WFM Unfiltered | Workforce Management Podcast

How To evaluate the Performance of the WFM Team | Zakaria Berrada

• Irina Mateeva • Season 1 • Episode 43

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Why do WFM teams constantly feel like they’re missing the mark—even when the numbers add up? In this episode of WFM Unfiltered, Irina sits down with Zakaria Berrada, the Head of WFM for Global Strategic Accounts at Foundever, who brings over two decades of leadership in planning, forecasting, and operational strategy. His insights aren’t just from the textbook—they’re from the trenches.

Zakaria opens up about his career shift from finance into WFM, and why understanding people—not just numbers—is the key to getting it right. From aligning strategy with actual performance, to the silent battles between operations and planning teams, this episode gets under the hood of how most contact centres are set up to fail.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a leadership meeting where the finger-pointing starts when the metrics drop, Zakaria’s insights will hit hard. He shares stories of misaligned targets, management teams at war with their own planners, and the kind of small changes that drive long-term success. This isn’t theory—this is real WFM, with real impact.

And for those battling burnout from unrealistic expectations, Zakaria offers a new way forward. One where trust becomes the metric that really matters. A must-watch for anyone tired of chasing numbers while ignoring the humans behind them.

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Irina:

Hello everyone. Hi WFMers and Friends of WFM. I'm your host, Irina, and this is WFM Unfiltered. And today we're going to Morocco and I'm so excited because I have a guest that not only have. Tons of experience and knowledge, but it's also very, he's also very opinionated and for a very first time, he came completely prepared with tips and knowledge and stuff. And he even created the presentation that I'm gonna share with everyone after the recording. So he basically did my job, and I'm here for just, the beauty of it all. But I want to introduce you to Zak. Hey Zak, how have you been? Long time. I'm doing well. It, as you mentioned, it is been a long time and I'm happy that we've finally managed to sync and make that recording. But before we kick off with the conversation, would you mind sharing, a little bit about your experience and basically walk us through, your background.

Zak:

Yeah, of course. So first of all, thanks for also this opportunity you can call me Zak. My name is Zakaria, but you can call me Zak. Working with the business process outsourcers since 2003. So I do have something like 20 years plus experience in this field I think, like everyone, I. was not having any kind of goal to stay this amount of years. It was something like, oh, okay. I always start something like two, three months, year, and then second and then third, and then, okay, that's exactly what I would like to, do for the rest of my life. funny fact is completely different doing today. Completely different from my education path I'm someone coming from finance pure finance.

Irina:

Oh, I didn't know that.

Zak:

I'm doing workforce management.

Irina:

Finance, Zak, I, you haven't mentioned this to me. It is like new information. Wow. Okay.

Zak:

Yeah. But that was on the education level. So haven't, practiced anything. Finance. in 2005 I was discovering this workforce management path. And I was having this click in mind saying, I can switch. I don't like finance, I don't like this word of finance. but I can still use all the knowledge. So I have started the workforce management journey between 20, 2005 and eight. So that was really the first piece of work that I have delivered for workforce management, and since covering this with various parameters, with various organisations of toDay..

Irina:

So you are basically a converted WFM or from finance to WFM for life. That's what we're saying. Perfect. Okay. So as I mentioned to our listeners, you came prepared because I knew that you are always upping your game, but I didn't know that you are gonna come that prepared. So let's, kick it off. Let's start, talking about WFM and for some reason, Zak, I just closed the presentation, so you have to give me a second. Before that, we have to start talking about WFM in general. What's that all about? What's WFM?

Zak:

workforce management. not only numbers. It's not only, spreadsheets. It's not only, helping to make a decision, it's really making the people in the heart of everything. in our industry, we are not manipulating any kind of machines

Irina:

big

Zak:

Industries like we do have with automotive or paint or whatever, we're really having

Irina:

human

Zak:

inside of the core machine. workforce management is really about that. It's really about how to make sure that everyone is aligned the same goals, how, everyone is oriented to that performance, buying in and not simply thinking it's, something that we cannot achieve. So probably it's link also to our conversation today, the performance management.

Irina:

Yes. And this is a very good, segue workforce management, performance metrics and how to rethink it. So, walk me through that. What, is it there to be rethought?

