In an era of fast-paced digital transformation, the business world and its dynamics have undergone drastic changes. Workforce management has evolved from a back-office function to a strategic priority. WFM, as a function and a term, has changed over the years because this function is no longer associated with the work of tracking employees and keeping a record of their shifts.
The function it is associated with is aligning and hiring the right people for the right job role and title. As this action will help the company in increasing its productivity, employee satisfaction, and ultimately boost organisational performance. As companies now navigate their way into hybrid work models, the constant increase in employee expectations and data-driven decision making, the usage of workforce management has emerged as a critical and crucial tool for success.
In this blog, we will explore how effective the WFM strategies are, and we can transform the organisation’s operations and empower the teams for the future.
What is workforce management (WFM)?
Workforce Management is a strategic and proactive method of optimising a company’s workforce, which helps maximise productivity, efficiency, and compliance. It also involves the principles of managing all aspects of a working staff, including scheduling, time and attendance, and payroll, to ensure that the right number of employees with the right skills are available at the right time.
Below is a more detailed explanation:
- Strategic Alignment: WFM helps in aligning the staff of the company with its overall business goals, making sure that the resources are effectively used and are being used to achieve the desired results from the employees.
- Optimised Scheduling: WFM makes sure to involve the needs of the labour, creating a schedule and managing the shifts to meet the customers’ demand and make sure that there is enough staffing every day.
- Time and Attendance Tracking: The company and HR need to track the correct and accurate timings of logging in and out of the company, along with efficient tracking of the employee time and attendance. Tracking of time and attendance is very crucial for payroll processing and compliance with the labour laws.
- Compliance and Risk Mitigation: Workforce Management helps the organisation to stay in alignment with the labour laws, reduce the risk of workplace conflicts and address potential skill shortages.
- Performance Management: WFM helps in tracking the performance of the employees, and helps in providing insights into the employee productivity and also helps in identifying the areas of improvement.
- Cost Reduction: The Effective Workforce Management can help in reducing the labour costs by improving the staff quality, minimising the overtime of the employees and also making sure that there is efficient resource allocation.
- Employee Engagement: By empowering the employees and providing them with fair and transparent management practices, the company invests properly in their workforce to have a more engaged and motivated workforce.
Key components of workforce management
Every business and company is unique; you might never find two businesses working in the same manner, even though they are catering to the same services and products. There will be a difference in their operations. Therefore, there are no two workforce management processes identical. However, some key components of Workforce Management should be included and followed:
- AI and Automation: With the help of AI and its automation feature, the companies can make their WFM work more efficiently and effectively, as the AI will help in distributing the tasks according to the skills of the employees and will also make sure that the employees are not overburdened with work.
The HR Automation and AI in the offices have an important role in enhancing workplace efficiency and effectiveness in many ways:
- It helps in streamlining the administrative tasks such as payroll and leave management, which results in reducing errors and improving the efficiency of the workforce.
- The WFM, along with AI and automation, helps in giving immediate assistance during the critical moments with the chatbots.
- With automation and AI, companies save their employees time from repetitive tasks like setting reminders for follow-up calls, sending emails regularly, etc. This feature helps in making the employees more creative and focus on strategic work.
- Staff Forecasting and Scheduling: The businesses should have the smartness and ability to forecast their needs for workforce according to the seasonal or the time when the company gets more than usual workload.
Too many employees at a time when there is no need for an extra workforce can result in the wastage of the labour budgets, while too less workforce during bulk work or overload of tasks and targets, will result in inefficiency and non-submission of the work on time.
- Time and Attendance Tracking: Time and attendance tracking is very crucial for the calculation and disbursement of salary on time. The company tracks the employees’ records, attendance, time of login and logout, their performance, etc, to ensure that the employees and the company comply with the labour laws and regulations.
The company can also use WFM to track time and enhance the productivity of the employees, and make sure that the time sheet is always accurate.
