Pizazz to Shiraz: Workforce Planning Coordinator & Wine Maker On-The-Side

“Remote work enables me to live in regional Victoria and with LAB³’s one team model across Australia and New Zealand, it’s a bonus that when I’m back visiting family in my hometown of Auckland, I can also catch up with the local LAB³sters there.”

Describing herself as an avid foodie, Louise lives in country Victoria, where there is a plentiful supply of freshly grown produce and a short winding drive to a local vineyard where she and her husband “rent a row”.

“We are both intrigued by the science of making wine, starting with picking the grapes ourselves,” says Lousie. “Everything is done on site, from crushing, to flavouring and bottling. It is romantic and idyllic, being able to swing out and check our barrel late on a Sunday afternoon.”

Always with the end goal front of mind, a top-notch shiraz, Louise is meticulous and methodical in her approach to winemaking, but unafraid to experiment a little, to perfect the wine’s bouquet as it matures. This is the same way she approaches workforce planning at LAB³.

“With workforce planning, I spend a lot of time and effort balancing everything to ensure everyone wins,” says Louise.

“For clients winning means achieving the business outcomes they are striving for, and for our crew, they win when they are assigned the type of work which they find most rewarding.”

Moving the pieces around is highly strategic and involves a bit of pizzaz. “Thinking about client needs and their requirements involves thinking about what could happen in the future, and how our expert engineers and consultants can support their short and long term goals,” says Louise.

As a Workforce Planning Coordinator, Louise is involved throughout the full lifecycle of client projects, from before contracts with clients are fully signed until the last day of delivery and the final debrief.

Louise worked in IT recruitment for over 10 years prior to joining LAB³, and in workforce planning, she is enjoying the opportunity to work across many areas of the business.

Every week and often multiple times, Louise meets with the Sales team to stay up to speed with the pipeline, with leaders in the PMO to understand what skill sets are required in each role for each project, with Project Managers as projects unfold to cover scope changes and other dynamics, and with engineers to understand their work preferences.

“I enjoy collaborating with so many people across different contexts and figuring everything out. There’s a shared sense of achieving together.”

Although Louise manages the here and now, her mind is always on the future, looking well ahead of time and “thinking up new strategies to do things better”.

One example Louise cites as future thinking teamwork, is LAB³ having recently launched a Workforce Agility initiative, so that engineers are supported to pursue opportunities beyond their areas of expertise.

“This has created pathways for Cloud & DevOps engineers to stretch themselves and explore AI roles, with mentoring from our AI specialists,” explains Louise. “The individuals, clients, and our company all win.”

Louise finds it enormously rewarding when everything comes together. “The ultimate measure for this is seeing how highly our clients are rating LAB³ in Client Satisfaction Surveys,” says Louise. “In CSATs, LAB³ clients consistently rate their average overall experiences with Professional Services at over 9/10.”​

When asked about what the ultimate measure of success would be for her and her husband’s winemaking, Louise laughs.

“Success will simply be sharing our wine with close friends with a cheese platter and a BBQ in our own backyard.“