Have you been struggling to manage your rapidly expanding workforce? Don’t worry, you’re not alone because staff management is a common challenge faced by businesses today.
Research shows that poor workforce management practices can decrease organizational productivity by nearly 30%. Manual scheduling is not only time-consuming, but it is also less efficient and fails to deliver the expected results. Most importantly, human intervention in manual staff management increases the chances of human errors. Eventually, companies fail to leverage the full potential of their workers. This failure to meet clients’ expectations leads to declined business growth.
In this context, this article describes the importance of automated WFM software and its role in business growth.
So, let’s get started!
What is Workforce Management Software?
Workforce management software is a cloud-based system that automates staff management operations. These fully-automated solutions allow team leaders to effectively manage their employees and make them more productive and efficient.
By automating employee scheduling and reporting, project, project managers can save their precious time and focus on the most critical tasks. Besides, they can get data-driven insights in real-time to make informed decisions. The interactive dashboard of workforce management software centralized enterprise HR-related functions in one place.
Features of Workforce Management Software
While workforce management solutions have several features, some of them are given below:
- Employee scheduling
- Time tracking
- Leave and absence management
- Real-time staff attendance
- ID verification via live photo
- GPS location access
- Timesheets and reporting
- Automated control room management
- Patrolling management
- Automated staff vetting
Why Workforce Management Software is Necessary?
Suppose you are running a medium-sized security agency in a large metropolitan city. Your security teams are operating at different client sites across diverse regions. How would you monitor the performance of your security officers? Is there any mechanism to ensure they have reached the client site and started working on their shift? Or do you have any alternate solution if the manual practices failed to deliver the expected results?
This is where workforce management software becomes necessary. Check out different ways these automated solutions can help you grow your business and achieve operational efficiency.
1. Automated Control Room Management
Get rid of manual control room management operations that are less effective and fail to deliver the expected results. Use workforce management software to automate control room management and monitor large teams with ease.
Modern WFM solutions are powered with an IVR-based check call management system. This system makes automated check calls to teams operating in different areas at regular intervals. It eliminates the need for making manual check calls to each worker individually to confirm his/her safety. In case a check call is missed, the system alerts the manager to take prompt action.
Consequently, automated control room management enables team leaders to evaluate the performance of large teams from a single dashboard. You can also adjust the frequency of check calls as per your client’s needs and use this feature to get better control over your personnel.
2. Make Employee Schedules in Advance
Employee scheduling is a hectic and time-consuming task, particularly if you are doing it manually. From writing down the assigned shifts one by one and managing the paperwork, it makes take you several hours to create weekly or monthly schedules.
However, workforce management software makes employee scheduling quicker, more efficient, and more reliable. Instead of spending hours checking records and assigning shifts, you can create schedules in minutes with just a few clicks. As a result, you can save precious time and utilize your energy to complete the most critical tasks like business development and innovation.
Most importantly, you need not carry your employees’ manual records with you. Instead, you can access these cloud-based solutions anytime, anywhere. Just enter your login credentials to access the interactive and user-friendly dashboard and automate employee scheduling like a pro.
3. Calculate Accurate Payrolls
Payroll processing requires accuracy in financial calculations, which is only possible when you calculate the workable hours precisely. Even a minor discrepancy can create doubts in stakeholders’ minds and decrease the accuracy of expenses.
Workforce management software can address this issue by automating payroll processing. This cloud-based solution allows companies to track the time spent by their workers on each shift, task, or assignment. The software has a time clock that measures employees’ clock-ins and clock-outs against specific service areas, clients, and sectors.
From that data, employers can calculate the workable hours and payable salaries with just a few clicks. The process is fully automated and takes a few minutes to complete. You can also integrate workforce management solutions with your desired third-party payroll processing tools for better results.
4. Track Patrolling History
Some jobs require constant patrolling within a predefine territory or service area. For instance, security officers guarding an event or building have to keep patrolling to ensure vigilant protection. Evaluating the performance of these patrolling workers is a huge challenge because you can’t ensure your presence on the client site all the time.
However, workforce management software can help supervisors to track their workers’ patrolling history. The patrolling staff has to scan the QR codes attached at different locations at the client site. Whenever a QR code is scanned via a mobile app, the system automatically collects the necessary information like location, data, and time.
Based on that information, supervisors can track the patrolling history and ensure all the checkpoints have been scanned. As a result, the software brings transparency and makes remote team monitoring very convenient.
Final Words
Technology adoption is the golden secret to achieving higher corporate growth and development. Growth-oriented companies across diverse sectors are moving toward workforce automation for higher productivity and better results.
Hence, workforce management solutions have been the need of the day. These cloud-based solutions allow project managers to monitor their staff and evaluate their performance anytime, anywhere. You can use this fully-automated software to create employee schedules, track time, manage shifts, and download timesheets and reports. Besides, automated control room management and patrolling management features save both time and resources.
Try workforce management software like Smart Workforce today to make your teams more productive and efficient.