- Real-time Team Management: With the feature of tracking real-time team management, businesses can monitor employee schedules and customer demands on an hourly basis. Due to the real-time tracking team management, it has become easy for the company and the managers of the teams to make immediate changes and replacements if needed.
So that the business and the task are running and being completed efficiently and on time. With the help of the WFM component, one can also highlight the need for training to the employees, along with bringing improvements in the way business is being carried out at peak levels.
- Reporting and Analytics: WFM can help businesses in making data-driven decisions through its reporting and analytics features. The WFM software helps companies and businesses gather information on the employees’ performance, attendance and turnover rates.
While WFM helps gather all the necessary information about the employees and other aspects of running a business, it also helps the company know the areas where improvements are needed, and strategies to be implemented and set long-term goals.
- Regulatory Compliance: WFM helps the company stay in alignment with the labour laws by automating the processes which are related to the working hours of the employees, overtime done by the employees and also employee classifications. Once you start using the advanced form of technology, especially the CustomGPT, you can be assured that you won’t be overassigning work to any employee, which might not align with the labour law.
Who uses workforce management?
Workforce Management is used by organisations that seek to optimise their employee resources and enhance the productivity of employees and the company. This is a process that is used by the employees to distribute their resources and employees, monitor attendance and comply with the labour laws, which will ultimately aim at identifying priorities, predicting future hurdles and difficulties while also suggesting preventive measures.
Below is a more detailed breakdown of who uses the WFM.
- All Organisations: The size of the industry or the business does not matter. Businesses can benefit from WFM by improving team performance and satisfaction.
- Retail and Hospitality: The retail and hospitality sector relies heavily on the WFM software because of its ability to predict and suggest the required number of staff during the seasonal fluctuations.
- Healthcare: The Healthcare industry uses and needs the WFM function and the software to manage the patient’s appointment with the doctor, along with coordinating with the complex care teams for their availability.
- Field Service Industries: The telecommunications, manufacturing and utilities industry use the WFM software to manage their technicians, handle their service appointments and minimise the travel time.
- Other Industries: The other industries that also benefit and use WFM are the insurance, banking, distribution and transportation industries. They use this software to keep a record of their hourly working employees. These industries are very sensitive to time-sensitive tasks.
- Specific Roles: The team managers or the HRs of the company use this software to make their work productive and also help them in taking strategic decisions for the company.
Why is workforce management important?
WFM is important because it helps the organisation in optimising and using the workforce of the company efficiently and effectively. This helps in maximising efficiency, productivity and profitability. The main function of WFM is that it helps in planning, scheduling and managing the employees to ensure that there is an adequate workforce in the company, and this workforce is allotted the right role as per their talents and capabilities.
Below are some of the factors that make WFM important.
- Accurate Payroll: Once WFM is integrated with your system, it will look after all the details of the employee, right from time login to logout, leaves, overtime, staying back, half days, out for business travel, etc. This helps the HR managers avoid any kind of manual errors and disperse the salary on time.
- Improved Productivity: With WFM integrated and working in your systems, it helps the office manage its workforce better. The software makes sure to track the performance of the employees and suggest a training and development program for the employees, or assign roles and designations according to the capability and years of experience of the employees.
- Enhanced Employee Satisfaction: When the company works with WFM, it helps in knowing the employees’ weaknesses and the areas that need to be improved. This helps the company in providing training and development programs for the employees, which makes them feel valued and seen.
- Cost Reduction: The WFM software helps the company in analysing the number of staff or work personnel needed during an off-season or during the season where there is a need for work personnel for handling the workload. This helps the company in maintaining its existing employment cost.
- Compliance Assurance: With WFM, the HR department of the company does not need to worry about checking whether the company and the employees are following the labour laws and other legal rules and regulations. The WFM helps in checking whether the employee who is working overtime is complying with the labour rules, and the company is not putting work pressure on one employee only.
- Scheduling: The company needs to have a proper schedule prepared as per the leaves and availability of the employees, as this will help them in assigning the work tasks and client meetings according to the availability of the employees.
