What is workforce management?
Workforce management (WFM) is a process that increases the performance levels and competency of all your employees. The process includes all the exercises required to maintain a productive workforce, such as field service management, human resource management, performance and training management, data collection, recruiting, budgeting, forecasting, scheduling, and analytics.
Workforce management process provides a set of performance-based software to support front-line supervisors, store managers and workers across manufacturing, distribution, transportation, and retail operations. It is also termed as the Human Capital Management system.
Why should we use workforce management?
Effectively managing your work environment is crucial for the organization’s success. However, incorporating a system that keeps your business running smoothly impacts not only your business base but also your employees. Making work-life easier for your employees can pay off with many benefits. A happy workforce is very effective, in a good way.
Because workforce management process involves a wide range of HR sectors, it makes sense to consider various technology that offers a spectrum of solutions. Icloud, by apple, helps you manage your workforce with a cloud-based platform that’s easy to use and engaging for you and your people, even when employees are located in various locations.
Workforce management involves all the processes for staffing, scheduling, predicting customer demand, and adjusting to staff needs in real-time. The main objective of this concept, workforce management is to have the importance with the correct resources, in the right place, at the right time, so that they can accomplish customer needs in the most efficient manner. Workforce management tools help you to create an excellent flow for your organization. It can automatically lower labor costs without lowering performance. In real, active workforce management may help employees to do their best work. You can classify and correct inefficiencies and form groups that work well together. Workforce management isn’t just about utilizing resources; it’s about creating a workflow that works effortlessly, with staff who have a consistent purpose. That’s an advance that affects your entire organization and gets along to your clients.
What are the features of workforce management?
- Time and attendance tracking
- Labor scheduling
- Compliance monitoring (e.g. with labor laws)
- Leave management
- Staffing effectiveness
Strategic workforce planning map
The main workforce planning tool is the workforce map. This map shows how workforce planning activities are scheduled with a bigger picture, like the organizational strategy. Usually heard critique about HR policies is that it doesn’t follow organizational strategy. The beauty of workforce planning is that it offers tools to add value to the business.
9-Box grid
The performance-potential matrix (9-box grid) maps employees’ performance and potential in one project.
HR Dashboarding
A third major workforce planning tool that so many companies are actively investing in, is the HR dashboard. The HR dashboard is a very effective design to show current workforce capabilities.
There are so many things to tell about the HR dashboard. On a conceptual level, the dashboard is piled up with information from different source systems, like a payroll system, applicant tracking system, and other Human Resources Information Systems. Based on this data, metrics are calculated and displayed accordingly.
Scenario planning
Scenario planning is the most important workforce planning tool. It helps to anticipate multiple possible futures so that you won’t come into any trouble. By the saying of futurist Peter Schwartz: “if you haven’t thought about it, you’re unlikely to see it in time”.
In scenario planning, you imagine different potential futures that have a lot of impact on your business and that you will be unlikely to see coming. These scenarios can include technological innovation, new politic parties, natural disasters, changes in attitudes of the general public, etc.
While thinking about these scenarios, analyzing them and describing how they will make an impact on day to day business, you can develop a strategy for unlikely but impactful events.
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