Zak:

so indeed this is a very good question. So we are not excluding any, operational metric, but this is a landing page. This is nothing a path. WFM, they are, let's imagine they are asked to, visualize and put a plan for 10 different steps, And each step need to be correlated to the reality to the actual deliverable. If we conduct a postmortem analysis and found that the 10 were aligned with the plan, then there is absolutely no reason to fail in service level or to fail in the projected service level. Don't get me wrong, but if the projected service level, for instance, is 90%, 20 seconds, and the ten points,. We found out that five of them were completely deviating from the reality, then there is no chance to meet the service level because we were planning something wrong. So this is a result of a process. So the process itself is all the steps, imagine a good for every single step, and make sure that operation are delivering against this if everything is aligned. Everything is aligned. and this is most of the time my case when I'm, visiting some European cities and taking the metro, to somewhere. I don't know. So I, only know that this metro is going to that direction, right? But there is some kind of stations, and from time to time, I just try to correlate if the name of the next station that I do have on the door. Is exactly what I can see out from the window. if it's aligned, then I'm happy because I am on the right direction. But if one station, after I can see that it's the rock station that I do have inside and outside, then what did I miss? I'm not on the right. So that's

Irina:

kind of

Zak:

evaluation that I prefer to deliver when it comes to workforce management. And here is a tricky point. and for that we can illustrate with one example. Imagine that your contract with your client is saying 99, 90%, 22nd, H ht, and occupancy is something like 75%. So that's the, pricing model. Let's call it like this, and then you deliver something. Operation are delivering some something different. So probably they are delivering 900 AHT, reaching the service level. Occupancy is very, very different the 75. So the question will be you as WFM specialists? What will be your decision? So the most important is the raci. Whatever we decide who will own, what is the good map to read, the responsibility, the roles and responsibilities. But someone need to be clearly defined as owner, responsible, accountable, for every single process. Who is collecting the list of agents? is collecting the data? Who is responsible to take the final decision? the recommendation from WFM will be, I dunno, maybe do not exceed one hour training per week. Operation will say no, but we need 1:30. So this is, a recommendation and then a counterindication. who is owner of that final decision? Is it WFM or is it operation? In my opinion, it's always operation because they are responsible for P&L at the end of the day. And we are, we are here to support them to take, a very well informed decision. so that's it. The way how things are working is, simple as long as define it clear rules and responsibilities. Once we don't do that, will create chaos. We will enter directly into the blame game. It's not my fault, it's your fault, and then it's an endless conversation.

Irina:

I fully agree with you on this one, and if I bridge it back to when I first started, working as a planner, I, I, I have told my story a million times to that point, but I hated it because I was always told, okay, we need to do the planning. We need to do the real time monitoring. But then also the team leads were told, okay, but you need to following the service level during the day. So in the end of the day, everyone was taking actions for the same thing from different perspective. But when the result came in, it was always like. Yeah, but the team lead did that. Yeah. But the real time team was to the bathroom, so somebody had to react. And it was always such a finger pointing and blaming game that it's easily avoidable. And I think this is also a reason why, the rift between, team leads and WFM teams starts because everyone is responsible for everything, but then they don't know the extent to which they own the task. And this is the whole issue. We, don't define responsibility versus accountability, and everyone does everything in, the end, no one does anything. So I, really like that point. But, you have, You have created something very interesting for me in your presentation, and it's about the true WFM cycle, and you're taking a completely different approach to it. So walk me through it, and as a side note to everyone, again, I'm gonna link the presentation in the notes. So for everyone that it's interested, it's very interesting one, highly recommend it. But Zak, walk me through it.

Zak:

let me start with something different. let's take the. Imagine that, you are a CEO and you have, sales team, right? So what is the main responsibility as sales team or salesperson?

Irina:

Are you asking me.

Zak:

Yes.

Irina:

to achieve, the sales that he has as a KPI

Zak:

Perfect.

Irina:

as much as possible.

Zak:

Perfect. So imagine that this person is selling something very good. Price. Very good. Everything, but then operations when it comes to delivery are struggling to deliver. Pointing that the deal was bad, how do you evaluate where is the problem is landing.

