Productivity in workforce management refers to employee productivity. It is measured in terms of employee performance, project execution, the output generated, goal achievements, timely deliveries, client satisfaction rate, etc.
Workforce Management System for Business Optimization
Learn What is Workforce Management, its Need, Features, Working & How it is Impacts your Business. Also, Discover Importance of Workforce Management Systems.
We live in an information society deeply impacted by the effects of globalization and the global economy. The capitalized economy has given birth to a global workforce and new workplace trends, changing how businesses or companies run.
As your business organization or company grow, managing the people or employees becomes difficult, with remote working and virtual meetings. It has given birth to new workforce management trends where employee well-being, satisfaction, and flexibility take the driver's seat.
How to manage workforce with the evolving market, work culture, and digitization?
This blog intends to answer this question by discussing what workforce management is, its needs, benefits, effective strategies for managing the workforce, workforce management systems and software, and its features.
What is Workforce Management?
Workforce management involves all the processes, policies, procedures, or actions a company or organization adopts to optimize employee productivity. Strategic workforce planning, allocating resources/ tasks based on employee capability, monitoring absenteeism and attendance and performance, etc., is required to efficiently manage workforce. It impacts the company's productivity and the relationship of employees with the company or organization.
Benefits of Workforce Management
Why is it essential to have a workforce management system in place? These benefits will answer the question by stressing the significance of workplace planning:
Control Costs
Strategic workforce planning could help track, monitor, identify and control the expenditure due to excess overtime, overstaffing, and other expenses using labor forecasting technology. With the right workforce management tools, one could identify the impact schedules have on budgets and take measures to control them.
Run payroll with greater
Another benefit of an effective digital workforce management system is enhanced accuracy with payroll. Analyzing work hours, patterns or overtime, repetitive data entry, etc., is easy with the work management tools to minimize errors and manual calculation mistakes regarding payroll.
Improve productivity
Assessing and evaluating employee performance through milestones, benchmarks, attendance data, etc., becomes easy with standardized workforce planning processes. Cross-checking data and performance across industries and regions is also possible with the right WFM system. Employers could take corrective measures to improve productivity if the workforce lags behind and doesn't measure up.
Create efficient schedules
Schedules are necessary for a seamless business operation, and managing and creating the schedule with a larger workforce becomes a hassle. This is where the workforce management system comes in handy for managers to quickly assess the vacancy and fill the role preventing understaffed situations in the workplace. Work management tools or software makes scheduling work by department, location, or project effortless.
Minimize compliance risks
Compliance risks weigh heavily on a business or company during audits. Keeping tabs on whether any employee-centric state laws or policies are getting violated is easy with work management software, digital bookkeeping, and database management.
Need for Workforce Management
Workforce management is needed as it can help tackle the following:
How does Workforce Management work?
The range of activities and functions performed by the work management system facilitates human resource management and makes it attractive to most companies and businesses. How a company manages its employees and staff says a lot about its culture and way of operation, and reflects its professionalism.
Here are some functions and features of workforce management making it essential to manage workforce:
Labor forecasting
Labor forecasting projects the type and number of staff and resources needed for a project, department, or during a certain duration of a year, i.e., seasonal or holiday demand. This feature enables the employer to forecast the labor needs aligning with the resource and budget available in the company.
Scheduling
Scheduling becomes a piece of cake with workforce management tools. Staff scheduling is easily automated considering business variables like vacation, availability, workload, and absences. The conventional manual scheduling practices have become obsolete in the light of the new WFM system, which is time-saving and efficient.
Time tracking and Absence management
Time and attendance tracking using workforce management tools or software reflect the attendance pattern helping companies or organizations predict and manage planned and unplanned absences or leaves. The data generated by the WFH tool enables the companies to react to the changing demand and tackle issues of tardiness and chronic absences.
Overtime management
Tracking and monitoring the overtime done by employees is covered in the overtime management feature of the workforce management system. It also helps to configure time and set limits on overtime and other rules to prevent employees or staff from misusing it and automating the overtime process.
Analytics
The real-time data generated and projected by the workforce management tools enable managers to assess trends and employee patterns and make schedule adjustments as required. Analytics also come in handy while evaluating employee performance.
Regulatory compliance
The workforce management system also takes care of tracking and regulation compliance. Adhering to the compliance laws and policies of the state and government is mandatory for every business or company. Neglecting these laws could lead to lawsuits. A workforce management system makes tracking necessary certifications, role-specific training, labor standards, union agreements, and leave policies easy.
