How Education providers can streamline their HR processes with workforce management tech

For Education providers, workforce management is a dynamic affair. This report by PwC,  which outlines the changing landscape of tertiary education over the past few years, serves as an example. Industries continue to demand more and more from graduates; the ongoing adoption of technology and big data increases the need for digital acumen; and heightened student expectations have increased competition between universities worldwide.  

That’s the big picture, though. When homing in on tertiary education institutions, certain trends can be seen. An increasing demand for tertiary education requires more skilled workers in this sector, but cuts to government funding in recent years has caused a shift in how HR operates in tertiary education institutions. There has also been a gradual casualisation of their workforces. of their workforces. At present, many institutions rely on casual, contract, and part time workers — from academics to faculty, to retail workers, and even janitorial staff. While casual workforces bring benefits to both business and employee, they also come with caveats for HR departments — and in tertiary education, many HR departments adopt a unique structure compared to other industries.

The unique challenges facing HR operations in tertiary education 

McKinsey research describes how, in higher education institutions like universities, HR departments suffer from a lack of alignment between their HR function and the rest of the university.  

Despite many universities having a central HR function that reports to vice presidents or COOs, individual faculties — such as science or engineering — tend to hire their own HR staff to look after their own hiring and staffing processes. Ironically, this tends to decentralise the HR function in terms of structure, purpose, and function. 

Unlike in the private sector, the chief human resources officers (CHROs) in these institutions do not often report directly to the university president and rarely have a say in university-wide mandates that cover areas such as employer branding, organisational design, culture, employee experience, and more. Even some of the most integral HR decisions, like processes to determine faculty needs and hiring, can fall outside HR altogether.  

Consequently, many university departments tend to be branded as compliance and administrative functions that have little to no say in the strategic needs of the business. This results in a unique structure that leads to major inefficiencies, where simple HR processes and transactions can be dragged out for weeks or even months. 

This becomes a workforce management issue when considering that these institutions typically hire hundreds, or even thousands of full-time and part-time academic staff, contingent faculty, casual contractors, and non-academic staff such as grounds people and retail workers. If HR decision makers are dispersed across multiple faculties, societies, departments, and higher leadership, inefficiencies and communication silos will continue to arise.

Humanforce's workforce management solutions are ideal for all Education providers. But first — why Humanforce?

We are veterans in WFM technology. Humanforce was one of the first software companies to specialise in scheduling and time & attendance in Australia. For 23 years, we have made the lives of HR, managers and frontline (‘deskless’) workers easier through our WFM software suite — and continue to do so today in the US, UK, and New Zealand.  

Today, Humanforce offers its WFM software as part of a best-in-one human capital management (HCM) platform. This platform also includes HR, Talent, Payroll, and Benefits. This is what we can do for Education providers at all levels, including schools, boarding schools, universities, colleges, and more.

Rostering & Scheduling is designed to unify your workforce

Education providers at all levels employ a diverse roster of workers, consisting of both academic and non-academic staff. These employees range from educators to grounds people, kitchen staff, sporting coaches, and many, many more.  

A diverse roster leads to diverse requirements — especially on the compliance side. With different responsibilities, locations, and pay requirements, not to mention varied working hours, faculty managers may find it difficult to effectively allocate, track, and ensure compliance for these workers without a centralised WFM tool.  

Humanforce’s Rostering & Scheduling solution allows faculty managers, HR teams and staff coordinators to auto-generate optimised, demand-driven, award-compliant rosters in just a few clicks. Both academic and non-academic staff can easily be split across campuses or departments, simplifying the management of a diverse roster.  

Staff can be allocated across multiple locations on campus and be notified about shift conflicts, while faculty administrators can keep an accurate record of total hours worked by their educators. This helps ensure staff only work their designated hours, preventing burnout and unnecessary spending on labour costs for the business. 

Employees also stand to benefit from features such as the ability to bid on available shifts or swap shifts — all while using the Humanforce Work App. This provides greater flexibility and autonomy — potentially helping workers to fit work more effectively around their life commitments. 

Finally, managers and employees can the benefits of an intuitive UI and click-and-drag controls for ease of use.

Time & Attendance software allows you to accurately track your workforce 

With staff spread across large campuses and different departments, accessing and collating a holistic view of workforce metrics relating to time and attendance can prove challenging. 

Humanforce Time & Attendance allows managers to accurately track and capture live workforce data, including clock-in and clock-out times for casual academic and non-academic staff. Real-time operational insights mean that managers can see who’s on site and where. They can also review and approve timesheets in an instant for more precise payroll and reporting. 

Time & Attendance can be accessed via on-site kiosks or the Humanforce Work App, a mobile tool designed to place workforce management in the palm of your hand. It allows both managers and employees to view schedules, organise future shifts, manage leave, timesheets, and swap shifts in an instant.  

Importantly for managers, Time & Attendance is designed with full integration capability. It can be easily woven into your tech stack to work with third-party solutions, such as payroll and many others.

Additional Humanforce solutions for Education providers 

Awards & Compliance 

Also included in the Humanforce WFM suite is the Awards & Compliance solution — allowing managers to accurately interpret complex awards, track changes as they happen, and apply them with ease.  

The sophisticated award interpretation engine (sometimes referred to as a pay conditions engine) ensures that all modern awards and employment agreement pay obligations and entitlements are met, providing instant calculations to indicate exactly how much employees should be paid. The payroll calculator quickly and accurately calculates wages, penalties, overtime and allowances in accordance with current labour laws.  

Core HR 

With Core HR, Education providers can store employee data in a centralised repository. Whether it be personal employee information, work preferences, internal movements, qualifications, payroll, or job details, managers can view, edit, and track this data in real time.  

Organising both academic and non-academic staff into a single, secure location helps centralise HR, reducing the inefficiencies experienced by many Education providers. Instead, leaders from different faculties can access and edit employee records from a single, cloud-based location, accelerating processing times. 

Talent 

Humanforce Talent is another essential solution for Education providers relying on casual workforces. 

It grants them a candidate-centric, holistic approach to workforce planning by pooling pre-qualified candidates, contractors, internal staff and alumni into a single talent community. 

Managers can then contact pre-qualified candidates on an as-needed basis; this is beneficial for faculties looking for contingent staff in areas such as boarding houses, for sporting teams,  

This is just a snapshot of what Humanforce can do for your organisation. To find out more, visit our website or talk to one of our experts today.

About Humanforce 

Humanforce is the all-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, the US, 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.