What is Workforce Management?

Reduced Costs

Effective workforce management solutions help reduce costs by optimizing labor utilization and enhancing operational efficiency. For example, with accurate labor forecasting and effective scheduling, businesses can reduce the probability of overstaffing and associated labor costs to ensure maximum efficiency.

Improved Productivity

Effective scheduling and resource utilization can ensure that the right resources with the desired skills are allocated to the right projects or work setups.

Also, by having visibility into employee time, employers can check the workload distribution of employees and how much time they spend on specific tasks. Equipped with this analysis, employers can have insights into resource productivity and areas where they lag or perform better.

Even if employees aren’t working efficiently or their performance is not up to the mark, employers can consider providing them with training opportunities.

Minimized Compliance Risks

With workforce management in place, businesses can easily manage compliance with labor laws and regulations applicable to any region and reduce the risk of hefty fines and penalties. An efficient workforce management solution offers visibility into overtime hours, minor thresholds, and meals and breaks via a dashboard that’s updated in real time.

Because compliance adherence constantly evolves, a workforce management solution tracks changes in the laws or amendments. It updates its pay rule library and notifies you of such changes in the labor laws, helping you stay on top of compliance and regulations.

Effective Scheduling

Effective scheduling requires assigning the resources with bandwidth to the job to support operations. Workforce management solutions help create conflict-free schedules by distributing the right resources across required shifts. Also, real-time schedule data helps employers identify overlaps, gaps or conflicts in shifts as well as overbooking. It helps them modify the work schedule accordingly and ensure optimal coverage for all shifts.

Employee Satisfaction

A workforce management solution ensures accurate labor forecasting, creates effective schedules and prevents understaffing, thus ensuring a balanced workload for employees. Thus, with effective workforce planning and management, employees are less likely to burn out and achieve a better work-life balance without compromising on efficiency.

Accessibility Anywhere

Workforce management software helps employers manage the workforce from anywhere, regardless of location. With such solutions in place, employees can clock in and out, swap shifts and request time off remotely. Also, employers can approve time off requests, schedule employees, and modify any type of work schedule to fill unexpected gaps or address shift overlaps anytime, anywhere, and from mobile devices.

Reporting & Analytics

Workforce management software provides visibility into employee performance, productivity, scheduling, and workforce planning through dashboards and reporting. With such insights, employers can:

• Identify trends like high turnover, absenteeism, and overtime patterns and make informed decisions to improve the efficiency of workforce planning.
• Ascertain any issues in workforce planning, such as past scheduling conflicts.
• Access real-time analytics and data to optimize and adjust the shifts & scheduling, ensuring the seamless continuation of workflow. 

Training & Development

Workforce management solutions play a pivotal role in training management by analyzing employee performance data and identifying skill gaps in the workforce. Thus, they help flag employees who require training in specific areas to improve resource utilization.

Minimized Human Errors

By automating manual tasks such as data entry, payroll calculation, and timekeeping, a workforce management system reduces the likelihood of errors and mistakes. The software also uses validation checks to ensure that data is processed and calculations are accurate and follow the set criteria. The customizable alerts help employers keep major discrepancies at bay, mitigating errors and disputes.

Data Security

With a workforce management solution, you can ensure that your data is safe and secure and no one can manipulate it. When storing payroll data and tracking performance, you must carefully deal with this sensitive data and protect it from unauthorized access. With features like biometric authentication, data encryption, and two-factor authentication offered by workforce management solutions, you can ensure that only authorized people can access your data.

Here’s an example of how call centers can implement workforce management to ensure maximum operational efficiency.

• Forecasting: They can use WFM solutions that use historical data and predictive analytics to forecast labor and predict the right number of employees required to handle customer demands.
• Scheduling: Using the WFM solution, they can automate the scheduling process and ensure that employees with the right set of skills are scheduled for morning, afternoon, evening, night or graveyard shifts.
• Training & Development: Poor agent training not only impacts service quality but is also one of the leading causes of high attrition. Using detailed reporting and analytics in the WFM system, employers can identify areas where employees need improvement, e.g., productivity, call quality, escalation handling, tech skills, etc. and train them in those areas for their development and retention.
• Reducing Unnecessary Expenses: With the WFM software in place, businesses can minimize the need for overtime, operate within budget and render the best services to customers.

With effective workforce management, call centers can reap the benefits such as:

• A decrease in the number of overtime hours with proper scheduling 
• Ensuring that the right number of employees are staffed at the right time and on the right shift to handle the workflow
• More customer calls are entertained in less time
• Eliminate the likelihood of overstaffing and understaffing in any shift

While choosing the right workforce management solution, you should consider the following functionalities that can help you manage your workforce effortlessly and meet your business-specific needs. But before hopping onto the features you should seek, it’s good to have an assessment to understand what you need.

Understand the Existing Process

Map out the existing workforce management process you are using and how efficient it is. For example, some call centers manage their workforce using spreadsheets to create schedules for 24/7 work operations. This can’t provide real-time visibility into data, like employee attendance and shift scheduling.

Understanding that automating this process can provide accurate and updated information at all times, and at what level the automation needs to be done, can be a mapping exercise.

Check the Maturity Level

Thoroughly assess the system that you’re using to manage the workforce and whether it has any pain points or major challenges. Does your existing system require a modern solution to mitigate those challenges and streamline the process? Also, is the current system scalable if you plan to expand your workforce?

