Job no: 560130
Work type: Full time
Site: Redditch
Categories: Central Support
Location: West Midlands, Worcestershire
Salary: £35,894

ABOUT US

At Halfords, our mission is to inspire and support a lifetime of motoring and cycling. As a specialist retailer, we lead the market through customer-driven innovation and a distinct product range. We are dedicated to providing our customers with an integrated, unique, and convenient service experience - from e-bike and electric vehicle servicing to on-demand solutions. Our commitment is to foster customer loyalty by offering compelling reasons to keep coming back to our stores, ensuring a lifetime of motoring and cycling enjoyment.
The teams at our Redditch Support Centre work with every other area of our business, putting them at the heart of the action and playing a key role in our success and growth. Everyone brings their individual knowledge and experience to work every day, working as one team to keep things moving smoothly.
If you’re willing to get stuck in, you’ll love it here too. So put yourself at the heart of a dynamic, fast-paced working environment where expertise and focus take people far.

THE ROLE

As a Forecasting & Planning Analyst at Halfords, you’ll play a central role in making sure our contact centre operations both in-house and with our outsource partner, run at their best. Supporting over 400 people across multiple channels and services, you’ll take ownership of the data, analysis and forecasting that ensures we have the right people, in the right place, at the right time. It’s a hands-on role where your models, insights and recommendations will directly influence service levels, recruitment plans and budget performance.
You’ll thrive if you enjoy turning complex datasets into meaningful insight, building and maintaining forecasting models, and spotting trends that others miss. With advanced Excel skills and a solid grounding in contact centre or workforce planning environments, you’ll be confident manipulating large data sets and providing clear, actionable analysis to stakeholders. You’ll work closely with our Forecast & Capacity Manager, who’ll focus on the strategic decisions, while you make sure the data, models and forecasts are accurate, current and delivering what the business needs.
This is a newly created role, so there’s plenty of scope to make it your own. You’ll help shape our processes and tools, challenge how things are done today, and play an active part in improving how we plan, forecast and allocate resources. For someone who loves data, enjoys collaborating, and wants the chance to have a visible impact in a fast-moving, customer-focused environment, this is a great opportunity.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Build, maintain and improve forecasting models for our in-house and outsourced contact centre teams, covering multiple channels including retail, garages, membership and customer retention.
• Analyse historical and real-time data to spot trends, understand drivers and provide clear insight into workload, staffing and performance.
• Partner closely with the Forecast & Capacity Manager, providing the data and analysis that supports strategic decisions around recruitment, budgets and capacity planning.

Prepare clear reports and dashboards to communicate performance, forecast accuracy and operational insights to stakeholders at all levels.

• Collaborate with outsourcing partners to ensure forecasts align with contractual requirements and operational capabilities.
• Use advanced Excel skills (and ideally Power BI) to manipulate large datasets and create models that improve forecasting accuracy and efficiency.
• Support continuous improvement by reviewing existing processes, identifying opportunities to refine models and introducing better ways of working.