NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – April 28, 2026 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced Michael Litnak of Barclays Bank as the winner of the 2026 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 Michael 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 included Luke Brown of Pinnacle Financial Partners, Scott Lawrence of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, Jodi Maffitt of Enova International, and Brandi Tifft of AAA-The Auto Group. Michael Litnak is the Head of Workforce Management for Barclays US Consumer Bank, where he leads a large, multi-site workforce management organization supporting thousands of agents across...
Read MoreAssembled’s new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server lets Workforce Management and support leaders diagnose, plan, and act on workforce data from Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible AI assistant. [San Francisco, CA] — Assembled, the workforce management (WFM) platform, today launched the Assembled MCP, a Model Context Protocol server that connects Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools to live customer support operations data. It is the first WFM platform in the contact center category to ship an MCP server, making real-time workforce data queryable and actionable directly from any conversational AI assistant. Despite predictions that AI would gut the industry, contact centers are not shrinking. a16z notes that the Philippines, the call center capital of the world, grew its industry from 1.15 million workers in 2016 to 1.9 million in 2025 (with another 70,000 jobs projected for 2026), and U.S. customer service job postings have been outpacing the broader labor market since August 2025. At the same time, AI use continues...
Read MoreNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – April 28, 2026 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced Michael Litnak of Barclays Bank as the winner of the 2026 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 Michael 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 included Luke Brown of Pinnacle Financial Partners, Scott Lawrence of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, Jodi Maffitt of Enova International, and Brandi Tifft of AAA-The Auto Group. Michael Litnak is the Head of Workforce Management for Barclays US Consumer Bank, where he leads a large, multi-site workforce management organization supporting thousands of agents across...
Read MoreNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – March 30, 2026 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced the five finalists for the 2026 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry. The finalists are Luke Brown of Pinnacle Financial Partners, Scott Lawrence of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, Michael Litnak of Barclays Bank, Jodi Maffitt of Enova International, and Brandi Tifft of AAA-The Auto Group. “These five workforce management professionals are truly representative of the ‘best of the best’ in our industry,” said Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director. “They have all demonstrated great leadership and ability in the field, as well as shown measurable results for their companies. We are pleased to present them as finalists for this distinguished award.” The winner of the award will be announced at the SWPP Annual Conference, which will be held in Nashville, Tennessee on April 27-29, 2026. Below is a brief description...
Read MoreNew partnership bridges the gap between long-range staffing decisions and daily intraday operations, helping contact centers reduce spreadsheet risk, align budgets to service goals, and improve performance. DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aspect, a leader in workforce management and workforce engagement solutions, and Cinareo, a cloud-based capacity planning & insights platform, today announced a partnership designed to help contact centers move from planning to performance faster, smarter, and with proven impact. Organizations increasingly struggle to align customer experience (CX) targets, budgets, and hiring plans with the realities of day-to-day workforce operations. While workforce management systems forecast demand and build schedules, many teams still use spreadsheets and siloed assumptions to model “what-if” scenarios, compare service-cost tradeoffs, and govern long-range staffing decisions. The Aspect-Cinareo partnership closes this planning and decision-support gap by connecting scenario-based capacity planning to real-time scheduling and intraday execution. “Contact center leaders need a defensible plan they can trust, and the ability to operationalize that plan as conditions change,” said Anna DeGraftenreed, VP...
Read MoreNew intelligent scheduling engine eliminates complexity of manually managing human and AI workforces, global schedules, and regional labor rules at scale SAN FRANCISCO – January 28, 2026 – Assembled, the AI customer support orchestration platform, today announced the general availability of AI-powered Schedule Generation, tackling one of support operations’ most manual and error-prone challenges in workforce management: agent scheduling. Assembled’s new Schedule Generation tool creates optimized support schedules from scratch with just one click, balancing demand forecasts, labor rules, and the realities of running multi-channel, distributed teams. By applying intelligent automation to weekly agent scheduling, Schedule Generation removes 95% of manual effort, freeing teams to focus on more strategic scenario planning and coverage decisions. "The rise of AI has made scheduling and managing support agents harder than ever. Now teams are responsible for scheduling in-house teams, coordinating BPO partners, and balancing the impact of AI agents," said Ryan Wang, co-founder and CEO of Assembled. "Most support teams are still trapped...
