5 HCM pain points — and 10 tech solutions to remedy them
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Intro to HCM
Human capital management (HCM) is a tough beast to wrangle. HCM encompasses an organisation’s wider strategy or toolkit for managing its employees — from attracting to recruiting, training, developing, and managing its workers.
Regardless of the stage, HR departments need to ensure they have robust systems, processes and practices in place to ensure the most seamless employee experience (EX) possible. For Humanforce, EX is the North Star. Every solution we create places frontline (‘deskless’) employees at the core.
Intro to HCM pain points
Here’s the catch: you can automate HCM, but you can’t program your workers. They’re people. Managing people means managing people-related problems, which have gradually become ‘pain points’ for HR departments and organisations worldwide. Luckily, there are solutions to reduce the impact of these issues.
Here are five of the most common HCM pain points — with a Humanforce remedy-or-two two for each one.
Pain point #1: High employee turnover
Employee turnover refers to the number of workers that exit an organisation within a certain period of time. While healthy turnover exists, high turnover generally isn’t a good metric. As for a global snapshot, the US experienced a 13.5% average voluntary turnover rate from 2023 to 2024. The UK experiences a 21% average annual turnover rate.
In the year to February 2024, 1.1 million Australians changed jobs — that’s an 8% job mobility rate. While statistics show job mobility is on a downward trend compared to previous decades, it’s still worth understanding why people are looking to move on from their current role. Some of the key reasons for employee turnover include:
Insufficient pay
Disorganised or poor management
High levels of stress — or inversely, no challenge at all
Lack of growth and development opportunities
Inadequate recruitment processes and support
Toxic or incompatible culture
Competitors with better offerings
How Humanforce helps reduce high employee turnover
Humanforce Work App
The Humanforce Work App is a tool built to foster open communication and promote a healthier work-life balance for frontline workers — all in one place. It’s a hub for managers and employees to access important information on the fly and also provides valuable tools, saving time and granting flexibility. Users can:
Access schedules and organise future shifts, manage leave, complete timesheets, bid on shifts and swap shifts in an instant — anytime, anywhere
Stay in the loop with noticeboards, announcements, updates on the latest news and developments
Help managers deal with roster changes efficiently by being able to view gaps in real-time, issue and accept shift requests, and approve timesheets on-the-go
Designed to simplify admin and keep communication open for all, the Humanforce Work App helps enhance the EX by automating tasks and forming deeper connections with employees.
Onboarding and Offboarding
The Humanforce Onboarding & Offboarding solution encourages happier, more highly engaged employees from the dawn of their tenure. Managers can:
Enhance compliance & cost efficiency by eliminating time and resource intensive tasks like information recording, policy signoffs, and qualification updates
Coordinate the onboarding experience with customisable, automated workflows and processes that set new employees up for success based on role, department or location
Engage and retain from day one through personalised welcome emails and new hire check-ins. Offboarding feedback can also be obtained at the end of tenure
Pain point #2: Disengaged workforce
According to Gallup’s ‘State of the Global Workplace’ report for 2024, global employee engagement stagnated, and overall wellbeing declined.
Stress, worry and sadness were found to be the key drivers of ‘active disengagement’ — generally characterised by an employee that is openly expressing discontent and spreading negativity amongst their team. Gallup estimates that low employee engagement costs the global economy US$8.9 trillion annually.
Disengagement can become complex, especially when the factors intertwine. Some of these include:
Burnout or boredom
Lack of a challenge
Poor organisational support, services and facilities (physical and psychological)
No recognition or appreciation
Poor work-life balance
Management or team is unsupportive or disengaged
How Humanforce helps reduce employee disengagement
Nurturing an engaged team begins with HR, management, and a good toolset. Here’s how the Humanforce HCM suite can help.
Employee Engagement
Our Employee Engagement solution keeps managers and employees connected as the go-to function for surveys, feedback and reviews. Host 1:1 check-ins, track happiness and wellbeing over the entire employee lifecycle, and align wider teams around goals for better collaboration.
In keeping track of employee engagement and providing rich feedback, you can pinpoint areas for improvement with the end goal of reducing turnover.
Thrive Wellbeing*
In 2023, 37% of Australians reported cost-of-living pressures as the biggest driver of negative mental health. There’s a solemn need for organisations to understand and prioritise their employees’ financial wellbeing. In fact, over 50% of Australian workers considered financial education to be important — but only 29% of employers offered any form of it.
Thrive Wellbeing is Humanforce’s financial wellbeing platform. It’s an all-in-one financial wellbeing app, aimed at helping combat financial stress, boosting overall productivity and wellbeing, and retaining talent.
*Thrive Wellbeing is currently only available to Humanforce customers based in Australia.
Pain point #3: High cost of labour
One of the hardest aspects to running a business is balancing the ongoing and ‘hidden’ costs. Of these expenses, labour costs are one of the highest — as of November 2025, Australia ranks 7th in the world for highest average labour cost. And with wage growth struggling to catch inflation in 2024, organisations must understand that employees need to be paid a market-competitive rate, on time, and accurately.
