My name is Julie Bullock, and I am the Head of WFM for the UK and Ireland. My Foundever journey started back in 1995 when I joined a small independent call centre company of about 50 people in Watford. I had just completed my university degree in French and German, and took customer registration calls from English, French and German customers, and planned to do this for 6 months for some work experience and to decide on my career path.
After 18 months, I moved into a client account management role looking after some of our clients and enjoyed doing this for another 3 years as we took on new clients and grew, merging with other companies in Dublin, and then the USA, and Europe.
One summer, I sat in on some training for our first WFM tool (Qmax), which meant we could move our forecasting and scheduling from excel to a planning system. Within 3 months, I was responsible for the forecasting, scheduling and operational support for the Watford site (by now at around 200 heads) and for training our WFM systems and COPC processes out to new sites as we grew into ClientLogic.
In 2005, I relocated from Watford to Newcastle to join the new Pan-EMEA Resource Planning Team, supporting forecasting and scheduling for all UK ClientLogic sites, and some of the new European sites, and then to incorporate the Foundever sites after the merger with ClientLogic.
After a brief spell elsewhere (where the grass was not greener), I returned to the team 10 years ago, and for the last 5 years, have had the privilege to lead the UK Planning team based in Newcastle. Now, I have ownership for all UK WFM and support those performing this key role over all of our sites.
Much has changed in 25 years, but what has never changed has been the people that we work with. I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of great people, many of whom have moved on but are still friends, and to have met my husband of 20 years. As the company has grown, it has given me lots of opportunities to travel, to learn new skills and to share my experience, for all of which I am very grateful.
In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re highlighting the bold and powerful women of Foundever, celebrating that we’re all different, but equal. These are their stories of diversity, balance, success, gender equality and about leading the change you want to see.