The workforce management department (WFM) is responsible for the operational processes within an organization. Fundamentally, WFM teams provide the right number of staff doing the right activities at the right time. A world-class workforce management team identifies revenue leakage and helps maximize revenue opportunities. In addition, it includes tasks such as scheduling, forecasting, identifying training and development needs, recruitment forecasting, performance evaluations, and employee satisfaction.
This article will explore what a world-class workforce management department does and how they maximize value to the organization. Additionally, it provides examples of how WFM touches other departments in the organization.
What Is Workforce Management
Workforce management is the process of managing the revenue-generating activities of your organization’s employees. WFM encompasses the operational processes within an organization to provide the right number of staff at the right time. It also ensures the employees are doing the right activities in the most efficient ways. WFM includes scheduling employees, forecasting current and future staffing levels, and identifying training and development needs. Finally, they provide performance evaluations and measure employee satisfaction to ensure retention.
Functions of a World-Class Workforce Management Department
The workforce management department is a critical business partner because they ensure the workforce and revenue are optimized. It is a process that enables organizations to have enough staff to do the right work at the right time. A world-class WFM department also balances both financial and operational efficiency and workforce morale, and employee satisfaction. Critical functions of world-class workforce management include:
Scheduling
Workforce scheduling is the process of establishing workforce schedules using data-driven decisions to meet current, and future workforce demands. Using a data-driven approach optimizes schedules to maximize revenue opportunities. It also involves defining schedules so that the transition from one shift to the other is seamless. Workforce management scheduling considers the training and current skill set of employees scheduled to conduct the work. Additionally, WFM recognizes workforce demand for time off and works with managers to plan workforce needs.
Activity Forecasting
A world-class WFM organization produces forecasts that predict the future. For example, forecasting in a workforce management department predicts the people, skills, and numbers needed to conduct expected tasks at a specific time to meet the demand of the business. Forecasting in this area is essential to revenue maximization and optimizing staffing costs.
Forecast models used in revenue maximization usually consider variables such as revenue projections, labor cost, workload trending, and business/political/societal conditions. In addition, WFM teams analyze the sales pipeline and customer retention trends to factor in upcoming needs. Finally, they track and monitor current employee skill sets and the future skills needed for upcoming clients. For accurate forecasts, they need to be updated often. The main goals with forecasting are maximizing revenue opportunity and determining accurate staffing needs.
Staffing Forecasting
Staffing forecasting is the process of gathering information about past, present, and future work volume to determine staffing needs for the business. As a result, it helps companies avoid overstaffing or understaffing due to demand fluctuations. It can also help prevent just-in-time hiring, which causes bad hiring decisions. Here are some examples of how WFM staffing forecasting helps maximize revenue:
- World-class workforce management teams partner with revenue operations to understand the sales pipeline and customer retention trends. By understanding the sales pipeline, WFM knows potential headcount requirements and the skills needed for those contracts. Additionally, the workforce management department knows when to engage the recruiting team to hire the staff needed for new clients in the sales process.
- WFM partners with the PMO to build staffing plans to meet the organization’s project roadmap needs. Project managers can leverage workforce management’s staffing capabilities to forecast and develop optimal project staffing plans.
- World-class workforce management teams partner with HR and finance to provide headcount forecasts and plans. That information determines headcount budgetary needs, including wages, payroll taxes, insurance premiums, and other benefits (healthcare, dental care, retirement savings).
- WFM also partners with human resources to project attrition rates. Factoring attrition into the staffing plans helps avoid vacancies on client contracts which is a primary cause of revenue leakage.
Performance Trending and Assessments
The WFM department needs to understand what factors contribute to task efficiency and revenue maximization to produce effective performance trends. A world-class WFM department considers revenue factors such as revenue projections, labor cost, workload trending, and current and desired employee skill-sets.
