Forecasting and workforce planning may be the right words to use to describe what we do, but they fail to convey the human nature of the work. Our purpose is to ensure we have travel counselors in the right place, at the right time, to serve your employees with their travel needs.
Meet Manjula Mani:
Bringing a wealth of experience to CWT, Manjula has been working with us for over 5 years helping to deliver the very best of experiences for traveling employees.
Based in the Mumbai area, her understanding of service delivery in both a Business-to-Consumer company and in a consultancy role brings a unique viewpoint.
When not predicting where we need to increase or decrease our workforce, Manjula loves planning holidays. She is an avid traveler, voracious reader and loves cooking.
Everything starts with an in-depth analysis. Our global team of experts evaluates all relevant data and builds it into our planning process, looking for evidence of likely changes in booking volumes that might suggest your employees will need our help. Current data sources include infection rates, hospitalization levels, current travel volumes, client travel forecasts, and much more.
From here, we start to forecast where and when we need to flex our workforce to meet these changes. Pandemic travel restrictions increased levels of volatility in demand. We aim to adjust staffing levels within just a few days to reflect these demand changes, however with furlough programs and local market conditions factored in, it may take longer. In situations that require a longer lead time, we implement alternative flexing options such as supporting travelers from other same-language locations. e.g. our Australian team will answer calls from traveling employees in the US.
* overall results
Not all events are in our control, but can have a major impact on our forecast accuracy. For example a severe weather incident, a third-party technology failure, or wide-scale flight cancellations. All of which naturally leads to traveling employees seeking support from us.
In addition to using our forecasts to understand staffing needs, we work across our worldwide service delivery teams to address industry-defined workforce management practices.
These include:
During the pandemic we created a single, global workforce management command center, supported by one common technology solution, enabling us to work to one standard across all business functions to benefit from the recommendations.
Connecting our clients to this is vital to our combined preparedness for returning to travel. Your business forecasts help us to anticipate travel fluctuations. In addition, we can share information to help your employees travel again. Understanding the rules in place before planning to travel reduces the impact to them of navigating these. Travel essentials are a vital resource for the latest details.
