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.”
Michael was not able to attend the conference (along with another finalist, Scott Lawrence), so we had our first hybrid WFM of the Year ceremony. However, Michael had two colleagues at the conference who were able to accept the award for him.
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 multiple centers and handling well over a million customer interactions each month. He consistently demonstrates how Workforce Management, when executed effectively, can serve as a strategic enabler rather than a traditional support function. This enterprise‑level impact and leadership earned Mike the Exceptional Achievement Award at Barclays.
Mike has played a pivotal role in streamlining and integrating workforce planning, hiring, and financial forecasting, embedding these capabilities directly into enterprise financial planning and investment processes. The forecasting and capacity outputs developed under his leadership now serve as foundational inputs into business planning, resourcing decisions, and cost management discussions across Operations and Finance.
Through this work, Mike has successfully positioned Workforce Management as a trusted strategic advisor to senior operational leaders, helping the business solve real problems today while anticipating and preparing for future demand and risk.
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.
The SWPP Board of Advisors selected the five finalists from nominations submitted on the SWPP website. The Workforce Management Professional of the Year award was chosen from the five finalists by the Board of Advisors and was announced at the 2026 SWPP Annual Conference.
Under Mike’s leadership, the Forecasting and Analytics team delivered material improvements in accuracy, speed, and scalability through advanced, analytics‑driven forecasting approaches, significantly reducing forecast cycle times while improving decision quality. His Capacity Planning organization has achieved substantial workforce efficiency gains over multiple years, resulting in meaningful and sustained reductions in annual labor cost — while continuing to protect customer experience and service performance.
