Workforce management pain points
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Pain point #1: Maintaining compliant rostering and scheduling
Compliance is a key part of people management. When it comes to workforce management, and specifically rostering and scheduling, employers have a wide array of government and regulatory obligations.
These obligations may relate to employee health & safety – for example, the number of hours worked, the number of rest breaks taken, leave entitlements, and so on. Alternatively, they may relate to remuneration in the form of the minimum wage, overtime and penalty rates, and so on. Most of these obligations will be outlined in industrial instruments like awards and employment agreements.
In addition, certain industries may have their own criteria, such as mandated rostering requirements. An example is healthcare, aged care and childcare, where there may be staffing ratios to be maintained to ensure the right level of care is provided at all times.
Here are three pain points relating to compliant rostering and scheduling:
Multi-location rostering
For organisations operating across multiple locations, it’s important to have an overview of who’s working, where, and when. This overview makes it easier to ensure the optimal number of employees are in the right roles at the right time. In certain industries, such as events and stadia, the sheer size of a venue may also present headaches for roster managers, not to mention time & attendance tracking. Being able to move staff to areas of highest demand is only possible with innovative rostering & scheduling software.
Shift-filling
Being able to fill shifts easily and efficiently is crucial for sustainable business operations. If manual spreadsheets are being used, it’s almost impossible to factor in worker preferences, their availability and qualifications, and keep a tally of the number of hours they’ve already worked in a given period. Filling shifts due to unexpected absences can also be a challenge, with operations managers having to make frantic phone calls to other employees to plug the gaps, or use expensive agency staff.
Demand-driven rostering
Being able to match staffing levels to consumer demand is also important, primarily for compliance and budgeting reasons. The key is using historical data and AI-powered solutions to make predictive scheduling a reality. All leaders should have a reasonable idea of when work peaks and troughs occur; those busy times of the day/week/month/year when more staff are required to meet demand. For those in retail and hospitality – and any business with demand-driven variables – it’s crucial to understand your demand curve of sales or demand and roster accordingly to ensure under- or over-staffing doesn’t occur.
How can Humanforce help with rostering compliance?
Humanforce’s workforce management software solutions can help ease the compliance burden in a number of key ways:
Compliance depends not just on the worker’s role and status, but also on the number of hours worked, the days and dates worked, the time of day, providing adequate rest periods and breaks, RDOs, the number of hours since their last shift, and more. Humanforce’s Awards & Compliance solution is driven by a powerful pay conditions engine, which automatically calculates pay and helps ensure entitlements are correctly allocated depending on the relevant award or agreement.
Humanforce Rostering & Scheduling provides managers with notifications when roster conflicts or issues occur, including alerts when attempts are made to roster workers who don’t have appropriate or up-to-date qualifications. Generated rosters will clearly highlight any compliance warning to observe or action. Users can surface working hour exceptions, overtime warnings, and qualification limitations to optimise their roster and enhance compliance.
In addition, country and industry-specific features within the Humanforce suite can help with compliant rostering. For example, in Australia, Humanforce has always been committed to helping our aged care customers meet their legislated minimum staff time requirements through our Workforce Analytics solution. Humanforce Workforce Analytics allows you to view key datapoints in real-time to ensure your organisation remains compliant under the AN-ACC reforms, including:
Your compliance with minimum staff time requirements
Care minutes compliance reporting to maintain star rating for facilities
Residential care minutes and RN care minutes against schedule in a single report
Highlighting under- and over-staffing based on care requirements and scheduled hours
Today, our AN-ACC Real-Time Dashboard, found within Humanforce Workforce Analytics, adds greater functionality and helps providers analyse specific data to ensure they are meeting care minute reporting obligations. Read more in our blog
Pain point #2: Inefficient workforce management processes
Any software solution should ensure greater efficiency for workers, managers and HR. We’ve broken the term ‘efficiency’ into four key areas:
Automation: For years, the only way to ensure people were in the right place at the right time was via manual methods. Paper-based rosters would be pinned to the communal area wall and employees would manually clock in and out using bundy clocks.
However, those manual methods struggled to navigate the complexities of staff availability, over- and under-staffing, managing demand peaks and troughs, and meeting compliance needs such as mandated staffing requirements.
There was a higher chance of errors and limited accessibility. Spreading word about roster changes or updates was a key challenge.
Configuration: Every business is different and will have its own way of doing things. That’s why configurability is so critical when it comes to workforce management software. While processes often need to be formalised to ensure consistency, there needs to be scope to tailor these according to business needs.
A prime example is how a workforce management solution navigates industrial instruments like awards and employment agreements, which will outline countless employment provisions relating to pay, conditions, and more. The system should be configurable to correctly calculate pay and entitlements for employees, depending on each organisation’s unique circumstances.
Visibility: When it comes to areas like rostering and scheduling, managers often need to make quick decisions to ensure the right number of staff are on-site. For this, they need full visibility of their workforce: their availability, their attendance (in real-time), their work preferences, their annual leave accruals, and so on.
Reporting: Having access to workforce data is one thing; it’s what you do with that data that really matters. Managers need to be able to quickly spot trends and identify where greater efficiencies might be made. Managers should be able to glean deeper insights from their data – relating to all aspects of people management, from labour costs to engagement and absenteeism – in customisable reports.
How Humanforce can improve efficiency
Humanforce’s entire HCM suite is geared to automating time-consuming, repetitive tasks. For example:
Our Rostering & Scheduling solution can streamline the creation of rosters by pre-populating rosters automatically and sending out updates to staff. Our simple, drag-and-drop roster builder makes it easy to create new rosters or refresh existing rosters.