Irina:

But what do you mean from the delivery perspective? The delivery of a product. the delivery of contact,

Zak:

of, the, service itself. So you, win a contract, your salesperson is winning a contract. you will manage calls for, I don't know, healthcare, service, Right. And that was sold with certain number of assumptions. And then, so everything was okay, everything was clear during the RFP process, during the sales process, and then the, we, need to start delivering, the, itself,

Irina:

Yeah. Okay.

Zak:

and you just observe that your operation, they are struggling to deliver this service saying that, our agents cannot. B at the expected level of proficiency, so you have a clear gap between the contract and the operational point of view about how to deliver the tank. So here you don't have one responsible of failure. It's not the fault of the salesperson, it's not the fault of operation, it's the fault of the process itself. Something was completely unclear during the RFP period where, no one was able to put a true diagnosis to understand what will be the winning equation. A clear example is most of the clients today, they will ask if one agent can deliver voice chat, back office, five different languages using chatbot and tons of other things at the same time. So this is the request. So if you have a salesperson who is not challenging this, who is not picking up the phone and asking the operation. it something that you can truly deliver or not?

Irina:

Gotcha.

Zak:

What are the caveats? And if we, as a company, we want to take the risk because this is a prestigious logo and we want to have it on our list of clients, and then we see and we accept the risk, and once we will hand it over to the operation to deliver, everyone is conscious about that risk. Then you have a perfect selling team. But if there is absolutely no conversation between everyone and sales are sales operation, are operation, and most of the time you will find director of operation or ops management or whatever come in with very big eyes saying, Hey, why are you selling those things? We can never achieve that. And sales are. Now, it's no longer my business. It's your hot potato. Manage it. I was only responsible to bring it to the company. That's that. So what would be intelligent from A CEO is to put KPIs to measure the performance of sales, depending on this. Process, how it is calibrated with operation. Not only how many clients did you bring, what's the revenue what's It's also how can we make sure that whatever we will, But in our offer is something we can achieve realistically. So WFM is exactly the same. So again, if you break down the WFM process into multiple steps, you will always find that they need to have list of persons. They need to have assumptions in term of shrinkage. They need to have assumptions in term of attrition, in term of learning curve, in term of X, Y, and Z. So put everything into one single, Planning steps, let's call it the planning steps. And then your role as WFM will always be plan according to the reality. And when we don't meet the final result, you are able to directly the persons to which step is failing. So that's the true power of WFM. So what I call the true cycle is. plan take something that is not insane to achieve that take something where operation are buying in, aligned, committing to deliver and then hand it over to them because they have to deliver this. They are responsible for the behavior, they are responsible for longer. AHT's. They have, they are responsible for repetitive sickness. this is management. This is no longer WFM, and they have to deliver. And whatever they will deliver, take it back again. measure it a delta always from the plan. How are you deviating from the plan? Not how are you deviating from the contract?'cause the contract is something different. And, further in the slides I have put one example, which is considering a service level of 90%, that's the target. But the WFM plan is only 84%. let me just see the numbers to not say something. No, the service level target is 85%. The plan from WFM is 84%, so it's lower. And the delivery from operation is 83%. I think this is a perfect model. This is a perfect alignment about everything. This is us, them taking very righteous but in other scenarios where you will find the same service level, target 85% and the projected service level from. is 87%, which is even higher. So everyone is happy about the plan, but the delivery at the end of the day, the actual delivery is 50%. There is something wrong in the process. We don't know how to plan. I always challenge my guys saying that if, your plan is very far from the actual

Irina:

data

Zak:

delivered by operation, it means that you don't know how to plan. As simple as is it.

Irina:

But can I challenge you on this one? So say for example, because I agree with you and I always like to, use the bandwidth because having a perfect forecast a hundred percent is utopia, right? A perfect schedule. So we need to have a bandwidth. But imagine, just imagine something happens, a flu pandemic, and. Nobody comes to work and like service level is in the drain, like nobody showed up at work. It's something that, in my opinion also from performance, scenario should be excluded when you are measuring your people because there was no way that we can predict COVID like that. Everything is going to close, for example.

