What is Workforce Management? Process & Complete Working

Before you allocate tasks and align your workforce, you must understand the complete mechanism of workforce management processes. Know where it starts and ends!

While many businesses are doubting the potential of having well-laid workforce management processes, some are clueless about it. It looks like both parties aren’t exposed to the benefits well-structured workforce management can provide. Having a well-thought plan to channel the workforce at the office or remote location can help:

• Streamline daily to quarterly processes
• Align manpower on the same page
• Reduce wasteful hours at the job site

Let’s understand in this guide what is workforce management, its working, and the complete process. Along with that, we will also unfold how it adds to the value of an organisation.

What is Workforce Management?

Workforce management is a combination of processes, methods, and ways to effectively monitor and manage diverse teams, which could include an in-house team, field staff, remote or hybrid team.

Workforce management or WFM solutions leverages the use of effective processes, methods, and software that help:

1. Assign the right people for the right job
2. Allot shifts – upon forecasting regular to urgent work volumes
3. Optimise resource utilisation for cost & time saving
4. Define workflow and forecast productivity patterns

Benefits of Workforce Management Software

Why should you use it (if you don’t have any)?

Having efficient workforce management software empowers product-based or service-centric businesses by streamlining and automating their redundant tasks. It lets line managers with scattered and diverse workforce access a digital workstation wherein they can:

• Automate the task of assigning jobs or urgent service tickets to the right staff.
• Track their staff’s availability and locational movement through GPS.
• Manage their staff’s shifts effortlessly even during heavy work demands.
• Access task v/s achievement data to compare total tasks assigned and actual tasks achieved.
• Manage the order requests of field staff and give approval for them.
• Helps regulate field staff’s attendance through facial recognition, picture upload with time stamp, and location detail.
• Approve or reject leave requests from staff and accordingly update leave quota.
• Compile accurate salary invoices to disburse salaries on time.

As a result:

The software-aided platform easily reduces the challenges of traditional workforce management solutions.

→   It eliminates ambiguity and reduces the scope of repetitive tasks

—> Brings clarity on who is working on what and who is available

—> Keeps track of every process with up-to-the-minute information

—-> Ensures that assigned tasks are accomplished or are moving according to the decided priority

Let’s explore how workforce management software works in complete depth – without missing a single beat.

How Does Workforce Management Solution Work? – The Entire Process

Here are the workforce management processes that are possible to comply with simple-to-use and integrated WFM software solutions.

Step 1 – Gathering Important Data

Managing a workforce starts with gathering and evaluating of relevant data, mainly as:

• Current staff’s strength, team size
• Types of tasks with roles, responsibilities
• Hierarchy structure specifying the reporting pattern
• Total resources required for operations
• Task priority and delivery window

Data is subjective to each enterprise’s needs and use cases.

Step 2 – Forecasting of “Present” and “Future” Workload

After having relevant information on people and tasks, it’s time to decide how you would divide the workload for the short run and long run. You can do it bi-monthly, monthly, or even yearly.

Forecasting workload lets you predict future task volumes and accordingly:

• Schedule and optimize resource allocation
• Enhance processes and efficiency
• Ensure the right teams or people are well equipped to manage required work demands

This helps foster effective planning and ensures long-haul productivity.

Step 3 – Identifying the Total Staff Requirement

Analyze staff’s requirements based on their skills, capacity, availability (especially during peak seasons or heavy work volume), and time spent on each task.

Invest in employees’ time-tracking software to ascertain:

• How much time does each employee take to complete a certain task?
• Which employee is more adept in efficiently completing the given task?

Having this data would help you determine whether you need to hire more people to meet the workload in the future.

Step 4 – Scheduling of Shifts for Employees

If your company works in diverse shift patterns, then you must pre-plan shift schedules for your staff.

Generally, there are two shifts — morning and night. If your company accommodates both then it’s imperative to assign shifts to employees (based on their skills, capacity, and availability).

🔍Find How TrackoField Helps:

—-> Automate Field Service Employees Scheduling and Dispatching

—-> Schedule Last Urgent or Minute Shifts for Field Employees

Step 5 – Track Employees (With their tasks’ progress)

The final step involves tracking employees for their current location and the progress of the assigned tasks. The workforce management system provides a live map where you can locate your executives ‘ current movement. You will know:

• When he/she is halting or idling unnecessarily (away from the assigned task site)
• When he/she is at the client site completing the scheduled tasks (maybe fixing the coffee machine)
• When he got freed from the current call and moved towards the next.

All in all, you will know how your employees are utilising their time and spot it before it overpowers or negatively impacts your healthy returns.

