What is Workforce Management?

Have you ever come across the term workforce management? The phrase might be unfamiliar to you, but it covers a variety of processes that are essential in the day-to-day operations and efficient running of any business. 

What is workforce management? 

Workforce management (WFM) helps boost the productivity of workforces. In essence, people are what make businesses tick and workforce management is used to ensure work gets done, direct everyone’s efforts, and make sure that all team members are compensated for their input. Anyone running or managing a business might use it to predict staffing needs, create rosters, track attendance, and make sure that they are compliant with labour laws.  

In essence, workforce management ensures that you have the right number of staff with the right skills working at the right times to hit your business goals. It focuses on making workforces as efficient and productive as possible, while keeping labour costs down. 

It is a particularly important focus area of businesses that rely heavily on labour to function and have flexible, hourly, or contingent workforces. These businesses have to have the right mix of people rostered on to capture demand, meaning workforce management can have a big impact on their profitability. 

Is workforce management part of human resources (HR)? 

While workforce management and HR both deal with people, they have separate focus areas. The main goal of workforce management is to enhance operational efficiency, performance, productivity, labour utilisation, resource allocation, and scheduling.  

On the other hand, human resource management focuses on the overall management of human capital. It involves a broader array of activities, such as recruitment, training and development, compensation and benefits, performance management, and employee engagement. It involves creating a healthy work environment so that it’s easy for a business to attract and retain staff. 

Why is workforce management important? 

Workforce management helps businesses allocate the right amount of labour to meet demand and minimise their costs. It can help you avoid overstaffing, which can rack up unnecessary labour costs. On the flip side, it can also prevent you from understaffing, which can lead to missed sales and unhappy customers. 

Good workforce management also boosts employee engagement and satisfaction while reducing burnout, because it promotes fair scheduling and balanced workloads.

In Australia, there are also a lot of laws in place to protect businesses and workers. Our Industrial Relations laws are some of the most complex in the world. So, if you’re an Australian business, you can use workforce management to ensure you’re compliant with the Fair Work system, cutting down the risk of legal issues and fines. 

What is workforce management software? 

Workforce management can be a lot of work, especially as your business grows and becomes more complex. Workforce management software is a digital tool that can automate and streamline the business function. 

Digital workforce management systems provide easy to use tools for scheduling, tracking attendance, managing leave, running payroll, and conducting compliance checks.  

They also centralise employee data and provide analytical tools and reports that help managers make smart decisions about staffing and labour costs. By storing your historical workforce data in one central location, you can analyse past trends and make smart decisions about how to allocate and manage your team, ensuring you have the right mix of skills covered throughout the year. 

Using workforce management software can also improve your accuracy, cut down on unnecessary administrative work, and boost productivity. 

What are the core features of a workforce management system?  

A solid workforce management system should help your business complete its core, operational tasks faster and with more confidence. If you're trying to use the right workforce management software for your business, remember to look for an adaptable platform with all of your core operational features built-in. This will enable your workforce data to flow freely, helping you to simplify your payroll, scale your workforce, and grow your business.  

Employee onboarding 

Employee onboarding ensures that new hires are integrated seamlessly into your business. During the process, you can use workforce management software to gather important information from your new team members, such as work rights, pay information, tax details, and availability. You can also provide them with your policies and procedures to review and sign online so they know what to expect from day one. 

Employee scheduling and rostering 

Rostering software empowers you to create and manage rosters efficiently. It should work for all types of employees—salaried, permanent, part-time, or casual—and offer different views (like shift, day, week, or month) for flexible planning. 

Time and attendance tracking

Workforce management systems provide tools that help you track employee attendance with ease and accuracy. For example, digital clock-in and clock-out functions, geolocation tracking, and photo verification can be used to help your employees track their time from anywhere. Once that data flows into your system, it can then be leveraged to process payroll and leave entitlements. 

Leave management 

A good workforce management platform will help your employees review their accrued leave and submit leave requests easily. Leave management systems let employees empower employees to apply for leave from anywhere online, then their managers can approve the request. The associated pay slip should be automatically updated when the leave is taken.  

Payroll 

A comprehensive workforce management platform will have a built-in payroll system. This allows your operational data to inform pay and entitlements each pay cycle, ensuring the accurate and timely processing of wages. It should also include a pay rule and award interpretation engine that ensures you are paying every team member the right amount for the position(s) they have worked. Other helpful features include the ability to calculate earned wages, overtime, and allowances.  

Compliance monitoring 

Workforce management software will help you gain constant compliance assurance with labour laws by maintaining records of licenses, qualifications, attendance, and work rights. It can even automate alerts for license expirations or compliance breaches. Importantly, it should help you pay your employees their wages and superannuation based on their exact position and hours worked, helping you avoid the risk of over or under payments. 

Employee management 

Workforce management platforms include a central employee profile to keep all of their information up to date. When you have a digital profile, employees can submit their leave requests, view pay slips, and access earned wages from anywhere. You can also update their information and automatically sync the data to your rosters and payroll. 

Invoicing 

If you service clients, then you need the ability to create work schedules, track attendance, and invoice them accurately. Workforce management software should help you track the wage costs associated with servicing each client and ensure that you accommodate for an appropriate margin when you send your invoice. You should also be able to share data between your business and each client to ensure efficient, transparent, and accurate rostering and invoicing.  

Analytics and reporting 

Workforce management systems come with reporting tools that give you insights into labour costs, employee performance, and scheduling efficiency. This helps business owners and managers make data-driven decisions to boost their productivity. They can also help you keep your finger on the pulse if you have multiple business entities, locations, clients, and operations to monitor.  

Technology is changing workforce management 

By making the most of workforce management technology, you can simplify and streamline your operations, then grow faster. When you have smooth operations, you can build an engaged and productive workforce while keeping in line with industry standards and regulations. This all leads to building a strong team that’s ready to grow your business with you. 

If you want to learn more about how you can improve your workforce management practices, then book a demo of foundU.