Director of People Planning

Overview

Ogilvy is a world-famous brand with an incredible heritage of creative and strategic excellence. Our ambition is bold and unambiguous: Ogilvy will become the largest and best growth platform on the planet. And within our business, the People Planning function is critical to achieving that ambition.

The People Planning ambition is to unlock Ogilvy's broad spectrum of Talent to establish high-performance teams.  We cast teams to generate ideas and great work across a portfolio of clients, empowering our leaders to unlock creativity from all levels of the organization. We maximize our employee experience by putting people first, balancing career desires with business needs – and deliver on the promise of working for a network of career opportunities.

Our People Planning ambition is to:

• Unlock Ogilvy's broad spectrum of Talent to establish innovation teams and optimize Talent, matching people and casting teams to generate ideas and great work across North America
• Empower our influencers and leaders to unlock creativity from all levels of the organization.
• Maximize our employee experience by putting people first, balancing career desires with business needs.
• Deliver on the "promise" of working for a network of career opportunities.
• Maintain a pulse on the talent supply chain by improving scoping, unlocking trapped capacity and shifting Talent across brands.
• Partner with Global technology and data leadership to automate staff planning; leverage advanced technologies that predict upcoming opportunities for talent development, mitigation and assignments.
• Identify opportunities to bridge connectivity across the Ogilvy and WPP network.
• Connect talent acquisition into people planning by aligning systems, processes and approvals.
• Establish KPI’s that hold leaders and managers accountable for their people's optimal performance - aligning bonus incentives to encourage resource sharing and target KPI compliance.

We are looking for an individual to lead our People Planning across Experience.

More About the Role:

How we assign teams, how we grow our people, and how we match the skills of our teams with the needs of our clients is critical to our organizational success.  As a People Planning Experience Lead, you will be responsible for leading a strategic, business-critical resource management discipline across all Experience entities within Ogilvy.  You will be a unifier of teams newly formed into the Experience Business Unit and be a key connection point for  people.  This role will partner with the Experience department leads to ensure we are staffed for the current work as well as provide insight into the new business needs and identify gaps. You will partner with the North America People Planning Director to ensure our regional People Planning platform is delivered through a tech-enabled, data-driven process.

This role will report into the North America Head of People Planning and Client Operations.

Responsibilities

Your Key Responsibilities in the Role:

You will engage with leaders across the Experience Business Unit, establishing yourself as an integral part of the Experience leadership team. You will be responsible for:

• Overseeing assignment of the correct agency teams to each project based on a real understanding of the project requirements, the scope and the strengths of each member of the agency
• Partnering with business and capability leads, ensure the local workforce is fully utilized against work that is both suitable for individual skills and supports individual professional development desires
• Have an understand of Experience skill sets and projects to provide guidance on teams staffing and scope.
• Democratize data around staffing metrics (e.g., forecasted capacity reporting; utilization vs. realization; billability; future staffing trends)
• Ensures the implementation, compliance and governance of People Planning technology, partners with IT to ensure that tools are fit for purpose
• Aligning local workforce metrics with regional reporting with People, Finance and Executive leadership
• Work closely with Talent Acquisition to ensure the understand the needs and that we are supporting the agency DE&I goals.
• Managing a team of People Planners across Experience
• Participating actively in building a community of People Planners across North America
• Maintaining a pulse on the talent supply by continually identifying and capacity and shifting Talent across client work
• Identifying opportunities to connect across all Ogilvy North America offices and the WPP network.
• Establishing a culture for team collaboration, inspiration, improvement and active listening

Qualifications

Executive Leadership

• Attend local Executive Leadership meetings and update key Operational metrics (Utilization, Realization, Talent Gaps etc.) through dashboard reporting
• Act as the first point of escalation for all local People Planning issues; partner with Leadership to achieve resolution.
• Provide guidance and thought leadership in People Planning subjects
• Provides confidential counsel to Executive leadership and Heads of Department as to any Talent issues i.e. Overwork, mobility needs, underutilization
• Be a driving force of creativity without boarders ensuring we are resourcing across locations and other experience entities.

HR Partnership

• Identify new opportunities for the staff, including a change of client for short- and long-term assignments
• Partnership with Talent Acquisition and HR to identify talent and skill gaps, prioritize open positions and gain internal financial approvals needed to begin the external hiring process.
• Support long-term planning of hiring Talent by providing staffing trends, analyzing current and future utilization and future skills needs.
• Work with Leadership to develop growth plans and orderboards
• Participate in a regular cadence of meeting with local HR and Talent Acquisition teams to identify growth opportunities for staff and provide input on promotion metrics
• Provides business context and input for Learning and Development teams to develop training programs
• Drive diversity of Talent into client and project teams – ensure casted Talent represents a diverse set of backgrounds, skillsets and expertise

Business & Client Leadership Partnership

• Partners with Business and Client Leaders in validating future skills against long term business objectives
• Provides context and input on suitability of available talent to work on client business
• Provides confidential context to Business Leaders on talent mobility issues
• Will act as escalation with talent conflicts across multiple businesses

Project Management (PMO) Partnership

• Partner with Project managers for oversight and management of all team talent/resourcing needs.
• Partner in the development and implementation of new and iterative processes that improves the agency's effectiveness and efficiency
• Point of escalation for all talent/resourcing needs with Project management leads.
• Review Client Scopes of Work to ensure consistency and accuracy in Staffing needs

Finance & Commercial Partnership

• Partner with Finance to ensure accurate workforce management of sold work plans.
• Ensures timely escalation with Finance in scenarios of over-servicing against sold plans
• Partners with Commercial leadership to ensure that New Business opportunities have accurate staffing plans and is pipelined in a structured way
• Proactively provides the Finance and Commercial leadership with key workforce metrics to help drive overall business profitability

Experience You bring to this role:

You will have 10 years working in a highly matrixed, fast-moving service industry and successfully managed a Delivery or Resource Management department within a company of comparable size and scale.  With passion for critical and systems thinking, you will have a deep understanding of the Resource Management function, and familiarity with best-in-class resource management tools (i.e., 10k Feet).  Demonstrated extensive leadership capabilities partnering at a C-suite level, as well as leading and inspiring a team. Finally, you will add to the Ogilvy Culture - adding value and changing the way we work/think/act. You will foster a spirit of innovation and ideas over egos. And ensure respect, inclusion within the People Planning team and Ogilvy at large.