Scheduling Specialist IKEA

Job description

At IKEA our mission is to help the many people live better everyday lives in their homes, in their communities and on this planet we all call home. We are committed to making IKEA more accessible, affordable, and sustainable in everything we do.

We are transforming how we meet our customers across all touchpoints to be seamless, effortless, and enjoyable. And we know that customers love to interact with IKEA in many ways. Connecting with IKEA remotely has never been more important to us to allow our customers to be inspired and think of the many ways IKEA can help them live a better life. We also know that our customers demand increasing levels of accessibility from wherever they are and that has led to creating a transformed and very capable remote customer channel at IKEA.

As a result of the Customer Support Transformation, we are now implementing the Remote Customer Meeting Point (RCMP), an integrated part of the new IKEA omnichannel retailing. The Remote Customer Meeting Point is located in Billingstad (hybrid workplace), close to IKEA Slependen.

We are now looking for our new Scheduling Specialists to join our People Planning team. As a Scheduling Specialist you will be a part of a team consisting of seven members, four Intraday Specialists and three Sceduling Specialist. You will report to Planning, Scheduling & Intraday Manager.

As a Scheduling Specialist your most important assignment is to translate the group capacity plans into country scheduling plans in order to maximize business outcomes, while adapting to co-worker preferences when possible.

Your responsibilities

In this role, you will:

• Define rules for scheduling and assign to individual co-workers to generate schedules for coming weeks using specific algorithms in order to balance business and co-worker needs
• Sense check and validate medium and long term capacity plans from group to adapt when relevant to local situation
• Translate the weekly forecasts from the group Demand & Capacity (D&C) into interval patterns in order to reflect customer demands
• Validate the forecast from group Demand &Capacity in order to increase business relevance and accuracy for the inhouse and outsourced workload
• Integrate coworker input in the scheduling process (e.g. availability, preferences, shift swapping) and publish updated schedules in order to ensure work/life balance and to create transparency and common view.
• Perform pool management and schedule maintenance to address local short term needs
• Define activities and timings within a shift, including tweaks and changes to shifts based on short term view of demand, in order to keep the schedule relevant despite changes in demand/capacity
• Secure active participation in relevant parts of the Remote Partner meeting cadence (daily/weekly/monthly/tertial) in order to enable close collaboration with Remote Partners.
• Regularly orchestrate common review with remote partners in order to agree on rolling and locked forecast thus securing a clear view on partner capacity
• Provide insights and feedback to group D&C team, coordinating with Scheduling & Intraday, to improve upstream forecasting and planning process and secure continuous intraday operations.

About this work area

We believe your backpack consists of:

• Broad knowledge of workforce management with focus on retail businesses, covering demand, capacity, scheduling and intraday
• Broad knowledge of demand drivers connected to sales and customer care in multinational environments
• Strong knowledge of the scheduling area within the contact centre industry and its integration with capacity planning and intraday
• Strong understanding of how demand is calculated in order to understand the importance of the role
• Excellent knowledge of local legislation and internal policy around scheduling and time keeping
• High level of data/computer proficiency
• Passionate to create a good work-life balance for co-workers and contribute to IKEA being a great place to work.
• Ability to build trustful and strong relationships while demonstrating a service minded approach towards colleagues and partners
• Ability to balance independent work, own initiatives and responsibility with openness and transparency in a sharing culture

The ideal candidate has:
• Minimum 3 years of experience in a Scheduler, Intraday, Forecaster or Timekeeping role
• Minimum 3 years of experience working within contact centre/customer service
• Proven solid experience in working with workforce management software
• Good English and Scandinavian/Norwegian language level

What you need to know

Does this sound like your next challenge? IKEA offers an exciting and empowering work environment in a global workplace. And as the world’s leader at life at home, you have exceptional opportunities to grow and develop together with us.

Please submit your CV and motivation letter in English or Norwegian.
If you have questions, don't hesitate to contact Planning, Scheduling and Intraday Manager Emma Davidsson: emma.davidsson1@ingka.ikea.com

Our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people. The values are the foundation of our work. By living them, we form the unique IKEA culture where team spirit and togetherness are key.

https://about.ikea.com/en/about-us/ikea-culture-and-values