The above factors clearly define the processes and functions of workforce management solutions that are proven to benefit small to large-scale field service businesses.

How Does the Workforce Management System Simplify Field Manager’s Jobs?

The workforce management system like TrackoField comes with oceans of modules and features that allow field managers to elevate the field staff management process:

💡Simplifies Shift Scheduling	Managers at quick clicks can assign recurring or last-minute shifts, either weekly or monthly.
💡Simplifies Task Allocation	Managers can easily equip their field staff with service requests or routine tasks based on urgency, priority, or other variables. They can even assign ad-hoc tasks based on limited availability or shortage of staff.
💡Manage Field Employees Expenses	Managers with expense management modules enjoy the liberty to: Receive expense reimbursement requests from field staff Put a cap limit on total expenses their field staff can incur Categories expenses as travelling, food, stationery, fuel, and more – to enjoy the clutter-free process.
💡Track Field Staff’s Orders	Managers with an order management module can keep track of the number of orders placed by their field staff. Can approve or reject orders as per the need. And even request field staff to place ad-hoc orders, while keeping a view of order volume and inventory level.
💡 Attendance & Leave Management	Managers with such comprehensive software enjoy access to geo-coded attendance marking. They can mark attendance based on their employees’ availability on the task site. Plus, they can plan or hand over task requests accordingly.
💡 Detailed Performance Reports	Managers receive up-to-the-minute data on workforce performance which helps them identify trends, and reasons for gaps and make informed decisions. Such data allows managers to generate reports on key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the effectiveness of workforce management strategies.

Here’s What Successful Workforce Management Should Look Like!

Let’s take an example of a service-based business that provides at-home services for cleaning, repair work, etc. Let’s name this business “Rural Company”. When the company automated its processes with field force management software, it achieved the following positive outcomes, defining its success in workforce management.

The above results clearly highlight the importance of workforce management. It’s time you get your hands on such software!

Steps to Choosing the Best Workforce Management Solution

While making a selection from the market-offered workforce management software, ensure it offers features to:

✓ Simplify assigning of shifts (for daily, weekly, or monthly needs) to multiple staff in one go. ✓ Allocate tasks to field employees based on their skills, proximity to the job site, availability for the day, and 50+ custom aspects. ✓ Mark geofenced attendance and manages leaves according to customer requests and sudden work demands. ✓ Report and acknowledge expenses of field staff for food, stationery, fuel, lodging, etc. ✓ Manage bulk or ad-hoc order requests and acceptance for sheer visibility. ✓ Access to real-time and updated reports & data to know the scope for improvement. Looking for the best workforce management solution that can be customized according to your business’s scaling needs? It’s time to turn towards TrackoField. Doubting its efficiency? Get a Free Trial Today!

Final Takeaway!

Now that you know how beneficial workforce management processes are, all that is left is to execute and manage them with the help of software. Experience elevated shift and task scheduling, higher visibility through target vs. achievement reports, and under-budget operations. The workforce management software makes it possible to maximise the efficiency of employees, whether operating via the office or remote, far-off locations.

TrackoField is an all-in-one workforce management system that takes care of your task allocation, attendance and leave management, expense, and payroll computation while helping you monitor the employee workforce. It does all of this and more in just a few clicks and commands!

Schedule a demo today!

FAQs on Workforce Management

• How does workforce management work?

  Workforce management works by planning, scheduling, and optimizing employees' tasks, shifts, attendance, and admin tasks. All to maximise productivity, and ensure efficient utilisation of resources while keeping in account employees' skills, availability, and preferences.

• What are the advantages of efficient workforce management?

  Efficient workforce management leads to:
  Efficient and effective utilization of resources
  Better allocation of employees as per skills, project deadlines, and priority
  Manage employees' attendance and leave to reduce absenteeism and ensure effective deployment of tasks
  Saving wasteful hours, reducing redundancy and repetition of tasks

• Why should you use workforce management software?

  You need workforce management software to align work and shift schedules, auto-assign tasks, and manage working hours and payroll data. And all in all, keep an eye on your employees' tasks visibility, efficiency, and productivity level.

• What are workforce management processes?

  The workforce management process includes:
  Step 1 - Gathering of important data about workflow and workforce
  Step 2 - Forecasting of “present” and “future” workload.
  Step 3 - Identification of total staff requirement
  Step 4 - Scheduling of smart shifts for on-time dispatching
  Step 5 - Tracking employees’ locational movements with their tasks progress and completion rate.

• What is the importance of workforce management?

  Workforce management is important in every organisation because it helps deploy the right people to the right tasks. It further reduces the wasteful, paper-led operations and syncs every process from shift scheduling to task assignment to successful dispatching of field staff.