Workforce management. Not always considered the most exciting phrase in the human capital management lexicon. But I’m here to change all that. Because I firmly believe that current business conditions are bringing the sizzle back to workforce management, or WFM.
So why do I think workforce management is so important? Because I believe it’s where an organization deploys its talent to execute against its business vision and mission, as well as the mechanism by which it can track and manage the data to understand performance and productivity, as well as predict future workforce needs and manage labor costs.
And it’s part of the reason why I wanted to join Brandon Hall Group to continue to build out research to help your organizations in this critical area. We’ve just launched our first annual Workforce Management Benchmarking Survey, which you can take here. And I am hosting a webinar July 9 focusing on workforce management and our upcoming research efforts, which you can register for here.
But wait, you’re saying. Isn’t workforce management time clocks and schedules? Certainly those are part of it. But modern workforce management technology takes a wider view and encompasses not only 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.
The best-automated tools to support workforce management today not only translate old spreadsheets of hours worked and schedules into an automated system, they also bring content to the user. Content in the form of integrated business rules that prevent unnecessary spending on overtime. Content that helps organizations determine the right type of leave to grant in absence situations. Content in terms of multi-jurisdictional compliance rules to determine proper pay practices across regions, geographies, job roles and union contracts.
Now we’re talking some real value-add. Not only does modern workforce management make your organization more efficient, more accurate and more effective, it actually helps your managers and employees make better decisions, make those decisions faster, and focus on productivity.
Have I piqued your interest yet? Hope so. Again, you can use this link to register for the webinar, and this link to take our survey.
—Mollie Lombardi, Vice President of Workforce Management Practice
and Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
@MollieLombardi
