NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – March 4, 2024 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced Elias Saykali of TD Bank Group as the winner of the 2024 Workforce  Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry.

“We are continually amazed by the quality of nominees for this award, and are so thrilled to recognize Elias as this year’s winner,” said Vicki Herrell, Executive Director of SWPP. “Through his  leadership and vision, he was able to achieve great results for his company and their customers in the workforce management arena.”

The other finalists for the award include Eric Bigelow of Qualfon, Brandon Kelly of Options for All, My Tran of UC Davis Health, and Chris Trujillo of Memorial Hermann. 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 2024 SWPP Annual Conference.

Elias Saykali is Senior Leader, WFM Command & Dispatch Centre for TD Bank Group. This financial services company employs 12,000 agents in 23 locations and remotely on a 24x7 basis. They handle five million monthly inbound and outbound voice, inbound chat, social, email and back office contacts. The technology used includes Cisco UCCE, Genesys Routing, NICE WFM and EEM,
Genesys WFM, and Verint. The workforce management team employs 160 people.

According to the Senior Manager of Command & Dispatch, Elias possesses a rare combination of strategic thinking and hands-on problem-solving, making him an exceptional leader. His ability to envision and implement groundbreaking processes has been a driving force behind his team’s success. He is known for fostering a collaborative and motivated team environment where his leadership has become synonymous with success.

Elias has accomplished many amazing things during his tenure at TD Bank that produced great results for the organization, including:

• Service level targets were met for the first time ever and sustained consistently for an unprecedented 13 months. This moved the organization from 5th to 1st for service level performance based on a benchmarking study of the “Big 5” banks.
• Occupancy levels dropped only 1% while the service level increased 13 points.
• Implementation of Voluntary time off resulted in a full year paid FTE hours reduction of 3% or $15MM (CAD).
• A live dashboard was created that integrates multiple data sources, providing real-time insights in ACD, weather, live insurance claims, logins to the bank website, customer transactions, and real-time incidents. This offers a view of ongoing activities, enabling proactive decision-making and creating a rapid response centre mitigating against unexpected events.
• Service level consistency across all intervals was a focus and reporting capabilities to produced heatmaps highlighting the opportunities overall and for each line of business.

Elias consistently secures the highest employee engagement survey results across the entire WFM department with a 98% employee engagement index score (median score 86%).