Zak:

And you are perfectly right. But here we do have, the thing about another methodology, which is the BCP business continuity plans. And this is completely different from the core, perspective. What we are talking about here is If your delivery is 50% because. Of very single issue is popping up. Like whatever you are describing, then it's okay. is something that we have to isolate from the historical data and do not consider it as critical to WFM or to operation. This is false measure. That's what, how we call it in French. I dunno what's the right term in English.

Irina:

We stole this one from you in Bulgaria. Just so you know, probably

Zak:

so this is something different, but if you are in my example, if your, simply out of office shrinkage is three time higher than your assumption. For several weeks. It means that you are not aligned with the reality. and most of the time it's like this, but if you are trained over six weeks or three months is around 10% out of office and you are challenging a bit the operation and just putting 9%'cause you are expecting them to manage in a better way. They're out of office they, finish by delivering

Irina:

20%

Zak:

in one week. then the week after it's bucket going to 10%, then it's something really wrong about one week. Maybe this is out of control completely. it can be inside the control if you have some very specific weeks with, a big event. You haven't considered this into your forecast, then probably it can be a bit your responsibility as WFM, but most of the cases, this is very isolated week. if, you, if your actual trend is 10%, you plan with nine and you start delivering 15, then 16, then 18 for three weeks, then no matter how the, third week, you need to rethink your trend. You need to rethink your projection. Sorry. need to take something like what is going on? Is it something really that you cannot control as ops? And then we have just to put a new assumption in your out of office shrinkage, to 18%, 19% to protect the business. Then you can visualize is your effort in term of hiring that you have to put in place. Or simply to say to your client, we cannot because of, and if you are not the only provider, they can share the business with others. It's not good for the for, for, you because at the end of the day, you are losing money. But this is protecting also the trust you have with your clients because it's, never a good when you say, no, I can do. And at the end of the day, you don't deliver, clients will always appreciate that you are a bit of straightforward saying, okay, I cannot do it because of, I commit that I can do it back again in five weeks.'cause I need to regain control on my assumptions and that's it. so it is supposed to be a perfect alignment between the initial plan, the trends, the delivery, and then retake it as continuous improvement to the process. So it's never, A final destination. It's always starting back again. The loop.

Irina:

I, quite like that you're outlining that because a, single point of failure for many companies and teams that I have seen is, evaluating or assessing performance. Based on a target. While for many, organizations, if we're taking service level, this cannot be applied in good faith. say for example that you are severely understaffed, I cannot meet your target even if I'm your best planner. Like there, like literally, there isn't a better planner, than me in that entire earth. If the prediction is that I can meet up to 50%, that's it. So I fully agree that the valuation should be based on, also the prediction on what is the most you can achieve under the circumstance, because the target might not be achievable at all. And this is then the alignment that you're sharing. And yes, maybe our strategy is to go to, up to that 90 or 95% or whatever you wanna achieve. But then you also need to consider your circumstance and your environment. So yeah, really, good. And this is the mature way to look at things rather than, that's my target and I'm, 40% below it and that's why I'm not, getting my bonus. And the other thing that I wanted to bring you back on the conversation, why sometimes alignment sucks. Is because of different financial interest between the parties, and I'm quite vocal about it because what I have seen also from vendor perspective or from team lead perspective is if you can achieve a financial bonus by doing some stuff that might not be better for the greater good, but it's definitely better for your wallet. People tend to do it. People have to pay bills. Everyone have different life circumstances. They might be in a great need of that. There is no r there is not, basically a, process that need to follow. They're gonna do whatever they can to reach that bonus, and that's it. tell me what is then the true, how did you call it in the, presentation? The what we are truly and really measuring in WFM then?

