An enterprise workforce management solution (WMS) is a powerful tool that can streamline and optimize an organization’s workforce operations. With features designed to enhance efficiency and effectiveness for employees and management teams, these solutions are becoming increasingly popular among large businesses across all industries. Explore the key features of an enterprise WMS and the benefits it can bring to your organization below.
What is enterprise workforce management?
Enterprise workforce management involves all of the activities and processes needed to ensure an enterprise-level organization has the right number of qualified employees in the right place at the right time to meet business objectives. This includes various aspects of human resources functions and employee time management, like employee scheduling, time tracking, attendance, task assignment, workload management, compliance and reporting tools.
Effective workforce management is important for businesses of all sizes to operate smoothly and efficiently but becomes increasingly complex as the company and workforce grow. Enterprise workforce management solutions help to streamline and automate workforce management processes using technology. By managing a workforce effectively, your organization can improve productivity, reduce costs and improve overall operational performance.
Key features of an enterprise workforce management solution
In order to be most effective, an enterprise WMS should include several key features, including:
- Employee scheduling capabilities
One of the key features of an enterprise WMS is its ability to create functional employee schedules. By considering factors such as employee availability, skills and business needs, the solution can automate the scheduling process, ensuring that the right employees are scheduled for the right shifts.
With intelligent scheduling algorithms and machine learning capabilities, the solution can anticipate future staffing needs based on historical data. This can help your business plan and avoid under or overstaffing situations proactively.
- Time and attendance tracking
Accurately tracking employee time and attendance is essential for businesses to manage labor costs, comply with labor laws and ensure fair compensation and timely payroll. An enterprise workforce management software solution simplifies this process by automating time and attendance tracking. Employees can clock in and out using biometric devices, mobile apps or web portals, eliminating the need for manual timesheets. The solution can also capture additional data like breaks, overtime and more, helping your business monitor and manage labor costs.
Whether your organization pays contributors for hourly work or salaried roles, these workforce management tools can help individuals manage schedule changes like time-off requests to help managers create better schedules and accurately pay employees. They can also automatically manage paid time off and sick time accruals and expenditures.
- Task and workload management
Efficient task and workload management is crucial for organizations to prioritize and allocate resources effectively. An enterprise WMS provides tools to streamline and improve these processes across departments and teams.
With the right workforce management software, managers can define tasks, assign them to employees and monitor their progress in real-time. This ensures that work is distributed evenly and completed within designated timeframes. It can also help employers see where workers may be struggling or require more training or support.
- Compliance and reporting tools
Complying with labor laws and regulations is a critical aspect of workforce management. An enterprise workforce management system offers built-in compliance and reporting tools to help businesses stay compliant and reduce risk.
The solution tracks employee certifications, qualifications and working hour limits, sending automated alerts and notifications when violations are detected or about to occur. It also creates comprehensive reports and analytics, providing you with valuable insights into your workforce and compliance status. While these are important details during an audit, they can also help you determine better processes or systems to improve compliance across your organization before it becomes a problem.
- Capacity planning
Another aspect of a WMS is capacity planning. As your organization grows and changes over time, you need to be able to forecast and schedule your workforce and tools to ensure your products and services can meet changing demands. An enterprise WMS can provide predictions on capacity needs based on forecasted updates and changes, allowing you to stay ahead of the curve.
A WMS can also help you determine exactly what your current workforce is capable of producing and how you may need to add to your headcount to help your productivity scale up and meet customer demands or performance goals. The solution will use historical data and algorithms to help you better meet your labor needs while keeping an eye on compliance and employee engagement.
Benefits of implementing an enterprise workforce management solution
Using an enterprise WMS can have multiple benefits for your organization, leading to better processes and procedures, improved revenue and a better place to work for employees. Using one also provides you with real-time data and a better analysis of past data, so you can spot trends more easily in your workforce and plan for the future accordingly. By integrating with other systems in your organization’s technology stack, an enterprise workforce management solution can also help with budgeting and financial forecasting.
By implementing the right WMS for your organization, you can:
- Increase productivity
- Ensure compliance with licensing requirements and labor laws
- Make decisions based on data
- Improve employee work-life balance
- Forecast labor needs
- Manage workforce across multiple locations
- Reduce costs across the enterprise, especially in labor
- Better manage employee talent and skills
Manage your enterprise workforce with ActivTrak
Leverage ActivTrak’s workforce planning software to improve your workforce management capabilities across your organization. From tracking employee time and energy to preventing burnout and increasing engagement, ActivTrak provides a wide range of data to leadership to help you make meaningful decisions on your biggest investment – your organization’s human capital.
Contact us to learn more about how ActivTrak can help you manage your enterprise workforce today.
