What is Workforce Management?
Workforce Management (WFM) is a term used to define any technology or business solution designed to help organizations more effectively manage their processes for recruiting, hiring, training, scheduling, tracking, evaluating and compensating employees. WFM focuses on ensuring companies have the right people in the right job at the right cost on a continual basis. Common software systems which can comprise a complete WFM solution include Time and Attendance, Scheduling, Leave Management, Attendance Management, Performance Management and Employee and Manager Self-Service.
Effectively managing the workforce results in tangible benefits across the organization:
- Human Resources – Reduces administrative costs and the risks associated with regulatory non-compliance (federal, state and local labor laws; Sarbanes-Oxley).
- Labor – Reduces overall labor costs through the elimination of errors and employee malfeasance
- Operations – Improve productivity levels, on-time delivery and overall customer satisfaction.
- Finance – Enable proactive resource allocation decisions through enterprise-wide analytics.
- Sales – Increase sales through more effective matching of labor supply with customer demand.
Workforce Management is not a new concept - companies have been using stand-alone silo systems to automate one or several WFM functions for years. In the 21st century, however, the discipline of Workforce Management has evolved to the point where it now involves consolidating these silos and implementing solutions at a holistic, enterprise level. Done successfully, the benefits of an enterprise WFM solution are significant; the hard cost savings and productivity improvements related to how employees are scheduled, compensated and managed can result in an investment payback measured in months, not years.
The focus of Workforce Management is on streamlining the communications and transfer of information between the Employee and the Organization. For those organizations with payroll costs in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars per year, savings of pennies per employee per week can result in millions of dollars in cost savings per year.
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