Our Roster Manager is a single rostering interface that allows operations and roster managers to complete all their rostering needs with a few clicks. It offers three different views of a roster, allowing users to view their data in a way that best suits them.
The solution will also alert users of any potential scheduling clashes or errors. It’s even possible to micro-schedule short-duration tasks and breaks – and build costing, mandatory qualifications, award/agreement conditions, reminders and more into them.
Similarly, timesheet approvals can be streamlined and done in bulk using our Time & Attendance solution.
Humanforce’s Workforce Analytics solution helps HR and business leaders make more informed decisions supported by real-time, data-driven evidence. In-built reports covering project costs, tardiness reporting, hours worked to hours rostered ratios, causes of unauthorised timesheets, and more can improve visibility of what’s happening across your business and show where planned and unplanned costs are occurring. Alternatively, a custom dashboard builder can be used to visualise specific, business-critical information, enabling users to spot minor anomalies before they turn into costly issues.
Pain point #3: High labour costs
The cost of labour has rarely been higher; optimising how workers are utilised is the ideal way to stay within budget. Here are four areas to keep in mind:
It may seem obvious but one of the best ways to improve your labour cost efficiency is to avoid overtime as much as possible. The occasional burst of overtime may not seem like much, and is often unavoidable, but even small amounts on a regular basis can quickly add up – especially with a larger workforce.
Of course, if you’re earning additional income during that overtime, it can be worthwhile. But more often than not, overtime costs you more without additional revenue. If your staff are struggling with workload, consider another part-time staff member to handle the workload and service your customers more effectively.
Alternatively, undertake a cost/benefit analysis to assess whether in fact it makes good business sense to operate on a public holiday or have staff working overtime on a regular basis. It goes without saying that regularly reviewing the number of agency staff required can also help. Would it be more cost effective to hire casual or full-time employees?
Not keeping accurate time & attendance records can also impact labour costs. If pen-and-paper timesheets are still be used, it’s possible that time theft is occurring. Whether it’s malicious or unintentional, chances are you’re regularly overpaying your employees. Alternatively, the data being manually entered is being misinterpreted. It’s easy for mistakes to slip through: a staff member enters the wrong name, HR reads the wrong column, or someone’s ‘7’ looks like a ‘1’.
How Humanforce minimises labour costs
Humanforce’s Rostering & Scheduling solution helps to optimise how efficiently a workforce is being utilised and can help managers work within budgets across one or many locations. It will also alert managers of any potential scheduling clashes or errors. They can even micro-schedule short-duration tasks and breaks – and build costing, mandatory qualifications, employment agreement conditions, reminders and more into rosters, while they are being created.
Just as critically, smart workforce management software can help employers stay compliant with pay, loadings and conditions – potentially avoiding the damage caused by staff underpayments. For example, Humanforce’s Awards & Compliance solution can break down what needs to be paid for a shift that starts on a non-public holiday (e.g. 10pm), then crosses midnight into a public holiday. It will show how much that worker will be paid (at time-and-a-half) for the hours worked past midnight – all on one timesheet and without having to split it manually.
Accurate time clocking is also only possible with sophisticated technology. From simple kiosks to mobile clocking, Humanforce’s Time & Attendance suite offers solutions to suit the operational and security needs of every business, in addition to innovative QR codes, finger vein scanning, facial recognition and geo-fencing features. Frontline managers can relax, knowing that they’ll always have the correct time and attendance data once payroll processing begins.
For further tips on reducing labour costs, read our blog.
Pain point #4: Employee disengagement
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to improve employee engagement. However, having smart technology can play an important role in keeping people connected and informed. While workforce management is considered a foundational ‘hygiene’ factor of the employer/employee relationship, it still plays a critical role in employee happiness and engagement.
For example, offering workers the flexibility and autonomy to work the hours that suits them can improve work-life balance. Similarly, providing predictable, regular shifts can enhance feelings of job security while also guaranteeing steady pay – key elements in overall health and wellbeing.
How Humanforce improves employee engagement
Here are three ways Humanforce workforce management solutions can enhance employee engagement.
Information at their fingertips: Deskless workers are on-the-go and need to have access to everything they need to do their jobs without having to log into deskbound PCs or laptops. The Humanforce Work App gives workers the opportunity to check rosters, bid on shifts, clock in and out, apply for leave and check leave balances, communicate with managers and peers, receive important company-wide updates, and more.
Greater flexibility and autonomy: Humanforce has a Shift Bidding feature, which allows eligible employees to bid for open shifts. After reviewing the location, department and times of the available shift, employees are able to bid for it directly. Staff benefit from a more open, transparent process that allows them to balance work with life, while managers remain in control of final scheduling.
Seamless payroll: There inevitably needs to be integration between your payroll system and your workforce management system – specifically your time and attendance data in the form of digital timesheets. It’s also critical that employees are paid according to applicable awards or employment agreement rates. Humanforce Payroll links seamlessly with Humanforce’s wider human capital management (HCM) suite, or an application programming interface (API) can be used to build those integrations with third-party payroll software platforms.
Conclusion
Labour is one of the most significant costs for all organisations, regardless of industry. It makes sense to take all possible steps to ensure that cost is carefully managed, while also streamlining workforce management operations and ensuring compliance is maintained. Given today’s workplace complexities, workforce management technology is the only way to do this. Get in touch below to see how Humanforce can help!
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 can automate and streamline all aspects of people management, please contact us.
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