Mobile accessibility
Employers can easily access and operate the workforce management software from their mobile phones. Editing, filling, and modifying schedules and vacancies is easy with mobile accessibility.
How to Create an Effective Workforce Management Strategy?
Creating an effective workforce management strategy requires the employers to concentrate on activities associated with sustaining a cost-effective, productive and happy workplace. To ensure this modification in management policies and employee-centric policies are required according to the changing needs and working environment.
Strategic workforce planning it's not easy. Building workforce planning processes to manage workforce, given the pace at which the work culture is evolving, is not easy. However, if the following factors are taken into account, crafting a workforce management strategy could be tackled:
Standardization of processes and policies
The first step toward employee management is standardizing the rules, policies, and processes. Transparency is crucial to workforce management regarding scheduling, overtime, leaves, attendance, and time tracking. Employees should be clear about the processes, policies, and rules impacting them directly and indirectly.
Automation of time and attendance tracking
If your company still follows a manual timesheet, it's time to turn to technology. Some industries like healthcare, manufacturing and retail are still on manual time sheets. Now it is time to stop and automate time tracking and attendance. Doing so will ensure the HR, finance, and operations department have more time to focus on business development and business goal implementation.
Moreover, automation would improve the data accuracy and minimizes payroll errors to control labor cost.
Automation of employee scheduling function
Another key aspect to consider in workforce planning processes is automating staff schedules. Having more than the required individuals on a project or activity is one of the common mistakes, with manual scheduling increasing the cost. By automating the scheduling, it's easier to pre-plan schedules to align with cost revenue ratios. Automated staff scheduling also enables managers to create schedules adhering to forecasted needs, project demand, company policies, and compliance. It's easier to optimize scheduling with automation than a manual time sheet.
Review employee/manager self-service options
Including self-service options in your workforce planning is a proven method of attracting, retaining, and motivating employees. Ensuring self-services gives employees or employers a sense of control over their working hours, leaves, shift swaps, and holidays. Automating this process will take the load off the managers and supervisors if a standardized system is followed, improving the employee relationship and satisfaction.
Implementation of proactive absence management procedures
Absenteeism is prevalent across industries, and it hampers the productivity and profitability of a company. It delays deliveries, impacts client relationships, causes over time, and affects the morale of other employees covering for the absentees. Therefore, to curb absenteeism, proactive management procedures should be enforced. Using an automated solution, proactive measures could be taken through real-time analysis, ensuring decisions are taken quickly to mitigate absentees.
Formalization of flexible, remote, and mobile working strategy
Convenience and flexibility are expected by most employees in the present work culture and globalized economy. Employees value work-life and personal life balance, thus, ensuring this balance in the workforce planning processes would improve retention and satisfaction among staff. [Here are 8 essential tips to improve work-life balance]. Flexible working hours, leave policies, remote working provisions, and other benefits have taken over old 9 to 5 jobs with exhausting hours with burgeoning numbers of millennials. So, if you plan to deprive your employee of these benefits, re-think and reposition your workforce management strategy.
What are Workforce Management Systems and Software?
A workforce management system comprises the tools, software, or solution used to tackle human resource management and associated activities to sustain employee management. Workforce management software is the solution if you are looking for an effective way to manage workforce (i.e., staff and personnel). The right software helps to plan, organize, track, monitor, and analyze business metrics to boost productivity, profitability, and efficiency.
Managing the workforce eases with automation and digitizing workforce management systems. Implementing a workforce management strategy is also ensured by utilizing the right solution
Benefits of Workforce Management Systems and Software
If you are still on conventional methods for workforce management, it's time to transition to automation. Here's why you should opt for workforce management software:
Increases Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction plays a crucial role in employee retention rate and productivity. Satisfied employees tend to harbor loyalty towards their work, enhancing productivity and overall company financial health. Workforce management can aid this by giving employees control and freedom to modify personal schedules, request time off, and enter working hours with ease. Ensuring these self-services empower employees impacts the retention rate.
Improves Analytical Functions
Employers across industries, businesses, and sectors require business data management and analysis to plan their next move and assess the present conditions. Workforce management software captures real-time data to evaluate and compare business performance against budget, patterns of absenteeism and overtime, leave applied, resourced and labor demanded by a specific project, etc. The diverse analytical functions ease the task of HR, operations, and finance managers.