Take Inputs from Stakeholders

Get feedback from the stakeholders and managers to understand in which areas the workforce management system can be improved further and the main challenges that need to be addressed.

For example, in some work setups that require 24×7 operation, it can be challenging to create different types of work schedules for employees without creating any time conflicts. Yet another challenge could be to track time for workers who have to work from locations other than their office workspace.

Taking inputs from stakeholders like managers and others helps in understanding the use case and then opting for a solution accordingly instead of just having a generic one in place that doesn’t meet their needs completely.

Pen Down the Requirements

Once you have identified the challenges and pain points and developed a plan to pivot to a new workforce management system, it is time to make a list and understand what features and functionalities you will need in that system. Before we explore these in the next section, let’s look at what you need to ask yourself or the software vendors to choose the right solution.

Questions to Ask

• What are the use cases and processes for which you require the workforce management system? What’s the priority level for these?
• How closely does the system match your organization’s objectives and goals?
• What are the features of the system? Are these advanced or simple enough for your setup?
• Can the system offer features that contribute towards enhancing productivity?
• Can the system ensure appropriate validation for data accuracy?
• How easily and with which software can the system integrate?
• What’s the level of security that the system offers?
• How effectively can it support your organization with the labor law compliance requirements?
• What type of learning curve would there be for all the users?
• Who will take the call to finalize the system and how will it be deployed?
• How easy would it be to deploy it locally and globally, if required?
• What’s the timeframe for deploying the WFM system?
• To what extent can it help you reduce business costs?
• What’s your budget? How flexible can you be with it, depending on the features and services you get? 

Forecasting & Budgeting

An effective workforce management solution that leverages predictive analytics should be able to spot trends and provide accurate labor forecasting, possible fluctuations in labor demand, etc. With these insights, you can easily plan your staffing requirements, hiring needs and labor budget.

Scheduling

An effective WFM solution should provide smart recommendations for resource allocation and scheduling based on bandwidth, cost, location and the required skill set. The solution must also allow managers to view and modify schedules in real time to fill unexpected gaps and allow employees to swap shifts with each other while keeping the manager informed.

Time & Attendance Tracking

The workforce management solution you choose must have time-tracking capabilities. It should track employee work hours, overtime hours, and attendance and automate time-off-request approvals for payroll processing. It should also be able to detect absenteeism patterns and alert the respective managers.

Data Analytics & Reporting

Workforce management software should be able to provide real-time analytics on workforce data, such as scheduling, labor cost, etc., via dashboards and reports at various levels – be it individual, team, or department level. This way, businesses can analyze the possibility of any issue or contingency and address it promptly by making data-driven decisions. Here are a few ways workforce analytics can help:

• Check employee engagement levels and make changes to help them thrive
• Help remove any project bottlenecks and save costs
• Help make smarter decisions related to succession, transfer, severance, and more
• Help with performance management
• Provide a real-time and unified data source to support tracking of important KPIs like billable utilization that can help map profitability

Scalability

The software should be able to scale as the business grows. The system you choose should be able to handle the increasing number of employees, increasing complexity or diversity of workflows and comply with regulations for the new location. Such scalability empowers businesses to adapt to growth, operate efficiently and future-proof their operations, ensuring sustainability.

Integration

Your WFM solution should seamlessly integrate with other ecosystems, such as CRM, ERP, payroll, collaboration apps and accounting software. This way, there will be an integrated and single view of data for all departments, and they can avoid data ambiguity. Also, integration with performance management tools can help employers ascertain employee productivity trends.

Compliance

The workforce management solution you use must help you comply with financial and legal requirements to avoid any legal repercussions. This can be done via a pay rules library, multicurrency support, regular updates to the system regarding global and local labor laws and regulations, support for an organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and more.

User-Friendly

Your solution must be intuitive, easy to use and have a minimal learning curve. Also, check if the vendor provides assistance with implementation and comprehensive training resources to understand its functionalities and way of operating.

Mobile Accessibility

WFM solutions that are also accessible via mobile devices make it easier for managers to manage schedules and fill shifts on the go. Features such as shift swapping, time off requests, approval, and filling the shifts should be available in the mobile application to create and approve requests on the go in real time without any delays.

A workforce management system reduces manual processes and provides real-time insights into employee work hours, availability, schedules, and bandwidth, ensuring that staffing needs are covered and overall efficiency can be improved.

Deltek | Replicon’s Workforce Management solution provides all the functionalities mentioned above, ranging from labor forecasting and scheduling to compliance support. This unified AI-powered platform is useful for managing a diverse, remote, and mobile workforce and creating shift structures based on roles, skills, and locations within seconds.

What are the main components of a workforce management process?

Forecasting demand, employee scheduling, time and attendance tracking, task management, performance monitoring, and support for compliance management are the key components of the workforce management process.

What are the challenges of manual employee scheduling?

It creates risks of errors, understaffing and overstaffing, shift conflicts, and inefficiencies. Manual scheduling is time-consuming and can’t provide real-time updates. It lacks flexibility and can complicate the audit trails required for compliance tracking.

How does workforce management help with labor law compliance?

With proper workforce management, it’s possible to organize schedules, track work hours, and monitor rest periods so that employees receive fair wages and adequate breaks based on their job role and laws. It promotes fair treatment of employees and reduces non-compliance risk for the organization, helping align its workplace practices with legal standards.