Workforce management reviews staffing performance evaluations to identify areas to gain efficiency. Performance evaluations assess the performance of activities and processes within the following areas: employee KPIs and analytics, attendance, quality, and CSAT scores. In addition, WFM teams utilize gamification to reward and retain employees who demonstrate the desired behaviors. Finally, they redeploy and retire employees based on individual performance trends in support of business objectives.
Identifying Revenue Leakage to Maximize Revenue Opportunities
There are several ways that revenue leaks can occur, including through manual processes, poorly performing employees, misunderstandings with clients about contracts and deliverable expectations, and poorly documented processes.
Workforce management helps organizations identify and manage revenue leakage through real-time monitoring of current processes, workflows, and tasks. Identifying inefficiencies within these areas will also allow WFM to develop a plan that will reduce the losses in the future. In addition, they can make real-time adjustments throughout the day, week, and month to help the organization maximize its revenue opportunity.
Revenue Maximization
This process maximizes the billable hours and revenue opportunity across all client contracts. If left unmonitored, inefficiencies cause revenue leakage in completing the contracted hours and activities of employees.
Workforce management can correct inefficiencies at different levels with practices or processes best suited for each level. For instance, goals for an organizational level should include utilization targets for all resources, accountability for client activity, tracking demand against capacity, and making every hour count, then monitoring results over time to make incremental adjustments if needed.
How Does a World-Class Workforce Management Department Partner With Other Departments?
World-class workforce management processes engage nearly every department in an organization. For example, HR, operations, finance, sales, and technology all depend on information and guidance from WFM. Without the partnership with WFM, it is difficult for those departments to plan effectively. For that reason, these departments should work together with WFM to provide operational excellence and high client satisfaction rates. Here is how world-class workforce management teams partner with each department:
Operations
WFM provides operations with optimized schedules and performance and adherence reporting. They highlight areas of inefficiencies and provide recommendations for improvement. Additionally, world-class workforce management teams provide ongoing demand forecasting, staffing plans and identify the upcoming skill set needs.
Training and Development
Workforce management partners with the training and development team to coordinate new hire training. The staffing plans help ensure the training team has resources available to deliver the training. Additionally, WFM identifies cross-training opportunities or areas where residual training might improve efficiencies.
Sales
World-class workforce management teams partner with sales to understand the 3-month sales pipeline. The pipeline helps produce staffing forecasts based on the headcount and skill set requirements of those contracts. WFM partners with sales to review customer retention trends along with contracts that are expiring. This information determines if resources will be available for other contracts, reducing the recruitment efforts needed.
Finance
WFM and finance partner together to review margins and profitability expectations for the client contracts. In addition, the two teams partner on staffing costs and budgeting for non-billable activities such as training. Finally, WFM and finance work together to close any gaps on contracts behind billables or deliverables to develop plans to close the gaps to maximize revenue opportunities.
Human resources
Proper workforce planning is critical to ensure success. Workforce management delivers staffing plans to HR. The recruitment team can plan and prepare to deliver the staffing levels needed to maximize revenue by partnering with WFM on staffing needs. Additionally, workforce management helps identify performance, attendance, and other concerns to HR that could create vacancies on client contracts. Finally, WFM partners with HR on employee engagement and satisfaction to help retain talent.
Technology and infrastructure
Workforce management relies heavily on technology and infrastructure teams. For example, employees require equipment and network resources, so communicating staffing plans is critical, particularly during growth times. Additionally, technology and infrastructure help provide the tools WFM needs to monitor and report employee activities effectively.
By utilizing an integrated set of processes, workforce management helps optimize your organization’s labor requirements. These processes enable them to create staff schedules for employees to accomplish daily or hourly tasks, with the ultimate goal being to increase productivity. In addition, world-class WFM teams go beyond just contact centers and partner with nearly every department in their organization, including HR, marketing/sales, finance/accounting, etc., while focusing on revenue leakage and maximization.
Last updated on September 4th, 2021 at 08:17 am
