Workforce Management Software | What Is It & Why You Need It

Workforce Management - the software your growing business desperately needs.

The right workforce management software can significantly impact your organisation's productivity, efficiency, and overall success.

In this article, we uncover the benefits of workforce management software with the:

• The 7 Steps to Choosing the Right Workforce Management Software for your business.
• The 9 Must-have Workforce Management Features.

What is workforce management software?

Workforce management refers to the day-to-day operations of managing your employees. Today, organisations rely on workforce management tools to streamline employee management processes. These software solutions are designed to improve the efficiency of managing workers with more streamlined processes for employee schedules and rosters, time tracking and attendance, payroll and more. Businesses can reduce administrative tasks, improve productivity, reduce costs, and ensure compliance by automating and optimising these processes.

Often separate applications are used to manage certain aspects of workforce management, and these often require integration for data flow and compliance. Another option is to use a complete workforce management solution like Access Definitiv. This offers better visibility, reporting, and unified data in an all-in-one workforce management system. Download our eBook to learn more about the differences between an all-in-one workforce management solution and separate applications.

By implementing a workforce management system, you can improve efficiency, save money, improve compliance, and engage employees more effectively. This contributes to business success.

What is workforce management software?

Workforce management software allows organisations to plan and manage key operations and Human Resource (HR) functions. Workforce management software simplifies onboarding new employees, rostering and scheduling workers, attendance and leave requests and absence management. It tracks hours via a mobile app, integrates payroll for pay runs and compliance, and delivers comprehensive reporting in real-time for managing labour costs, future staffing needs, rostering a cost-effective workforce, and scheduling employees, to name a few.

How to choose the right workforce management software?

Choosing the right workforce management software is critical for any business as it impacts productivity and efficiency, and overall success. There are many different solutions on the market, but finding the best workforce management software for your business needs to be feature-rich and cost-effective.

An effective workforce management solution should deliver comprehensive reporting to meet your strategic goals, simplify HR processes and streamline the productivity of your workers.

To choose the right workforce management software, consider the features and capabilities that best fit your organisation's needs. These features and capabilities include time tracking, payroll management, employee scheduling, and reporting. Additionally, you should also consider the cost of the software, its ease of use, and its ability to integrate with existing systems.

7 steps to help you choose the right WFM solution:

1. Build a team

Any business reviewing or changing its workforce systems and processes should include all departments that use the systems or own the processes.

Workforce management software features and functions can vary from department to department. Human Resources, Operations, Finance, IT, Customer Service Managers, and Directors may be part of the review and selection team. Creating a team to evaluate a workforce management system ensures departmental requirements and expectations are met.

2. Conduct an internal audit

Review how you manage your workforce and the systems and processes used today. This will highlight gaps and improvements needed. The internal audit will also help build requirements for the Workforce Management solution.

3. Capture business requirements

Define your business requirements for holistic workforce management. This should include core HR functions like workforce planning, employee onboarding, labour costs, time and attendance tracking, payroll processing, rostering and scheduling, compliance, data security and a mobile app for employees. Once you have the requirements, you can narrow your search by identifying the most critical features for your business.

4. Understand the costs

In your internal audit, capture the costs - this includes employee costs - the people that implement and manage your workforce tools, subscription costs - if you have multiple applications to manage your workforce, you will have multiple subscriptions and licences, training costs to use the workforce management solution in-house, this might be an additional cost. Workforce management costs can vary, so it's imperative to know what you are spending today vs how much an upgraded solution will cost.

Consider the long-term benefits of investing in a high-quality solution, like increased productivity and reduced labour costs.

5. Research and compare solutions

Review and evaluate different Workforce Management solutions, and compare key features, cost structures, and customer service models. This will enable you to determine which solution matches your business needs. Sources to help you include industry associations like the Australian Payroll Association, which has a comprehensive directory of suppliers, customer testimonials and case studies.

