North America Workforce Planning and Execution Lead

Together We Do What Matters

Avanade, a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft, is excited to be seeking our next North America Workforce Planning and Execution (WP&E) Lead. The WP&E Lead will set the strategic direction of workforce planning - for a workforce of 4000+ talented employees within North America - to prepare for waves of progress and opportunity, and to fortify our position in times of economic headwinds.

In this senior level position, reporting to the North America COO (Chief Operating Officer), the WP&E Lead is accountable for proactively anticipating, defining, and executing on a strategic plan to forecast and fulfill short-term, medium - and long-term demand for skills across all sources of workforce supply for the North America (NA) Area.

Within the North America Area, there are 5 Regions. Each Region has its own Workforce Planning and Execution Lead. The NA Workforce Planning and Execution Lead will direct and partner with each Regional WP&E Lead driving the future focused vision, strategy, and accountability needed in each NA Region.

As the NA WP&E Lead, you will foster open communication and provide decisive leadership to empower Workforce Planning, Capability development and the Workforce Scheduling team. As part of your commitment to enabling these stakeholders, you will drive operational excellence by encouraging efficient execution of existing globally standard tools and processes for Workforce Planning and Execution.

The NA WP&E Lead is the ultimate champion and point of escalation for any matters related to fulfilling our commitment to our clients by providing them with the best talent with the most up to date skills to fulfill their solutions.

ROLE ACCOUNTABILITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Define and own the monthly NA Workforce plan - working in partnership with stakeholders, Region WP&E Leads and Region Directors of Operation (DOO) to drive monthly execution, including adjustments in line with business strategy, financial forecast, performance and priorities
• Conduct/consolidate skills gap analysis to determine and drive plan that balances "build, buy, borrow" actions (i.e., beyond short-term supply-demand matching) across a dynamic and flexible workforce model
• Partner with HR and Business Leads to drive the intersection between the NA Talent Strategy and the NA Workforce Plan, to proactively determine needs for strategic skills-building investments, and synchronize the priorities with the NA Learning & Development team
• Empower Region WP&E Leads to leverage insights / identify leading indicators from existing Workforce Power BI reporting, using those results to define and be accountable for their region improvement plans in coordination with the Regional DOO
• Partner with Area COO and Region DOOs to guide processes and change management to achieve workforce plan execution and effective engagement of all Area/Regional stakeholders
• Provide regular Workforce Planning and Execution reporting and insights to Executive Leadership

TECHNICAL AND NON-TECHNICAL SKILL REQUIREMENTS:

• Demonstrated multi-year experience of successful and collaborative planning and execution (financial, operational, or people-based) across multiple locations
• Proven ability to drive complex process, change implementation and stakeholder management
• Strong managerial and leadership experience with remote teams across multiple time-zones within North America
• Power BI, analysis, and reporting garnering actionable insights from data with ease
• Exercises a "Growth mindset" fostering new and creative solutions to familiar operational problems
• 7+ years’ of extensive experience with workforce planning, skills planning, and/or resource scheduling in a management consulting environment or technology is preferred

EDUCATION:
You will likely possess a Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in a relevant field.