Workforce & Schedule Management – A key to a happier and more flexible workforce
Managing time is a big part of managing people. Like everything in life, shift work is a gentle balancing act and creating work schedules is not an easy task. It’s rare that everybody gets the shift they want, and if you manage hourly employees, you know how many issues can come up when you’re trying to schedule shifts. Predicting busy times and arranging for staff accordingly doesn’t always go smoothly.
When creating shift schedules, there’s a lot to consider. You have to know who can work, how many people you actually need, and how to find the balance between providing excellent customer service and staying within budget. Probably, you already have some sort of system for creating work schedules, and while your technique may work, there is always room for improvement and the right information and tools can make it smoother. If you’re still using paper scheduling, it’s time to consider an app for scheduling employees.
There are a lot of reasons why you should adopt a proper workforce management system (WFM). A workforce management system is not just another program to install on your computer – it is a practice that encompasses the proper employment of HR practices and processes, from payroll to the deploying of one’s workforce in an optimum way, taking into consideration rare skills and technical knowledge (e.g. technical knowledge of machinery, technology and even languages). We would like to explain to you why you should say goodbye to old-fashioned manual work and acquire a system so clever, optimized and automatic that it can almost serve you breakfast in bed… Well, almost…
Integrated time clock can save your bottom line
After you have gained control over your HR tasks, the next step is to gain control over your finances. The fact is that many part-time workers are sloppy with their manual hour registration noting down more hours than they have actually worked. Consequently, you will pay for more than you get, which can leave a huge hole in your budget.
A great workforce management system such as Planday, has an integrated time clock which means that your employees will clock in when they arrive and clock out when they leave. This means that you will only pay for worked hours. Not scheduled or expected hours – only actual worked hours! Businesses actually report up to 5 percent savings on the entire payroll cost because of the time clock. Just imagine if that 5 percent is all you need to stay above your bottom line…
The beauty of Planday is that it can clock employees in automatically and remotely, by for instance detecting them entering the building or when their mobile device gets on the company WIFI network. No physical time clock needed!
Are your employees always sick on Mondays?
You will not only be able to run a tight ship concerning time registration with a workforce management system. In fact, you can get actionable and updated reports on every part of your business enabling you to constantly keep an eye on your development and make crucial improvements to stay within your budget. Perhaps you will suddenly discover odd patterns such as a tendency to call in sick on Mondays or swap shifts on Saturdays?
Promoting a work-life balance
While many factors affect employee happiness, work-life balance is a huge part of the formula. In today’s modern workforce, where freelancers and remote-workers are becoming increasingly more frequent, employees want to feel more empowered to manage their own time, effectively. Happy employees are more engaged and productive. They don’t just do better work, they generally bolster group morale and they also take fewer sick days. Making use of mobile apps such as Planday gives the notion of flexible working a different dimension, reducing the complexities of skill-based scheduling and putting the employee in control of their time.
Scheduling will suddenly become an easy task
Many look for an online scheduling system to replace their whiteboard or Excel scheduling hassles. What they don’t know is that a scheduling tool is actually a part of workforce management software.
So, not only can you handle your key HR, payroll data export and reporting tasks in your workforce management system, you can also handle scheduling. Or put more specifically, you can make shift scheduling collaborative as your employees can book, swap and give away shifts among themselves in an optimized scheduling template. All you have to do is accept the changes. The best part of this scheduling feature is that it’s online and on the cloud, which means that everyone can access the updated schedule anytime, anywhere.
Planday is the one place for all your administrative tasks – including staff management, scheduling, communications, time tracking and reporting. No matter the size of your team, Planday makes it easy to create and share a schedule, communicate with employees, and handle your HR processes.
Organisations that have dedicated customer contact teams could benefit from workforce management solutions like Planday. Such businesses are typically already using customer support service solutions such as Zendesk to manage customer complaints, service requests and interactions which span geography, language and product knowledge.
Bringing together the best of customer service management and WFM practices, iMovo has built a bridge between Zendesk, popular in many industries in Malta, and Planday, the leading workforce management solution. This bridge, or connector called: The Planday Connector by iMovo, helps you integrate Planday with Zendesk Support to give you a comprehensive customer service agent tracking package. It provides managers with a 360° view of agent activities, allowing easy reporting, monitoring and enabling better scheduling. Agents have access to easily log time against tickets, set their current status, and view their logged time for the day, without ever having to leave the Zendesk Support interface.
If you would like to learn more about workforce management and Planday, contact us on [email protected].
About Author:
Hadrian J. Sammut is the Chief Officer – Advisory & Projects at iMovo Limited. iMovo specialises in Customer Experience Management (CEM), Business Intelligence (BI) Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence & Workforce Management (WFM). Blending some of the most innovative technology solutions in the market with a formal advisory approach, iMovo enables organisations to build long-term value relationships with their customers resulting in consistent & profitable growth. [email protected].