Zak:

Yes. it's three component predictability. can we focus operational needs with precision? I believe this is really something, not possible. But what is possible is to measure if we have done our effort. If we have consider every single piece of work, if we have challenged many algorithms and we have even created something new, if not covered by the time series. I always say that, forecast specifically forecast is always wrong, but what can be always right is our methodology of work and if how we can, how do we consider the. The historical trend data versus the future events, versus the future impact, the ones that we would like to create. if there is no equitable between both of them, then definitely we are losing something. The final number is different and will always looks different. And same goes for else, single assumption. It's part of it. Historical data. But once you will into the game, the, future events, even in term of vacation, for instance, if you don't predict your vacation period, depending on the country, depending on the labor, rules, depending on the behavior, if you don't predict it, this with the right way, then you will fail. will simply transform your. Occasion and to unplanned absence. And this is something to avoid. so it's not, again, about the final number. It's about how do you manage that forecast? How do you learn from mistakes, how accurate you can go while looking at the mirror? And you, you simply simplify that for five months you are out of accuracy with 20% deviation. How can you move from that 20% to. 10, closing the gap. so this is how smart the people will be. The second thing is

Irina:

credibility

Zak:

if there is no trust, there is no need for WFM. I always call the WFM team as natural as Switzerland. They don't take decision, they. Simply provide enough insight and intelligence to others to take the right decision and probably closing the loop to your idea, which is some, someone somewhere will always take a different decision because they have a different interest, and that's absolutely fine. They just need to take this decision based on your data, on your inputs, where they are relying on. whenever you enter into, any outsource or any company contact center and operation are going back again, schedules or planning or whatever, you simply understand that there is lack of trust and lack of trust is coming from when I say that you will achieve something or not, or not. and you don't hit it, you hit completely different things. So you do no longer have any benefit. You don't see any benefit in my as input to you. That's why in some organization, you will see operation as now I don't need the, planners. I know how to do things because what he's doing is more aligned to what he's delivering. And that's it. So credibility is fundamental, and we are, we were talking about this learning agility. it's, not a precise science. It's not, it's nothing like physics. Something today is the same tomorrow. and even with quantum then it's a complete different fit, it's always moving to a direction. You don't, understand the first day, but you have to be close to your result. After a few iterations. So that's if I am operational and I can see from, all these years of experience how every everyone in the organization can behave. But if I am purely operational, I will simply ask my WFM team to provide to me good plans as I can achieve. And, I need to help them because that's my role as operational guy. By committing to those plans, I need to give to them an honest feedback about what they are not delivering right, to improve their themselves. But if I choose the, way to duplicate cost by having my own team doing WFM in parallel to the WFM team. I am losing efficiency and I am causing to the company a lot of troubles. No one can pretend today that they can do it, that they can manage networks, that they can manage cybersecurity. They do have a team in the organization and this team is doing the job. And if people are not satisfied, then they will provide enough feedback to this team to, Perform better. The issue with workforce management is everyone pretend to understand how to deliver WFM and that idea to can replace them by anyone in our organization in term of ops becomes easy. And that's not true. WFM is too much complex with too much added value. So if you don't put the right persons at the right place at the right moment, you are losing everything.

Irina:

So it was such a great conversation. Before we wrap up for today, and I know that you have some questions prepared that people should ask, I would like to leave that in the presentation to be like a nice bonus, but I want to ask you final questions about. how are you personally evaluating your team members? can you give us your, your to go metrics to make sure they're going, doing a good job?

Zak:

It is exactly what I'm describing in the slides. It's, really, I'm evaluating their plans, how for every single piece of work they're delivering. How much they are de the deviating from the reality. And, we are trying to close the loop or to close the gap between what they are planning and what we are delivering, what they are delivering operations. and always trying to into make them confident enough to speak about their plans.

Irina:

That's a great one. That's a great job.

Zak:

explain the plan and how to, be also humble to change it. If they are receiving something like, like it because I do have different priorities, it's okay against, again, we are not here to decide. We are here to make a very well decision to the company. And by this I mean that we have to provide enough, insights, enough analysis, enough

Irina:

intelligence

Zak:

to the wider company to take the right step.

Irina:

Thank you so much for this conversation, and as always is a full complete pleasure talking to you because you're coming up with. Straight on point, mature advice of how to do workforce management in a better way. So thank you so much, Zak for this one, and thank you for coming prepared with even the presentation. I'm so impressed. And for everyone else, please go ahead. Look at, here, look at the episode. Look at the presentation, and any questions and comments are always welcome. Let's keep that conversation open so everyone can learn and benefit from this. Thank you, Zak.

Zak:

Thank you also for your podcast. Very, good. and I wish you all the, success.

Irina:

Thank you.

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