Workforce management software provides automated solutions to many of the common, everyday tasks performed by any organisation’s Human Resources department.
HR is one of the departments that can take up a huge chunk of a business’s operating budget, but doesn’t directly contribute anything in terms of profits or productivity. Unlike the sales department or even marketing – both of which can point to real returns on investment, nearly all of HR’s contributions to the organisation’s success are indirect.
So C-level executives are often less willing to invest more money in HR than they already do. In fact, they respond better when HR leaders propose ways to cut their budget rather than expand it. And that’s exactly what workforce management software allows you to do.
How? There are many benefits to using workforce management software to reduce your HR department’s operating costs while increasing the organisation’s efficiency. Here are the top five:
Higher Employee Morale
The biggest benefit of any type of workforce management systems is that they allow your organisation to automate all or most of its payroll and timekeeping functions. This is huge because payroll and time and attendance management can eat up thousands of work hours per year for even the smallest business.
Workforce management software can capture and record employee punches and then use that data to calculate payroll more accurately so that there are few mistakes with employee’s pay and benefits. Any HR manager can tell you that the best way to de-motivate a workforce is to mess with their pay. It’s often the Number One complaint among unhappy workers.
This kind of unhappiness can quickly cause your employees to turn on your organisation, which can then lead to bigger problems, such as poor employee morale, higher attrition, and even workers organising for collective bargaining rights – none of which executives and ownership want to see.
But workforce management software transfers much of the responsibility for accurately recording time punches for both work hours and break times to the employees themselves. So they have less to complain about because if there are errors in their pay, it’s more likely due to a missed punch that was their responsibility.
While workforce management systems won’t eliminate worker complaints about their pay, it substantially reduces them by sharing responsibility with the employees themselves.
Cutting Costs
Quick question: How many people do you have working for your business right now whose sole responsibility is calculating payroll and issuing pay cheques to your workers?
For small businesses, this might account for half the work of one person. But for a larger business or even multinational corporations, it could be dozens or even hundreds of people.
When you use a workforce management software solution such as those available from Advance Systems, you can eliminate all of these costs, reassigning these employees to more productive tasks if you choose.
One of the ways workforce management systems pay for themselves is through the savings you achieve by redirecting the money you currently pay for payroll clerks or a payroll department to investments that better serve your organisation’s bottom line.
Although it’s an essential function, payroll doesn’t contribute anything to your business’s profitability. In fact, it takes away from it. But workforce management software can not only absorb all or most of these responsibilities – including the issuance of paychecks – but your investment is far lower, you can depreciate the investment over a number of years, and use the savings to improve your business’s profitability.
Enhance Analytical Function
Regardless of what type of business you are in, data management is the name of the game today. Having the ability to see real numbers, compare actual performance against budget, and measure your success (or failure) against plan is something that is essential to the successful management of your organisation.
Your managers need these type of digital tools in order to make the best – and most profitable – decisions for your organisation. Without them, they may be flying blind. Plus, you can be sure your competitors are already using this type of data management to outwit and outsmart your business.
Workforce management software provides you with the data you need to analyse and manage your business more effectively. It gives your managers the tools they need to succeed.
One word: Compliance
One of the primary things HR does today is record and maintain records in order to provide national and local government bodies with statistical proof that your business is in compliance with its legal obligations. Unions, individuals with employment contracts and company policies also need access to this type of data.
Maintaining these types of compliance records manually is not only next to impossible, it’s also enormously time-consuming. But it’s something that workforce management software can do automatically and, in most cases, instantly.
Even the smallest gap in compliance can cost your business huge sums in fines, court costs, and other expenses – not to mention the public embarrassment and damage to your organisation’s reputation. Workforce management systems reduce this risk and allow you to maintain full compliance with all national and local requirements.
Customer Satisfaction
What does workforce management software have to do with customer satisfaction? Everything!
The workforce management systems available from Advance Systems allow you to integrate customer service performance as part of the overall performance review of your line level employees. Now your managers can use measurable criteria to assure your employees are interacting with your customers according to specific standard then record those measurements so they can be integrated into each individual’s performance evaluation on an annual, monthly, weekly or even daily basis.
This type of observation and recording isn’t possible when you are using manual systems. But automated workforce management systems make it simple to measure actual employee performance against standards so you can identify and correct shortcomings before they can affect the way your customers perceive your business.
Workforce management systems can do all this and more to improve both HR’s actual performance, and the way your department is seen by upper management within your organisation.