Benefits of workforce management
Workforce Management is beneficial to the organisation in many ways. Below are some of the most beneficial points for the businesses that implement WFM processes:
Cost Reduction: Having employees on payroll is one of the most difficult tasks for many businesses, and at the same time, it is one of the most expensive expenses for the company. NoFHrw, the businesses can reduce their payroll expenses by using every single penny for good use. This can be done through having a precise employee scheduling and an accurate forecast about employee hiring. There is no need for overhiring of staff and letting them do overtime, and making sure the employees do work in the office in compliance with the labour laws and are giving efficient results.
Strategic Planning: A good WFM system gives businesses insight into the business trends and performance analytics, which provides a springboard for optimising strategies. With WFM, the businesses can ensure that they have the right number of employees working at the right time and analyse the company trends which are related to the performance. In addition, the businesses can use the WFM principles to plan for retirements and resignations so that they have a workforce full of top talent and highly productive employees.
Improved Productivity: WFM principles like workforce allocation and performance monitoring can optimise team productivity and make sure that the employees are operating at the right role assigned to them based on their skill set. In this process, if the managers identify that a certain employee is not performing as required and is not meeting the performance standards, then they can be assigned a different role or they can be assigned to training programmes, which will help them improve their performance.
Enhanced Employee Satisfaction: The Workforce Management Software helps in balancing workloads and provides consistent employee schedules, which are a constant throughout the process of hiring and staffing. When these forecasts are already done and informed to the employees and their managers, they have enough time to schedule their future work schedule, and the prepared schedule notifies enough staff on a particular day to attend and interact with the customers. Due to the already prepared schedule, the employees get an opportunity to balance their personal and professional lives together, along with reducing the burnout of employees.
How to choose the right WFM solution
The right WFM solution for your company and the business will differ by the team’s goals and the size of the organisation. Below are some of the factors that you should consider before you select the best WFM solution for the company:
Integration and Compatibility: The first basic step is to see whether the chosen WFM software is ready to integrate with your systems. Here, your systems means that the WFM software has to integrate and amalgamate with your HR, payroll, ERP and others. After the proper combination of the software and your system, there is compatibility between both systems and a robust API capability that will help in communication between both platforms.
Scalability and Flexibility: You can also examine a good WFM software by analysing the scalability and flexibility of the WFM software to know whether the software will be able to handle and adapt to the changes according to the needs and preferences of your company.
Insights and Analytics: You cannot improve your old methods until and unless you have a report or you have measured the way these methods are working. Therefore, with the help of a WFM software, you can find the solution to the overpricing method of payroll or staffing. With a WFM, you can get a detailed report on the employee performance, labour costs and scheduling efficiency. This detailed report is important for the management to make informed decisions.
Manager and Employee Experience: Out of all the other steps, having a user experience is very important as this will help you in identifying the areas of lacking or improvement needed. When the user, an employee or a manager, tries to work on this interface, they should easily and smoothly have an experience of using this, as this will be a platform that will help teams work together and share information. Therefore, there should be a feature of using this software on a desktop, a mobile or a laptop.
Final Thoughts
Workforce Management Software is a platform that works smartly with your system and gives accurate and reliable reports based on the data entered and given to the platform. The WFM works closely with the HRM software of the company to ensure accuracy in the details of the employee’s information and project details.
Once WFM is integrated with your system, it helps the company in knowing the needs of the staff force, along with knowing the need for extra staff and the expenses behind a particular employee. It will also help you in knowing the employee’s performance over a certain period of time, and will also point out the areas where they need training or some development in their skill set. It will also give an analysis of whether the employee is a perfect fit for the role assigned to them or not.
The WFM will handle all the automated tasks of the employees, allowing the human workforce to focus on more important and strategic decisions of the company. Therefore, if you are looking for a platform that will integrate with your system and handle all the workforce-related activities, then look for a software that fits well with your current systems.
