Why optimize workforce?

As more and more employees demand hybrid or remote work, the problem of scheduling and organizing workers gets more complicated. Workforce optimization can help you deal with these new types of work arrangements.

To deal with intensifying competition, employers must rethink and improve how they organize their workers and carry out daily operations. Optimizing your workforce to improve its efficiency and effectiveness can be a sustainable competitive advantage and the difference between business success and failure.

Specifically, workforce optimization can bring these benefits:

• Attract high-quality candidates and reduce worker turnover : Workforce optimization improves employee training and matches them to the right jobs. This helps your employees excel in their roles and lead to improved job satisfaction. By organizing your workforce more efficiently and effectively, you can also offer more remote or hybrid work opportunities, attracting higher quality candidates and reducing worker turnovers.
• Increase worker productivity: By improving and automating business processes, accurately forecasting customer demands and optimally scheduling workers, workforce optimization helps you match your staffing level to demand precisely while enabling them to do their job more effectively. The end result is the right number of workers at all times and higher worker productivity.
• Lower operating costs: Improve your business processes to reduce the costs of serving each customer and optimize your staffing level to avoid wastage due to overstaffing. By attracting high-quality candidates and reducing employee turnover , you can also lower onboarding and training costs. All these lead to reduced operating costs.
• Improve customer satisfaction and lower customer churn: With improved training and business processes and the right staffing level, your workers can serve your customers better and faster. By collecting and analyzing customer data, you can also pinpoint their pain points and anticipate their problems to prevent unpleasant surprises. As a result, your customers become more satisfied and more likely to stay with your firm.
• Higher revenue: Intelligent data analytics can help you better understand your customers’ unmet needs to create new products and services, resulting in new revenue sources, which, combined with lower customer churn, lead to higher overall revenue.

Examples of workforce optimization

Workforce optimization can work in many industries, such as retail, hotels, restaurants, warehousing and distribution, call centers, manufacturing and financial services.

You can optimize workforce in diverse job functions, including sales, marketing, recruitment, customer service, legal compliance, HR, finance and IT.

Examples of workforce optimization include:

• Job scheduling: Smart work scheduling helps your business effectively utilize its human resources. A good job schedule takes into account workers’ preferences, performance data and hours worked to improve employee satisfaction and limit overtime expenses. More sophisticated systems can also match job schedules to expected demands. For example, you may need to schedule more than usual workers for Friday to meet the expected spike of store visitors because it’s a holiday and forecasted to rain.
• Task management: This includes assigning the right task to the right person, tracking sub-tasks and dependencies, streamlining communication and raising alerts for any missed deadlines. You can also improve the productivity of workers by simplifying their workflow and automating repetitive tasks.
• Time tracking: By accurately and automatically tracking clock-in and clock-out times, you can get a better picture of your staffing level and how many hours each worker puts in every week, helping to lower unplanned overtime expenses. With a detailed record of your staff levels over time, you can also better match staffing to demands, reducing understaffing and overstaffing as a result.
• Skills management: With a skill inventory that tracks the knowledge and skills of each employee, you get a detailed picture of the capability strengths and skill gaps of your organization. You can close your skill gaps with targeted training and development programs, and use your skill inventory to determine if your company has the necessary capabilities to enter a new business.
• Performance management: Using tools that help managers monitor and track worker productivity and performance, your organization can ensure critical business objectives are met and identify opportunities for improvement. You can also collect data to measure key metrics, such as customer satisfaction scores, time spent per caller, net promoter score and revenues per worker, in real-time.

Workforce optimization software

To optimize workforce effectively, you can leverage technology and specialized software. Many IT providers offer workforce optimization software to automate business processes, create forecasts and schedules, collect operating data and calculate key business metrics.

Popular workforce optimization software systems include Oracle Workforce Management, SAP Workforce Management, Monet Live WFO, When I work, ADP Workforce Now and TCP Humanity Scheduling.

When selecting workforce optimization software, consider these factors:

• Integration: To maximize its utility, workforce optimization software needs to receive and send data to ERP and CRM software, such as Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce Sales Cloud. For example, job scheduling software may pull employee and hourly wage data from financial software, and performance management software needs average time per call data from call center software. Make sure the workforce optimization software you choose can be integrated with your existing ERP and CRM systems.
• Ease of use: An intuitive user interface can reduce training needs, minimizing the time and cost associated with adopting workforce optimization software.
• Total cost of ownership: The purchase price or monthly subscription fee of workforce optimization software is only a small part of the total cost of ownership. Other costs, such as implementation, integration and training, could exceed the purchase and subscription prices.
• Implementation, training and support: Look for a software vendor that can provide the implementation, training and support services your company needs to successfully adopt the workforce optimization software. If you decide to hire third-party consultants for these services, make sure the software you choose has a vibrant ecosystem of consultants and other service providers.

Workforce optimization strategies and best practices

The strategies and best practices below can help you optimize workforce effectively.

• Adopt a data-driven mindset: Adopt a data-driven mindset by collecting detailed operational data. Define appropriate performance metrics, such as time per call or net promoter score, to guide your strategy. Undertake intelligent data analytics to track your progress and base your decisions on objective, quantifiable data.
• Focus on the customers: While improving employee efficiency is great, your focus should be on serving the customers’ needs. Reducing the average time per call at a service center may save you money, but it’s not a good idea if doing so sacrifices service quality and leads to higher customer churns.
• Hire the right people: Hire people with the right skill sets and match them to the right jobs. Identify any skill gaps in your organization and systematically close the gaps through hiring and training.
• Support your employees: Give your workers the tools and training they need to succeed in their roles and set realistic, achievable goals. This can increase worker engagement and satisfaction, which in turn improves customer satisfaction.

Workforce optimization can reduce costs and improve profits. To succeed, focus on your customers while supporting your workers with tools and training. Use data to guide your actions and learn from best practices.