Workforce management software, also known as WFM, is a set of technologies that helps ensure employees are present at the appropriate time and location to achieve optimal production. It is customary for its capabilities to include labor forecasts, employee scheduling, time and attendance monitoring, leave management, and rule or policy enforcement platforms to assist with regulatory compliance.
WFM software is essential for employers with hourly or shift-based workers and adds complexities, such as varying schedules, fluctuating availability, and wage and hour calculations. Although any business can benefit from these features, WFM software is essential for employers who have hourly or shift-based workers. The following are the five fundamental functions of workforce management software:
Labor scheduling: The labor schedule exists to assist in the more efficient management of employees’ abilities and compliance requirements.
Time and work data collection: The gathering of data on both time and labor aims to record and report extremely specific information regarding the use of labor.
Leave management: This includes processing requests for paid time off while maintaining visibility into the staffing and liability consequences of those requests.
Management of tasks and activities: to provide a complete perspective of labor-management requirements to assist with the complex decision-making required for activity-based management.
Time and attendance: to take input from the other modules and apply rules to the reported times based on the firm’s requirements.
What Are Types Of Workforce Management Software?
A diverse selection of software tools can be used for WFM. Some of these solutions are stand-alone products that provide one or more of the functions, while others provide a more comprehensive and integrated solution.
- Scheduling software
- Absence management solutions
- Payroll software
- Employee engagement tools
- Customer relationship management tools
- Attendance Software
- Customer service & support ticketing solutions
- Workplace safety incident tracking software.
- Project management and communication tools
- Time tracking software
Benefits Of Workforce Management
Keeping track of attendance automatically
Tracking employees’ attendance is made easier and more accurate by software designed for workforce management, which also helps cut down on payroll mistakes. With an all-encompassing workforce management solution, businesses can provide several different sorts of employees with a straightforward and user-friendly method to accurately report their work hours and absences in real time.
Increased productivity of the labor force
A workforce management software allows you to better manage a wide variety of policies that regulate time and attendance while reducing the number of manual tasks that need to be completed.
The overall productivity of the workforce improves, and managers can better guarantee that staffing demands are met and react swiftly if circumstances alter due to increased visibility into the number of hours worked, the availability of workers, and the occurrence of safety incidents.
Employee engagement
Employee engagement can be improved with workforce management technologies by assisting workers in experiencing a greater sense of productivity in their work and achieving a better balance between their personal and professional lives through enhanced scheduling flexibility.
A company can offer their employees a voice and promote employee empowerment by collecting employee sentiment at the moment and using employee opinions and preferences to affect workforce management activities such as scheduling. This allows the company to collect employee sentiment in the present.
Safer workplace
A workforce management system can assist you in fostering a culture of environmental health and safety compliance among your employees while also assisting you in more effectively managing environmental health and safety incidents. Organizations are in a better position to ensure that the information they collect is correct and to encourage people to report health and safety issues if they streamline and automate the procedures for health and safety, which include reporting occurrences and recording crucial information.
A decrease in expense
As the efficiency of your employees rises, your workforce management costs may fall due to more simplified operations. This implies that you will spend less time on administrative chores, reducing the amount of time you spend on those jobs. A greater level of visibility into employee availability and budgeted hours ensures the correctness and authenticity of time worked and absences taken, which in turn reduces staffing expenses caused by things like extra overtime or labor overages.
Flexible scheduling
The management of employee schedules is a challenge for many businesses, particularly in terms of aligning employees’ work skills with the demands of the business to increase production and minimize expenses. Employees are given the autonomy to control their schedules through the use of self-service tools made available by workforce management solutions. These tools enable managers to construct plans that align their workforce with anticipated demand.
Safekeeping
The practice of one worker clocking in for another is known as “buddy punching,” and some workforce management solutions use biometric data collection devices (such as fingerprint scanners) to clock employees in and out. This helps eliminate the problem of “buddy punching” and improves overall accuracy.
Access to a web clock that is determined by a user’s location can also help guarantee that employees are clocking in only from the locations in which they are authorized to be working. Secure workforce management systems also include machine learning that is embedded within the system and monitors for suspicious activity as well as anomalies in the data collected by the workforce management system. This helps prevent errors or fraudulent transactions from going through the payroll system.
Insights into the business world
When a company centralizes all of its organizational and departmental data in a single workforce management system, it can make more informed decisions about the future of its business. Tools for workforce management give companies the ability to analyze overall company performance with reporting that is updated in real-time.
Access from any location
Solutions for workforce management make it possible for companies to meet their employees where they are to assist them in working more productively. Access allows employees to perform tasks quickly and easily from their mobile devices, such as clocking in and out, switching shifts, requesting time off, and accessing information such as pay slips and W2s. Access allows employees to perform tasks quickly and easily from their mobile devices.
Fewer errors
By using automated time and attendance capabilities, workforce management systems help reduce the number of errors caused by humans. Automation guarantees accuracy by removing the possibility of errors caused by manual data entry when using self-service time reporting systems.
An intelligent system can, for instance, listen for retroactive changes that may impact how an employee’s time should have been calculated. It can then automatically recalculate an employee’s time and automatically send adjustments to payroll. This is made possible through robotic process automation (RPA). Intelligent compliance alerts can also help guarantee that an employee’s time is recorded accurately and that they keep to their work schedules. This can be accomplished by monitoring the employee’s computer.
A Satisfied Workforce Is Essential To The Success Of Any Company.
The goal of effective workforce management should be to keep employees happy while also meeting the strategic requirements of your company. Businesses that are successful in this facet of their business will be more innovative, efficient, and resilient than their competitors.