Director, Resource Optimization

About the Role

Rates Insurance Brokers is hiring a Director, Resource Optimization to own how we forecast, schedule and staff in two very different operations: a complex inbound sales and service operation driven by client demand, and an outbound contact team working against lead delivery targets.

Reporting to the Vice President and Principal Broker, you will lead the workforce management function and set the planning logic for each environment. Your forecasts and capacity models will show leadership where we are exposed, and what to do about it through hiring, training sequence or scheduling, before a gap reaches clients or prospects.

This is a seat at the leadership table. Your work informs budgets, hiring plans, lead pacing and growth decisions.

What You'll Own

Forecasting and capacity planning

• Build and maintain short-, medium- and long-range volume forecasts for both operations, covering inbound contact patterns, outbound lead delivery schedules, follow-up and email workload, and known drivers such as renewals, campaigns and seasonality.
• Model FTE and headcount requirements by team, accounting for shrinkage, AHT, blended workload (calls, follow-up and email) and target service levels.
• Model lead pacing scenarios for the sales team, balancing conversion opportunity against lead abandonment and wait-time risk.
• Own the utility factors and planning assumptions behind every model, and update and communicate them as the business changes.
• Support budget cycles with headcount modelling and scenario analysis.

Scheduling and real-time management

• Set scheduling standards and ensure optimized schedules are published 2–4 weeks ahead for service brokers, sales brokers and support staff, accounting for training blocks, meetings and follow-up time.
• Govern schedule integrity and the accuracy of agent profiles, shifts, skills and workload configuration in Calabrio.
• Direct intraday decisions (flex staffing, breaks, redeployment between teams) and real-time lead delivery pacing adjustments when staffing conditions change.

Performance and insight

• Own KPI reporting for both units: service level, abandonment, occupancy, ASA, AHT and schedule adherence for service; lead contact rate, conversion, pacing attainment and abandonment for sales.
• Find the intervals, queues, teams and channels with chronic misses, identify root causes and recommend corrective action.
• Track actual volume against forecast continuously. When divergence is material, escalate early with the likely cause and a recommended response.
• Surface agent-level outliers (AHT, adherence, occupancy, contact quality) to Team Leads and Directors so coaching happens in real-time.
• Deliver daily, weekly and monthly workforce reporting for operational and executive audiences using Work-force platforms, Looker and Excel.

Long-range planning and risk

• Maintain a rolling staffing outlook beyond the scheduling window, tracking projected capacity against anticipated volume trends.
• Model the staffing impact of hiring timelines, onboarding ramp curves and attrition to give leadership early warning of at-risk periods.
• Flag where current hiring plans fall short of forecasted demand and recommend adjusted timelines or interim mitigation.
• Recommend upskill and training timing by region and funnel, based on internal and external business impacts.

Leadership and partnership

• Act as the primary resource planning partner to the Directors of Sales, Service, and Contact Centre for day-to-day and strategic staffing needs.
• Coordinate new hire onboarding and training schedules to limit service level impact.
• Provide workforce data and modelling for business cases, budget cycles and strategic planning.
• Drive continuous improvement: AHT reduction, follow-up workload management, skill-based routing, shift structure and adherence coaching opportunities, and bring forward current WFM best practices.

What You Bring

• 7+ years in workforce management, resource planning or contact center analytics, including 3+ years leading a team or function.
• Hands-on experience with Calabrio or a comparable WFM platform, and with RingCentral or a similar cloud telephony and contact center platform.
• Strong command of Looker or a comparable BI tool, and advanced Excel skills including data modelling and scenario analysis.
• Deep understanding of workforce planning for blended, multi-channel environments: queued inbound voice, chat, unqueued direct email (inbound and outbound responses) and outbound calling. You can model total workload demand and turn it into accurate staffing requirements.
• Proven ability to build forecasts and capacity plans that leadership uses to make hiring and budget decisions.
• Sound judgment and attention to detail while managing competing priorities in a fast-moving environment.
• A clear communicator who translates workforce data into plain-language recommendations for non-technical and executive audiences.
• Experience building, coaching and developing analysts.

About Rates Insurance Brokers

Rates Insurance Brokers is Canada's fastest growing digital brokerage, part of Rates.ca Group Ltd, working with leading carrier partners to serve clients across Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia. We work and live in Welland, ON, a growing community in the Niagara region. We also have a corporate office in Toronto.

A few of our perks ...

• You get your Birthday off.
• Full employer-paid benefits.
• Wealthsimple RRSP Match.
• Annual holiday festivities, free lunches and so much more.
• Helping you help others with our paid volunteer programs.
• Employee satisfaction survey for you to voice your opinion on working at Rates.ca Group Ltd.
• Free access to LinkedIn Learning.
• Lounge and games room: ping-pong, foosball and more.

The compensation package consists of a competitive salary, benefits, and an annual incentive bonus.

Rates.ca Group Ltd. is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing a recruitment process that respects the dignity and independence of all candidates and we will accommodate people with disabilities throughout the recruitment and selection process. Applicants are encouraged to make their needs known in advance if accommodation is required.

We thank all applicants for their interest in a career with Rates.ca Group Ltd. Due to the volume of applications we receive, we may be unable to reply to all applicants. Only those candidates being considered are being contacted.