Workforce management is no longer considered just time clocks and scheduling. Modern workforce management processes and technology take a wider view and encompass more than time and labor management through time and attendance, scheduling, and absence management. It also looks at integration with payroll and finance, integration with ERP and other business systems to understand customer demand and productivity, and becomes a storehouse for data used to power predictive analytics.
Great workforce management can also have a huge impact on employee engagement. When people have transparency in how their time worked is tracked and recorded, how schedules and decisions about things like overtime and holiday pay are made, when they understand the consequences of lateness and absence clearly, it builds trust, which is a foundation for engagement.
This blog takes a quick look back at 2014, highlight’s this year’s key Brandon Hall Group research, and offers some observations on what we think should happen in 2015.
Looking Back at 2014:
- Workforce Management has evolved from improving accuracy and compliance to enabling strategic decision-making.
- Organizations that build competitive advantage leverage workforce data and the workforce management system to foster learning and communication.
2014 Research Highlights:
After email, workforce management systems are often the most frequently accessed applications, but not all organizations are using them to their full potential. These systems are uniquely positioned not only to help you deploy your workforce and ensure compliance, but to measure performance and improve productivity, agility, and efficiency. This webinar presentation explores the top challenges and strategies for improving workforce management.
This KnowledgePoint, a one-page summary of highlights from recent research, identifies the top 5 ways organizations are using mobile capabilities to support their workforce.
This KnowledgeBlast, based on data from Brandon Hall Group’s 2014 Workforce Management Study, focuses on the complicated business of workforce scheduling, a constantly moving mix of business and customer demand, worker availability and skills sets, labor costs and budgets, and market opportunities. This report analyzes the impact of automation on scheduling.
Predictions for 2015:
- Scheduling: Scheduling can be one of the most time-consuming and emotionally charged activities in the realm of workforce management. It also can have a huge impact on labor cost, employee engagement, and customer experience. We predict that organizations will find new ways to leverage technology to streamline and optimize the scheduling process in order to boost revenue, manage compliance, and deliver great service.
- Integration: As HCM matures, organizations are integrating workforce and talent management strategies t,o improve efficiency, reduce costs and better develop and engage their workforce. We expect that more organizations will look at the synergies between workforce and talent management and invest in solutions that enable a stronger connection between the two.
- Absence Management: Absence Management is one area of workforce management that is still immature. By investing in technology, organizations can lift administrative burden, ensure compliance, and reduce costs – especially for very complex organizations. We predict that more organizations will invest in absence management as part of their larger workforce management software investments.
–Mollie Lombardi, VP and Principal Analyst,
Workforce Management, Brandon Hall Group
