How to Succeed In Business With A Robust Workforce Management Platform
When a coach sends a football team out onto the field, they don't just send out a selection of random players. Instead, they carefully select a team with the perfect blend of skills, expertise, and camaraderie to win the game ahead.
The modern workplace is no different. To succeed in business, a company must use a well–crafted workforce management strategy to select the perfect combination of employees and resources. This strategy involves analyzing data, optimizing processes, and making informed decisions to ensure that the right people are in position at the right time.
This guide explores the benefits and challenges of workforce management, its key functions, and how to choose the best workforce management platform for your organization.
What is workforce management?
Workforce management is the process of planning, scheduling, and tracking employee tasks to optimize productivity and efficiency within an organization. It involves managing staffing levels, work schedules, time and attendance, performance, and more, to ensure your best people are in position at the right time and equipped with the resources they need to perform. This is essential for businesses of all sizes when the goals are introducing streamlined processes and boosting overall efficiency.
What are the key functions of workforce management?
The following core aspects of workforce management form the backbone of your business and are pivotal in optimizing staff performance and organizational efficiency:
Time and attendance tracking
Employers need to know when their employees attend work, take breaks, and leave at the end of the day. Time tracking isn't about employee surveillance but ensuring productivity and keeping accurate records for payroll and compliance. Working from the data, managers can also identify employee attendance issues and respond to absence management issues accordingly.
Leave management
When your employees need time off for vacation, illness, or personal commitments, leave management helps employers track these leave requests effectively. Potential scheduling conflicts may arise if all of your employees want the same week of vacation or if a project's launch date coincides with an employee's approved leave. Effective workforce management ensures leaders have plenty of time to plan for these situations and avoid negative consequences.
Labor forecasting
Even organizations with a steady headcount may need to anticipate labor changes for an upcoming project or fluctuations in seasonal demand. For example, if your retail store has extended its opening hours before the holiday season, you may need to hire extra shift workers to support your regular employees. Demand forecasting combines historical data, current trends, and predictions to help managers determine staffing levels based on expected workload. This ensures the availability of the right number of employees to meet business demands without overstaffing and increasing overhead costs.
Scheduling
If your company requires employees to work set hours or specific shifts, effective scheduling ensures you have the right number of employees scheduled for each shift and the right mix of skills and expertise. Sometimes, employees may wish to swap shifts or request schedule changes. Time management helps managers easily handle these requests, ensuring minimum impact on the business and employee satisfaction.
Payroll
Payroll is an essential component of any workforce management system, ensuring that employees are compensated correctly for the hours they've worked by considering any overtime or shift differentials. Traditional payroll practices have involved manual calculations, extensive resources, and a high risk of human error. Businesses can avoid any legal, financial, or employee satisfaction issues by switching to modern, automated payroll processes.
Analytics
Collecting and analyzing workforce data enables employers to gain valuable, real-time insights into their workforce, including productivity levels, attendance patterns, labor costs, and more. These analytics allow organizations to make data-driven decisions to optimize their workforce management processes and drive business success. Although manual data collection and analysis is possible, automated workforce management systems provide real-time data and reports that significantly simplify the process.
Compliance risk management
Failure to comply with current labor laws and regulations can result in fines, legal action, and reputational damage. In contrast, workforce management ensures regulatory compliance by providing accurate records of employee hours, breaks, leave requests, and payroll data they may need to produce during audits or legal proceedings.
What are the benefits of workforce management?
Can you run your business without a robust workforce management system? Possibly—if you own a microbusiness or have a penchant for chaos. But ultimately, workforce management delivers numerous benefits, including the following:
Increased efficiency and productivity
At their core, workforce management tools are designed to overhaul operational productivity by ensuring your organization functions at its best. No productivity conversation would be complete without discussing how AI aligns with traditional workforce management practices to impact business output. For example, the Brookings Institution explored AI's role in enhancing employee productivity across various industries, concluding that software engineers could now code up to twice as fast, while economists could be 10-20% more productive when using large language models.
Successful workforce management strategies will consider human workers' unique strengths and limitations and embrace the potential for technology like AI to enhance operations and production schedules.
Enhanced employee satisfaction and engagement
Employee engagement has long been a problem in the modern workplace. Gallup research highlights that only 23% of the world’s employees are engaged at work, with 59% not engaged and 18% actively disengaged. While numerous factors influence engagement, workforce management plays a significant role in supporting employee satisfaction and preventing burnout. By optimizing schedules, providing opportunities for individual employees to manage their workloads, and recognizing the importance of breaks, workforce management can promote employees' well-being and engagement at work.
Greater workforce insights
Workforce management systems collect vast amounts of data, allowing employers to gain valuable insights into their business operations. With real-time data at their fingertips, organizations can make informed decisions on:
- Hiring needs and labor costs
- Employee performance management and productivity
- Training and development opportunities
- Compliance with state and federal labor laws
- Industry-specific opportunities
Case study: John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. had previously used an on-premise employee management solution that lacked access to real-time data. By switching to UKG® Pro, the company's supervisors and managers can now view data from the mobile workforce management app, a single source of truth for a wealth of operations and workflow information. The move has also reduced employee time spent running reports by 50%.
Better work-life balance
Lack of work-life balance can significantly impact employee well-being and productivity levels, potentially causing burnout, a condition defined by the World Health Organization as an "occupational phenomenon." Human capital management reduces the risk of burnout by providing managers with the tools to offer flexible staff scheduling options and remote work opportunities or implement self-service tools for employees to manage their schedules.
Case study: Hartford Healthcare, a New England healthcare organization comprising 37,000 employees across 500 locations, improved patient outcomes and better supported frontline staff by migrating to UKG Pro Workforce Management. Employees now have greater flexibility in selecting schedules that best suit them, while managers and supervisors have real-time visibility into areas where coverage is required.
