SWPP Announces John Campbell as 2018 Workforce Management Professional of the Year
Left to right: Finalists Robert Wright of Manulife, Lisa Hoelscher of LanguageLine Solutions, WFM Professional of the Year John Campbell of CNA, SWPP Executive Director Vicki Herrell, and Mark Hernandez of Compassion International. Not pictured: Lydia Lefter of Emerald Contact Centre.
SWPP has announced John Campbell as the winner of the 2018 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 John 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 this award included Mark Hernandez of Compassion International, Lisa Hoelscher of LanguageLine Solutions, Lydia Lefter of Emerald Contact Centre, and Robert Wright of Manulife. The winner of the award was announced at the SWPP Annual Conference, which was held in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 4-6, 2018, at the Omni Hotel.
John Campbell is the Manager of Workforce Management for CNA, a property and casualty insurance provider. The operation includes five sites with 500 agents, handing phone, email, and handling back-office processing Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 8 PM. Technologies in use include Finesse, Salesforce, ECE, and Verint. John has been published in the SWPP newsletter, On Target, and has been an “Exceeds Level” employee the past three years as his role has continued to expand.
John has been in WFM for almost 15 years. During the last four years at CNA, he has progressed from being an analyst supporting one location and a couple of teams to leading a team of analysts and consultants that support multiple locations and business units. John is a strong project manager and commands control and respect of teams as they work toward solutions. He is viewed as a trusted advisor and true consultant to the business.
“John’s span of control will continue to grow and he has the aptitude to support the business in more ways than just WFM, including Business Process Redesign and Change Management,” said Heidi Bendick, AVP Customer Service and Sales. She defines him as “one of the most emotionally intelligent professionals I have worked with in my career. He has a keen sense for the employee experience and how people process change and pressure.”
John was asked to support two major projects over the past year. The first was to unite the fragmented and siloed operations, some of which utilized WFM and some that did not. The second was to build a WFM Center of Excellence to support not only all the enterprise contact centers, but also support back-office processing centers for capacity planning, forecasting, and scheduling. He was instrumental in a process to model various scenarios of how the work gets done and how many people are needed in each scenario. He based this on historical inventories, contact volumes, and working with the business to forecast future volumes and patterns. The WFM system in use during the project was outdated, and he developed spreadsheets and models that are being used to help migrate to updated technology now. He has worked closely with business units not yet supported by WFM to demonstrate the value to leaders so that they can release the burden of traffic control and staff planning and focus more on coaching and development of their staff. John’s analysis around redesigning the way CNA configures contact centers stands to save the business over $650,000 in HR costs alone (almost 15%).
According to Bendick, “John is an exceptional people leader and thought partner. The feedback I receive from our business partners around his expertise and advice is outstanding. The people who report to him consistently rave about John and the support and development he provides to their career.” This perception is supported by other team members including Lynn McConnaughey, Business Process Consultant, who stated, “John Campbell consistently impresses as a professional, a mentor, and a colleague, but his focus is clearly being a results-oriented, people-engaging leader.” Several others from both within WFM and in other departments provided support for John’s nomination, including Candace Chiavira, WFM Analyst, who stated, “John is very passionate about workforce management. He is a great boss. He really cares about people – not just his staff, but everyone in the call center.”
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 SWPP Annual Conference.