Minimizes Compliance Risks
Ensuring compliance with the state and government laws and policies is necessary for any business or company to operate. Deferring these laws leads to legal actions. Maintaining manual compliance records becomes a hassle and time-consuming, increasing the chances of errors. This is where the speed of workforce management software comes in handy. WFM solution automatically maintains compliance records which could be pulled up easily during audits.
Enhances Customer Experience
A WFM software is equipped to combine customer service as a metric to assess employee performance. Employees could be assessed on the basis of their interactions with the client and keep of log such interactions and meetings to enhance the customer experience. If the employees are aware that this assessment factor will impact their appraisals, hike, and performance evaluation, they will take measures to improve it by maintaining the standard. HR managers could pull up the data, assess the customer experience, and take measures to correct it by providing the required training or workshop.
Features of Workforce Management Systems and Software
Now that you are exposed to the benefits of the workforce management software and system, let's look into the key features of the system rendering it valuable to HR managers and employers:
Time and attendance tracking
As the work-from-home culture is dissolving quickly, a digitized and online time tracker and attendance marker are essential to manage workforce. WFM software comes with the ability to track time and mark check-in/out time. Employee productivity and working hours could be easily assessed with this feature.
Labor scheduling
Scheduling tasks and forecasting labor needs is another key feature of workforce management software. Instead of manually scheduling tasks and work assignments, the system could automate this process based on the parameters set by the employers. Common mistakes like overcrowding and assigning more than required staff on a project could be mitigated by ensuring cost control.
Compliance monitoring
You can rest assured from the tension of breaking any state or government compliance laws with WFM software. Monitoring whether the employees are compliant and adhering to the company's policies, regulations, and rules is possible with workforce management tools.
Leave management
The process of leave management is completely automated with WFM software. The employer could set the rules, regulations, and limits of paid leaves, holidays, earned leaves, etc., standardizing the process of leave application and approval.
Staffing optimization
Most time recognizing the optimum number of employees for a project, department, team, or task is miscalculated. The workforce management software's analytics features ensure optimum staffing is ensured on every project or task to prevent overcrowding. Optimizing staff could save money, increase productivity, and ensure the timely completion of tasks and deliveries.
Task management
A company takes care of diverse projects with multiple sub-tasks involved. Assigning these tasks correctly aligning with the resources, budget, and staffing is essential for project execution and completion. A workforce management software could ensure easy task management across departments by analyzing employee performance and past records for good results.
Employee self-service, including time-off requests and peer-to-peer shift trades
Employee self-services are always good for enhancing control and employee satisfaction. Ensuring the freedom to leave, time-offs, peer-to-peer shifts, schedule modifications, and swapping builds the satisfaction rate and enhances retention. Dissipating control to employees regarding aspects directly impacting them improves the work culture.
How to Select Workforce Management Systems and Software for your Business?
Choosing the right workforce management software could be challenging, given the diverse features and solutions. Many factors come into play while narrowing down the best workforce management solution for your business, company, or organization. Some of the factors to consider include:
- The size of your business (i.e., small, medium, or large). As it determines the extent of services of features required to identify the kind of workforce solution you are looking for.
- The level of customization is ensured by the workforce management system or solution.
- The scalability and scope of the workforce management software. If your business grows from small to large enterprise, is the solution equipped to handle this?
- The user interface (UI). A simple and easily understandable UI made the software more desirable.
- Features and modules supported by the software. Check whether the software has the features you are looking for, like employee scheduling, attendance, task assignment, leave application, labor forecasting, etc.
- The level of integration and compatibility with other HR software
- The analytics tool and report generation capabilities
- The customer support offered by the software company and their reviews
- And most importantly, the cost of the software. Don't go for an expansive workforce management solution if you're a small company if all you want is automating attendance, time tracking, and the leave process.
Conclusion
No matter how digitized the world has become, people are always crucial for any business to run and operate. Therefore, workforce management is essential to ensure productivity, employee satisfaction, human resource management, efficiency, cost-efficiency, time-tracking, and overall, the well-being of a company and organization. Invest your time and money on the right workforce management solution to build an attractive work culture underlining flexibility and convenience with productivity and efficiency. Provide the best comfort for your employees and order the best office chairs via Amazon Business and avail great discounts.
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