With 80% of the employees signing up and using the app, the project resulted in a savings of $5 million per year with a total cost of less than $50,000.
Pictured right to left: Award finalists Cynthia Stevenson of Citibank, Joe Muehlhauser of Sage, Jessica Harris of Cardinal Health, and WFM Professional of the Year Rita Davis of Rogers Communications. Not pictured: Carson Fulde of TELUS
In another great example of innovation, Rita deployed the Intradiem software system and was a key player in evolving the system from a training delivery tool to a workforce management real-time optimization tool. Rogers saw a 25% increase in VTO hours during downtime that can be directly attributed to this implementation. The roll out of real-time break optimization rules in the software led to an 82% reduction in break adjustments.
Finally, as the lead in upgrading and optimizing Aspect workforce management software, Rita deployed innovative features such as using the sequential shift bid feature to offer extensions to part-time schedules reducing the need for costly overtime hours. She was also a key player in optimizing shift trade capabilities in Aspect, which reduced manual email forms sent to the workforce management team by 20%.
Overall, the results from Rita’s projects have shown a 10% increase in adherence and compliance to schedules while also achieving a 25% decrease in operating costs. Employee satisfaction is at an all-time high with a 30% increase year over year.
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 was announced at the 2017 SWPP Annual Conference.