Exceptional customer service
Intelligent workforce planning significantly bolsters a company's ability to meet customer demand and ensure customer satisfaction. Aligning staff schedules with anticipated customer needs enables businesses to be fully staffed during peak times, ensuring prompt and effective service. Additionally, workforce management systems collect and analyze data relevant to customer interactions, providing valuable insights that guide businesses in meeting their strategic goals.
What are the challenges of workforce management?
Human Resources teams can run into some problems when trying to set up successful workforce management strategies. Here are some common challenges that crop up in the modern workplace:
Lack of skilled workers
You can't manage your workforce without workers, but shortages in the labor market have made it increasingly difficult for employers to find skilled employees to join their ranks. Currently, the US has 9.5 million job openings, but only 6.5 million unemployed people. The shortfall is partly caused by more women staying home to care for dependents and an increasing number of people retiring earlier. But this shortfall is challenging for employers to optimize their workforce without the headcount or skills they need.
Including contractors and freelancers
The American gig economy is growing exponentially. Statista research reveals that there were 57.3 million workers in the US in 2017, which is projected to grow to 86.5 million by 2027, making up more than half of the workforce.
For employers, this means the challenge of accurately tracking and managing these workers, who often work remotely or on flexible schedules. Workforce management tools must be able to track both permanent and contingent labor to provide a comprehensive view of business operations.
Adapting to changing labor laws
Labor laws and regulations continually evolve, presenting a significant challenge for employers trying to remain compliant. For example, minimum wage rates change significantly from state to state and from year to year. As compliance is mandatory, HR teams must stay on top of these changes and ensure their payroll and human resource management strategies are updated accordingly to avoid any potential lawsuits or fines.
Managing remote and global workforces
While some companies have executed return-to-office mandates in the years following the pandemic, the sentiment towards remote work still remains strong. Buffer's State of Remote Work report reveals that 98% of survey respondents want to continue working remotely, at least some of the time, for the rest of their careers.
Businesses must consider how to effectively manage remote or global workforces, which may require different employee scheduling strategies, communication tools, and HR policies. Companies with a global presence must also navigate diverse cultural norms and labor laws in each country where they operate.
Integrating workforce management with other business systems
Workforce management is just part of a broader HR and business management system ecosystem. To get the most out of your solution, you may wish to integrate it with other platforms, such as accounting or HRIS systems. These integrations allow data to flow seamlessly between systems, eliminate duplicate data entry, and provide a more comprehensive view of employee work patterns and business operations. However, integrating legacy systems can be complex and require additional technical support or resources to maintain.
Scaling workforce management according to the needs and size of your business
As organizations grow and change, their workforce needs may also evolve. For example, a small business with less than 100 employees may only require basic time and attendance tracking, while a larger organization with thousands of workers may need more advanced scheduling capabilities or compliance tools. It’s important for businesses to regularly assess their workforce management systems and ensure they are scalable and flexible enough to adapt to changing business needs.
How to choose workforce management software
A quality workforce management solution will save time, reduce human error, and slash operational costs for your business. When choosing workforce management software, you should consider the following factors as you evaluate different vendors:
Budget
Consider the pricing model of the software solutions you're interested in. Some vendors base their pricing on the number of users or a monthly subscription fee. Others will offer a one-time license fee and annual maintenance costs. Be sure to clearly understand the total cost of ownership, including any setup fees, before making your decision. Don't forget to factor in any potential savings from increased efficiency and reduced administrative costs when evaluating your budget.
Key features
Create a shortlist of the core features you want and expect from your workforce management system. This may include time and attendance tracking, scheduling capabilities, reporting tools, compliance features, and employee self-service options. Be sure to determine which must-have features are non-negotiable for your business operations. As a best practice, you should anticipate regularly upgrading your workforce technology to gain access to next-generation features and capabilities that meet the needs of your evolving business.
Integration capabilities
Determine which systems you need your solution to integrate with. This may include payroll, HRIS, or ERP platforms. Choosing a vendor that offers out-of-the-box integrations with commonly used business systems can save time and resources in the long run. It's also important to consider how well the software integrates with your organization's existing internal processes and workflows.
Scalability
Ensure your chosen solution can scale with your organization and adapt to future growth or changes in business requirements. This may include features such as multi-site scheduling, real-time employee communication tools, and compliance capabilities for expanding into new markets or industries.
Vendor support and training
While a vendor may offer a robust feature set, it's important also to consider how user-friendly and intuitive the software is for your team. A complicated or confusing interface can lead to low adoption rates and hinder the effectiveness of your solution, so it's always worth considering the user experience when choosing a vendor.
Consider reviewing third-party platforms like G2 and TrustRadius to learn how other companies have experienced a particular software. Evaluate categories like Ease of Use, Ease of Setup, and Quality of Support to dig deeper into specific stories.
Achieve superior workforce management with UKG
UKG Pro Workforce Management transforms the complex challenge of workforce management into a strategic asset for businesses with global, industry-specific work needs. Our platform scores 4.2 out of 5 from the G2 software community, with a five-star review describing it as a “Gem in Workforce Management.”
Here’s what you can expect from our people-centric workforce management solution:
- Strategic workforce planning to predict tomorrow's people needs accurately
- Time and attendance visibility
- Scheduling recommendations powered by AI
- Compliance with the latest government and industry regulations
- Analytics to power better and faster decisions
- Integration with your enterprise systems
Ready to build a more productive workforce and boost the work experience for everyone in your organization? Take a product tour today, or contact our knowledgeable sales team with any queries.