6. Request a demo

Seeing a WFM solution in action is the most effective way to evaluate the software and ask the vendor questions to evaluate its capabilities. At the demonstration, look for the following:

User experience

User-friendly interfaces and easy-to-use software are critical for successfully adopting and implementing workforce management software. Look for features such as drag-and-drop scheduling, employee self-service, and real-time dashboards.

Payroll processing

Confirm the software's payroll processing capabilities, including calculating pay rates, deductions, and taxes. Look for features such as automated processing, award interpretation, compliance reporting, time and attendance recording, rostering and scheduling capabilities and accounting software integrations.

Reporting and analytics

Evaluate reporting and analytics capabilities, including generating custom reports and analysing workforce data. Look for real-time analytics, predictive scheduling, and labour cost tracking features.

Integration

Determine the software's ability to integrate with other business systems like your accounting platform.

7. Customer support

Evaluate the vendor's customer service and support capabilities, including technical support, training, and implementation. These are all time-consuming areas. Make sure the vendor has a dedicated customer success and support team based in your business's time zone. Ask about support options - call centre, online support, and live chat.

Following these 7 steps, you should have all the bases covered to choose the right WFM solution for your business. Once you have identified the right software, you should also ask about the vendor's terms and conditions, pricing structure, and any other additional services they offer.

Workforce Management Software: 9 must-have features.

Choosing the right workforce management solution for your business is difficult. There is much to consider: cost, compliance, control, data and reporting, employee experience, scalability, and flexibility. Then there is the choice of separate applications or an all-in-one solution - which is better?

Let's look at some must-have features of workforce management and their benefits.

9 WFM must-have features and their benefits:

1. Onboarding

Businesses often overlook onboarding which creates a poor introduction for the new hire. Most new employees decide within the first six months of their employment if they’ll stay with the company or not. A good first introduction with the best onboarding practices helps retain staff and saves costs in the long run.

A workforce management system that includes onboarding has many benefits for both employees and employers.

• Digital onboarding streamlines the paper trail for employers and automates data collection. It also offers a great employee experience.
• Recording compliance at onboarding makes it easy to access and report on all documents.
• Digitally collection of bank, superannuation, and other personal details, payroll administration is reduced, and new hires are payroll-ready.
• With a self-serve mobile app, digital onboarding creates a positive onboarding experience. A mobile app ensures employee engagement, autonomy and transparency.
• Through in-app communication, new employees are welcomed and engaged.
• Employers can track onboarding progress, and newly hired employees can be reminded if they haven't completed all tasks with real-time notification.

2. Rostering

Managing rosters manually is difficult, time-consuming, confusing, and rarely consistent. Employee scheduling using workforce management software can make the whole process much simpler.

• With rostering as part of workforce management software, the right employees are automatically matched to the right jobs based on their availability, roles, and projects.
• Simple drag-and-drop functionality simplifies rostering, making it easy for managers to move shifts quickly and efficiently.
• Utilising reusable roster templates eliminates repetitive administration. Bulk-filling rosters by assigning people to multiple shifts at once eliminate human error.
• Real-time roster updates handle unforeseen disruptions by notifying affected employees instantly and requesting their acknowledgement of changes.
• With instant access to view shifts in real-time, the complex requirements of a business can be met with the right resources at the right time and place. A mobile app makes it easier to keep everyone in the loop.
• With real-time reporting, you can identify patterns, avoid overtime costs, and prevent underpayments. With a single data source on one platform, you can see the entire workforce rosters and schedules.

3. Mobile Access

Today's employees expect to be autonomous, self-sufficient and have a work-life balance. Mobile apps are part of cloud-based workforce management solutions that deliver employee self-service for an engaging employee experience.

• Mobile apps enable employees to access their schedules, clock in and out for time and attendance tracking, request leave, view their payslips, update their personal details, and even calculate leave accruals.
• The mobile app is a great communication tool; you can automate reminders and notifications to staff members whenever necessary.
• By providing employees access to information and tools on their mobile devices, they can clock in and out to capture attendance data and view their schedules. Overall, employee productivity improves as they can do these tasks on the go.
• Employee engagement increases when workers are given more control over their work schedules and tasks. Engaged employees are likelier to enjoy their work and be loyal to the company, and this, in turn, improves work-life balance. Learn more about why employee experience matters.