Read MoreNew integration bridges customer engagement and support planning, helping consumer brands scale exceptional service across every channel and team SAN FRANCISCO – November 18, 2025 – Dixa, the intelligent customer engagement platform, and Assembled, the leading support orchestration platform for modern CX teams, today announced a strategic partnership to transform how consumer brands deliver customer support. The companies have launched a native integration designed to connect Dixa’s fluid, omnichannel conversation layer with Assembled’s real-time workforce intelligence — giving support leaders end-to-end control over experience and execution. With this collaboration, support teams can move beyond siloed systems and manual processes to deliver consistently high-quality service across voice, chat, email, and messaging, while optimizing staffing, scheduling, and team performance behind the scenes. “Dixa and Assembled share a belief that great customer service is a growth engine for consumer brands. When you combine Dixa's omni-channel CX platform with Assembled's workforce management across the human + AI workforce, companies get a complete operational foundation...
Read MoreThe platform’s biggest update to date removes friction and adds flexibility, with a new interface, a native mobile app, and a portal for developers. BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aspect unveiled their latest product innovations within Aspect Cloud Workforce, which showcases the next evolution of its workforce engagement management (WEM) software, designed to tackle one of the most persistent operational challenges: adapting staffing and scheduling to meet rapidly shifting workforce needs. Each of these new innovations utilizes Aspect’s own Workforce Intelligence, ensuring access to predictive forecasting, AI-driven scheduling, advanced optimization, intelligent assistance, and powerful automation. Share Aspect Workforce is an essential workforce management (WFM) solution that streamlines scheduling, communication, and collaboration to help organizations scale user adoption, boost efficiency and productivity, and improve employee engagement and satisfaction. With a cleaner, more intuitive interface and powerful real-time tools, Aspect Cloud Workforce empowers organizations to move faster, work smarter, and keep employees engaged in an ever-changing environment. The upgraded platform is also the new home for all...
Read MoreNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – April 7, 2025 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced the five finalists for the 2025 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry. The finalists are Bill Hodge of USAA, Cody Janiga-Stoll of Northwestern Mutual, Breanne Katrin of Delta Airlines, Rachele Scales of Insite Managed Solutions, and Cooper Taylor of 8x8. “I am very proud to present these five workforce management professionals as finalists for this distinguished award,” said Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director. “Each year, there are so many outstanding nominations that it continues to be a difficult task for the SWPP Board of Advisors to select the top five. Each one of these individuals has demonstrated great skills, leadership, and ability in our industry, as well as delivered measurable results for their companies.” The winner of the award will be announced at the SWPP Annual Conference, which is...
Read MoreProHance releases its latest 2023-24 Global Productivity Benchmarking Report, offering key insights into workforce efficiency, trends, and industry best practices “Most productive time in Healthcare/RCM and BPO/BPM is spent on core business apps, while over a quarter of productive time in fast-growing Global Capability Centers goes to communication tools”— Arvind Sagar, Senior Advisor, ProHance ProHance, a new-age workforce analytics and operations enablement platform, has released its latest Global Productivity Benchmarking Report for 2023 & 2024. This comprehensive and updated report is an industry gold standard in terms of the data-driven statistics it provides. However, what makes it unique is the comparative analysis of productivity trends across a substantial dataset of 231,000 users across 69 organizations—this enables the report to provide valuable insights into workforce efficiency and performance. The benchmarking study examines key productivity metrics, identifies emerging trends, and delivers data-driven strategies for enterprises looking to optimize workforce performance. With deep analytical insights, this report serves as an essential resource for...
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