One of the biggest killers of accurate payroll is inefficient rostering and scheduling. Slacking on this HCM practice usually results in:
A decline in employee output and productivity
Overworked and underpaid employees, resulting in burnt out workers and (costly) turnover
Low morale due to prolonged hours or erratic shift allocation
Frustration and as a result, poor customer service
How Humanforce helps reduce labour costs
Our range of Workforce Management (WFM) software solutions offer the tools needed to keep your teams organised, and help you avoid any unnecessary labour expenditure.
Workforce Analytics
Workforce Analytics organises all the important stats in one place, giving you a better snapshot of your employees. Customise your dashboard, view critical metrics like costs and resources, tardiness, absenteeism and shift take-up rates, and convert them into easy-to-interpret charts & graphs.
Workforce Analytics empowers you to better understand the needs, patterns and behaviours of your staff members. You’ll then be able to forecast based on past trends, establish baseline performance metrics and generate insights to organise your teams and reduce unnecessary expenditure.
Rostering & Scheduling
With the Humanforce Rostering & Scheduling solution, you can eliminate any potential scheduling surprises.
This automated system provides both managers and employees with a unified and seamless rostering experience — including auto scheduling based on actual work patterns and availability, and shift bidding to quickly fill any vacancies.
It also helps combat overspending on labour costs. View budgets, monitor profit margins and additional loading and holiday pay to ensure your labour expenditure not only stays within budget but is also compliant.
Time & Attendance
Humanforce’s Time & Attendance solution allows you track and capture live, accurate workforce data to increase your compliance confidence.
Digitally log attendance and record work performed by authorised personnel with automatic time capture and security methods — from the Humanforce Work App to simple on-site kiosks, using facial recognition tools and QR codes.
Managers can also approve time and attendance via timesheets in bulk — seamlessly and on-the-go — to avoid payroll delays, promoting your employees’ financial wellbeing.
Pain point #4: Skills shortages
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, certain industries globally have faced critical skills shortages. Many of these industries are reliant on frontline workers — for example, retail, hospitality, and the care industries. To cite Australia as one example, government statistics show that at present, 36% of occupations nationwide are in national shortage. The occupations facing the most shortages were technicians and trade workers, followed by construction trades workers, food trades workers, and health professionals.
Skills shortages can arise due to a variety of external factors:
A lack of skilled workers in certain regions
Changes in the global economy cause job openings to increase or decline
Immigration policy, including changes in work visa requirements and fluctuating migration limits
Aging professions see mature workers retire and create gaps
Shortage of qualified & specialised workers
Adoption of new or innovative technologies create rapid demand for new occupations and skills, leading to a rapid oversupply or shortage of qualified people
Skill shortages are stressful to manage. For organisations and industries amid a shortage, things can become toxic fairly quickly. Resources are strained, causing bottlenecks to occur. Expenditure on overtime and contract workers increases, as existing staff begin to burn out due to increased workloads. Finally, organisations lose the capacity to innovate and grow.
How Humanforce helps limit the impact of skills shortages
Agility is the key to dealing with external challenges. This can be achieved by implementing tools that can help organisations handle sudden changes in the labour market.
Rostering and Scheduling
Rostering and Scheduling is the best Humanforce solution for optimising your existing employees for maximum productivity. With it, you’ll be able to roster accurately according to peak periods, while complying with award/employment agreement rates and protecting margins. It’s also a great way to keep employees organised and structured, minimising the need for overtime and last-minute shift allocations.
Pain point #5: Increasing and ever-changing compliance obligations
Regulatory compliance is one of the most important considerations for organisations worldwide — especially in Australia. Penalties for compliance breaches can be severe, with hefty fines and plenty of negative media attention that can send PR teams into damage control.
HR compliance is especially critical, with several bases to cover:
Fair Work Act 2009, including payroll, award and leave compliance
Workplace Health and Safety, concerning hazard & risk assessment, health and safety procedures and rigorous training
Privacy and data protection, with emphasis on data security, consent & disclosure, and breach notifications
Diversity and equal opportunity, including recruitment & selection, equal pay, and workplace policies
How Humanforce helps changing compliance obligations
Compliance obligations are ever-changing due to dynamic regulatory and legislative developments. Without a tracking tool or service, it can be impossible to keep up with — and it’s not something organisations can afford to miss.
Awards & Compliance
Part of the Humanforce WFM suite, Awards & Compliance allows you to accurately interpret complex awards, track changes as they happen, and apply them with ease.
Our award interpretation software (sometimes referred to as a pay conditions engine) accommodates all industry standard and modern awards, as well as employment agreements, providing instant calculations to help you understand exactly how much your employees should be paid.
One of the standout features is the automated payroll calculator. It allows you to quickly and accurately calculate wages in accordance with current labour laws.
Compliance Management
In addition, our Compliance Management solution allows you to automate audit and compliance management to make employee record-keeping effortless. Receive notifications about renewal dates for things like visas and vaccinations before they hit, track qualifications for different job roles, and stay on top of CPD requirements with training and qualifications monitoring.
Conclusion
Managing people is tough, but it's even tougher without the help of the right technology. Maintaining compliance, staying within labour budgets, transforming HR into a data-driven function, and ensuring the EX is prioritised is only possible with the right HCM software.
About Humanforce
Humanforce is the best-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite — without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses.
To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.
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