4. Manage Leave and Absences

Leave management can be a time-consuming task but important for compliance and correct pay runs. Workforce management software automates some of these time-consuming and administrative tasks.

• Reduce administrative burden by automating leave requests, approvals, and tracking.
• Ensure compliance with labour laws by automatically calculating leave entitlements based on tenure, position, and other factors.
• Real-time visibility of leave and absence records simplifies workforce planning and management.
• Reduce costs by automating leave and absence management, reducing errors, and maintaining accurate records, preventing overstaffing and under-resourcing, which fluctuates costs.
• The use of mobile apps allows employees to self-serve - they can view their leave balances, request time off, and track the status of their requests. In addition to reducing frustration and confusion, this provides autonomy and transparency.

5. Payroll

An all-in-one workforce management software solution is a key feature of payroll that ensures accurate payroll calculations for all staff members. Manages all payroll tasks and streamlines the process.

• Workforce management software streamlines processing for payroll accuracy as all the data is in one platform, and little to no additional data entry is required to run payroll. Streamlined processes on a cloud-based platform help increase productivity, manage time, and ensure accurate and timely pay runs.
• Using payroll software within workforce management with inbuilt award interpretation means you have accurate, compliant payroll incorporating all regulatory requirements. By matching all policies to awards, enterprise agreements, or contracts, you avoid workforce pay confusion, disputes, reputational risk, and Fair Work repercussions.
• The single data source ensures limited compliance violations, providing peace of mind.
• Cloud-based workforce management software delivers real-time data to automate report generation and allows you to analyse trends from historical data easily.

6. Compliance

Payroll compliance errors lead to heavy fines, back-pay orders, and even personal liability for directors, C-suite members, and managers.

• Ensure compliance before day one by recording and reporting compliance in a workforce management solution when onboarding a new hire.
• Most workforce management solutions have one record for each employee, which makes compliance recording and reporting easier as all the data and documents are attached to an employee record and readily available.
• Workforce management software with intuitive compliance management manages anomalies with triggers and alerts to employees and employers to ensure compliance is front of mind.

7. Workforce analytics

Workforce management data enables data-driven decision-making and alignment to strategic goals, but often the data resides in several applications, which is difficult to access, manipulate and visualise.

• The all-in-one WFM solution has centralised data, so all reporting requirements use one source for the data, and the reporting is comprehensive and easy to access.
• Workforce management software offers a real-time dashboard to monitor workforce productivity, workloads, rosters, costs and more.
• A cloud-based, real-time connected WFM solution ensures your data is always up to date. Harness the Power of Workforce Management Software

8. Data security

Workforce data must be protected with robust data encryption, controlled access, and compliance with data privacy laws.

• Cloud-based WFM solutions offer robust access control, including two-factor authentication, to protect sensitive data.
• In all-in-one WFM solutions, data is encrypted in transit and at rest, making it unreadable even if the unexpected happens.
• With an intuitive online workforce management solution, all user activity, such as logins, changes, and other actions, is tracked and audited.

9. Work Restrictions

The recording and management of visas, age restrictions, safety concerns, and medical restrictions are essential for workforce compliance. A workforce management solution with built-in work restrictions ensures you are aware of all compliance concerns.

• Workforce management solutions store and track visas, work permits, and other documents related to work restrictions.
• Managers can ensure employees are legally permitted to work by receiving alerts and notifications when their work permits or visas are about to expire.
• Local and organisational compliance requirements can be met with customisable WFM solutions for work restrictions.
• The ability to generate reports and identify trends based on visas and work restrictions in real-time makes it easier to identify trends and generate reports. Before compliance issues become bigger, the data can be used to identify and address them.

Are you struggling with your workforce management solution?

Download the Workforce Management – Separate Applications vs All-in-One Platform guide to learn the differences. The guide uncovers the 5 key drivers of adopting a workforce management solution: Cost, Compliance, Control, Data-Driven and Employee Experience.