Workforce management (WFM) refers to processes/systems supporting employees’ optimal productivity and performance. It is a basic necessity for every company that desires to attain its objectives by meeting customers’ requirements and observing applicable laws and rules. This blog outlines workforce management, its process, and why it can benefit your organisation.
What is Workforce Management?
WFM is how companies strategically deploy people and resources, manage time and attendance, and monitor constantly changing work rules and regulations. Eventually, the purpose is maximising production and lowering the risk.
WFM is not a single undertaking but a cyclical process consisting of planning, execution, monitoring, and improvement processes on the workforce activities in question. WFM covers various aspects of human resources management, such as:
- Labour forecasting: Forecasting future labour demands and supplies using past data, trends, and business objectives.
- Scheduling: Designing work schedules corresponding to the labour projections while considering staff preferences and availability.
- Time tracking: To record and check on the actual hours of work by an employee, inclusive of off time, overtime and absences.
- Overtime management: Managing and reducing overtime costs to comply with the laws.
What are the Workforce Management Processes?
WFM is a suite of procedures and actions employers perform to ensure the processes are functional. Here are the main workforce management process and their descriptions:
- Planning: Companies need to plan a workforce management process to enhance productivity and efficiency. By setting up staffing goals, strategies, and needs in the short-term and long-run one can plan a project successfully.
- Scheduling: This involves developing a schedule that matches the workforce plan and is also compatible with what employees can do, as well as their willingness. This means applying a workforce management solution which generates the best schedule while considering aspects like skills, qualifications, seniority, location, shift pattern, etc. This process results in an employee-satisfying schedule that maximises operational effectiveness.
- Execution: Establishing, monitoring and controlling the work schedules and employees’ attendance are parts of executing a plan. Use of workforce management solution that monitors and validates the time worked by employees beyond normal hours, break times and absence. This also includes monitoring the leave request process, approval, and balancing, how absence influences workforce productivity and its impacts on cost.
- Monitoring: This implies that they involve the measurement and evaluation of workforce performance and compliance. Using KPIs and benchmarking helps compare the observed results against the set objectives. As a result, the outcome of this process is a detailed analysis of the strengths and failures experienced by the employees and their outcomes.
- Improvement: Identifying and executing the changes in the processes and the systems used across the workforce. This entails employing the workforce’s perspectives and knowledge about the underlying causes of the problems, the efficient practices, and possible actions to address them. In addition, it involves its employees and stakeholders in feedback and change management processes. This results in an action plan which includes what improvements need to be made and who does it when it is done.
What are the Benefits of Workforce Management Processes?
The workforce management processes can bring various benefits to the organisation, such as:
- Improved employee engagement: The appropriate workforce management (WFM) processes can increase employee motivation and satisfaction along with employee loyalty by providing the workers with appropriate and honest time tracking, clear and fair work schedules, and timely and genuine feedback.
- Increased customer satisfaction: The WFM processes, therefore, help in enhancing service quality, delivery, and responsiveness, all of which contribute towards high levels of customer satisfaction and retention.
- Enhanced financial performance: The implemented WFM processes will enhance the revenue, profitability, and return on investment in the organisation by optimising labour costs, productivity, and efficiency.
- Reduced risk mitigation: Legal compliance and business ethics can lower the risks of fines or penalties, lawsuits, and reputational damages and enhance the employee’s welfare and safety.
How to Choose a Workforce Management Solution?
Workforce Management Solution (WMS) is a tool that assists enterprises in automating the implementation of processes and systems to enhance the same. The features, functionality, scalability, integration, and support of a WFM solution can differ among vendors and products. Therefore, choosing a WFM solution requires careful consideration of the specific needs and goals of the organisation, as well as the following criteria:
- Features: For the successful implementation of a WFM solution, it should be able to perform basic activities like labour forecasting, scheduling, time-tracking, absence, overtime management, data and analytics, and compliance management. Additionally, the system should include functionalities such as self-service, mobile access, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing to enhance user experience and business value.
- Functionality: The WFM solution must be easy to use, configure as well as customised as per the preferred user and business rules. Reliability, security, speed, quality, etc., must characterise trustworthy workforce data and systems; with this in view, I recommend using such techniques.
- Scalability: It is paramount that a WFM solution has the capability of conforming to the changing organisational needs and requirements. The system should be able to handle the rising levels of volumes and complexities in workers’ data and activities, as well as facilitate expansion and diverse aspects of operation.
- Integration: The WFM solution should support various other systems that an organisation is operating on, for instance, payroll, human resources, accounting, customer relationship management, etc. In addition, it should have the capacity to integrate with the outlying ones, including social networks, cloud, as well as third-party applications.
- Support: Using a promising WFM solution means being backed by a reputable and responsive vendor that can provide the necessary support and guidance for the installation, implementation, and maintenance of the WFM solution. It should also offer the training, documentation, and updates that can help the users maximise the benefits and features of the WFM solution.
Conclusion
All organisations strive to emerge successful within the turbulent business world, where workforce management remains critical. By adhering to workforce management processes and utilising a workforce management solution, managers can maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of the employees so that they meet organisational goals, customer satisfaction, legal requirements, and company objectives.
Organisations can utilise ProHance as a resource for their workforce management activities. Through the use of ProHance, they can ensure that the objectives are met in terms of increased employee productivity, higher quality, customer satisfaction and compliance with the rules and regulations. Other than enhancing staff wellness, it also improves work-life balance, awareness, engagement among workers, and their general well-being. The future of work for a hybrid or geographically dispersed workforce could be made possible by adopting ProHance.
