Workforce Management Featured Article
Checking the Health of Your Workforce Management System
Workforce management solutions are used to track and influence all activities of productive employees. This type of system focuses on optimizing everything that touches human resources, including payroll and benefits, career planning, training, forecasting, recruiting, schedule conformance and labor budgeting.
Since its influence is so far reaching, it needs to operate optimally.
To be sure of this, a workforce management system health check is in order from time to time. Results from this analysis will reveal what adjustments need to be made and if it’s time for an upgrade or replacement.
There are five main aspects of a workforce management health check. These are especially important for customer-facing organizations like call centers.
Version: Many companies delay upgrading their workforce management systems, because of the expense. But if the software is out of date, you’re losing out. Older versions lack more advanced capabilities of new software, which often greatly improves functionality. You may also be struggling with issues that have been solved.
Note: If you use a cloud-based workforce management solution, upgrades should be automatic.
Usage: By design, workforce management systems are supposed to make the employees’ jobs easier. But if they aren’t properly trained, or the system is overly complex, that potential can’t be realized.
Therefore, looking at how employees use the system, and how that usage can be improved, is very important.
Costs: Traditionally, workforce management solutions required significant ongoing expenditures on hardware upgrades, IT support, maintenance and operation. This was unavoidable to maximize the initial investment.
Things have changed with the advent of cloud-based workforce management options. These products can offer the same capabilities as their traditional counterparts, but are much more economical.
Needs: Like most business sectors, call centers are evolving. The wave of the future is the contact center, which creates different demands on a workforce management solution.
The system you use, therefore, must keep pace with your organization’s changing needs, and be appropriately scalable.
Performance: Finally, look at whether the workforce management solution is providing the information needed to help you make smart decisions. Is it delivering as promised? Consider real-time metrics and reports that impact forecasting, scheduling and daily operation.
Bottom line: Every so often, check on the health of your workforce management system. Then, make the changes needed to optimize its utility. After all, you’re paying for this tool, so make sure it’s giving you the information needed to optimize the organization’s workforce.