What is Workforce Management?

Workforce management is a collection of processes that optimize employee productivity and customer experience.

Workforces are constantly changing due to remote jobs, new technology, and a shift in the way people view work-life balance. For a healthy work environment and business growth, it's crucial to have a workforce management process.

Here is everything you need to know about workforce planning.

Workforce management aims to improve company performance by helping employees become more productive.

The success of a business depends on the employee experience. Making sure your team members have a good time and are happy at work should be a top priority. When the right people with the right skills are on the right team, the company profits.

Deloitte research shows that companies in the top quartile for employee experience are usually 25% more profitable than their competitors in the bottom quartile.

Implementing a workforce management process can take a lot of work. If you do workforce management (also called WFM) right, it could have a big effect on your company's bottom line and service levels.

WFM can help organizations save money by cutting labor costs and business expenses (like office space) while increasing employee engagement and productivity.

The following tips will make it easier to put WFM into place.

Find out how much work is required

It's challenging to manage the unknown.

Review the current workload of the business to identify staffing needs. A workforce management solution could be helpful here, by providing real-time analytics and reports.

An audit will help identify problems with current processes, like when a department is spending too much through overstaffing or because it has too few team members.

Determine staffing needs

Using full-time equivalent (or FTE) calculations, an organization can accurately predict how many people it will need to hire.

FTE will help you understand how many hours of work an organization requires to complete all its tasks. Then, managers divide that number by the number of hours in a full-time work week to figure out how many full-time team members are needed.

New projects that start on a smaller scale can use the same process. Knowing how many people you need for a project helps calculate the labor costs budget accurately for future projects.

Build strategic staff schedules

A well-thought-out staff schedule ensures that the organization meets goals and that the right people are retained for projects.

Workloads, staffing, and resources can frequently change, making staff scheduling difficult. Employees get sick and emergencies can happen, but it's easier to deal with the unexpected if you have an excellent staff schedule.

Consider a WFM solution that uses automation to simplify your staff scheduling. Automatic shift and schedule reminders, idle time monitoring, and built-in invoicing will allow you to work on your bottom line instead of repetitive administrative tasks.

Give out jobs carefully

Managers should pay attention to and learn about their employee's combined skill sets to build productive teams that enjoy working together. For a workforce management process to work well, you need always be learning about your staff.

After making a strategic staff schedule, ensure that the team members' skills match the job's needs. Provide complete instructions and information so projects finish on time.

Common scheduling mistakes include giving employees too much to do in a single shift or giving team members jobs they haven't trained for, leading to confusion and frustration.

Optimize your process

It will help if you start by figuring out which tasks have the most significant effect on productivity.

Changing workflows, automating tasks, or holding time management workshops are all ways you can begin to optimize your process.

The process will improve if the right team members are empowered to foster change. Make sure team members have a voice and open feedback opportunities.

Monitor employee performance

When monitoring employee productivity with proof of work software, choosing metrics and a workforce management solution to support you is essential.

To monitor employee performance, start by tracking:

• Tasks completed

• Time worked

• Quality of work

• Stress levels and well-being

• Employee morale

• Employee engagement

Over time, WFM's set of processes will use historical data to measure success, highlight trends, and anticipate problems.

A properly executed workforce management process allows your organization to hit critical milestones and identify opportunities for improvement.

Monitoring these accomplishments is a crucial part of improving the process of workforce management.

Hubstaff workforce management solutions include scheduling employees, keeping track of payroll, keeping track of invoices, and managing tasks. Check out Hubstaff today. 14 days for free.

By implementing a workforce management process, organizations can identify improvements in many areas, including:

• Labor and operational costs

• Quality of work

• Legal compliance of hours worked

• Customer satisfaction

• Employee experience

Now let's talk about how to optimize for these improvements.

Lower labor costs

One of the primary benefits of workforce management is lower labor costs.

By using workforce management software, businesses can quickly identify inefficiencies in productivity.

WFM systems help optimize your staffing levels, ensuring you are only paying for the employees they need, saving costs on labor.

Higher work quality

An effective workforce management process also leads to high-quality work.

Organizations should ensure that their employees are well-trained and are working as efficiently as possible. The right people must do the right jobs. As a result, team members create a positive customer experience.

Legal compliance in employee hours

Workforce management can also help organizations comply with employment and HR legal requirements. Organizations can track how many hours their employees work using WFM software solutions and keep the organization in compliance with labor laws.

To put it another way, workforce management software with tracking can help businesses avoid costly fines and penalties.

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

The benefits of a well-run workforce management process lead to increased customer satisfaction.

When a business optimizes its staffing levels and saves money on labor costs, it can pass these savings on to the customer.

When team members are happy, they are more likely to be motivated to do good work and enhance the customer experience.

Positive employee experience

In the last few years, one of the most significant changes in workforce management has been the move towards improving employee satisfaction.

Pay more attention to your employees. Get team members more involved and make them feel like they’re integral to the business.

Giving your employees the right apps to do their jobs creates a positive employee experience. Team members will be able to perform at a higher level, leading to higher employee engagement.

Research shows good employee experiences make team members 16 times more engaged and eight times more likely to stay at a company.

Workforce management is crucial in the call center and contact center industries.

Forecasts help call centers estimate weekly call volume. This type of forecasting requires a system that collects SMS, chat, and voice data.

Manual spreadsheets require a lot of historical data to predict call center staffing needs. The call center could sort this data and display it on a dashboard with the right WFM software solution.

Good workforce management includes caring for people who work from home, like those who had to leave the office because of the pandemic and work remotely.

A sound workforce management system gives them the flexibility and speed they need to move their employees to a work-from-home structure.

As the workforce changes, so must your software and strategies for managing the workforce.

Building and implementing a WFM process from scratch using only spreadsheets and calendars is not a good idea. It's incredibly time-consuming and it involves an unnecessary amount of effort.

A WFM software solution saves time, money, and resources. It should also make it easy to start and keep up with a WFM process.

Hubstaff streamlines WFM processes and provides valuable insight into how time and resources, whether team members are at home, in the office, or on the road.

These features include:

• Time tracking

• Productivity monitoring

• Workforce management, such as project budgeting

• Field service features such as geofencing which automate work tracking based on location

Hubstaff is a workforce management tool that automates time-consuming administrative tasks like payroll, invoicing, timesheets, and productivity tracking. Integrating Slack, Asana, Salesforce, Paypal, and many other helpful workforce management solutions will save you time when it comes to billing, HR, and project management.

Hubstaff gives you free access to all of its WFM tools for 14 days, so you can test our platform and see what works best for your business. It's a great way to make running your company and teams a breeze.