Workforce management (WFM) is strategies used by employers that show how they distribute their employees and business resources, track their attendance and performance, and stay up to date with work-related laws and regulations. The goals of these strategies are to increase productivity and decrease business risks.
Building a WFM strategy is necessary for all businesses, but starting from scratch can seem very daunting. If you’re in a management position in charge of coming up with some WFM strategies, there must be a number of questions going through your mind, but this post will help you get some solid tips on how to make your own WFM strategies.
WFM Tips
Create goals for your strategies: Before you start planning for your WFM strategies, you need to know what you want the strategies to accomplish. Do you want to improve productivity through better labor planning? Do you want to lower your business’s operational costs? Do you want to significantly improve your customer service? All of these questions and more can be improved with proper workforce management, it just depends on where you want your focus to be.
Take note of the people/resources you can already work with: If you jump right into developing your WFM strategies, you may overlook some of the staff and resources you have at your disposal. Take some time beforehand to understand what knowledge and capabilities your employees have with workforce management. You can use this to your advantage and find out what exactly you need in order to achieve your WFM goals. If questions or issues arise in your WFM strategy, your colleagues can help guide you.
Set a budget: Once you’re done with your initial planning, you’ll notice that some areas will require new tech or staffing to reach your goals. Take time to figure out the costs of filling these gaps. This will help you find out what you can do now with the resources you already have while you learn what kind of WFM software will help for the future.
Outline the steps for your goals: Once your budget is finished, focus on the steps that need to be taken to reach your goals. If your top priority is to improve employee productivity, find WFM software vendors that can get you the tech to oversee the performance of each employee.
Goal timing and overlap: This tip is similar to outlining the steps of your goals, allowing you to make sure that you’re using your resources correctly. It can be pretty easy to oversee the productivity of your employees, but areas of WFM may overlap with other areas of your business. An example of this is that your IT department could install new automation software for customer calls, and this would overlap with your call center because some of their processes would change.
These are only a few tips to help you with your WFM strategy, but don’t forget that each business will have slightly different needs from the rest. Make sure you take extra time evaluating the areas of your business to make sure your WFM is implemented correctly, and stay consistent.