Organizations rarely experience a “normal day” because no two clients are alike, and each staff member is unique. In addition, unexpected events such as pandemics, power outages, fires, protests, and the great resignation challenge businesses to deliver results while protecting and growing staff. Therefore, organizations need to be prepared to respond and adapt to each business interruption. They must be proficient at quickly and efficiently meeting the needs of the clients they serve. Additionally, they must respect and value the employees that make it all happen. The best-run organizations position themselves as BCP-ready with a strategic long-term workforce management strategy to handle the variations of a business interruption.
Organizations can reduce the chaos when the unexpected occurs by building a stable, data-driven workforce management strategy. The strategy is the foundation for resiliency and success and will positively impact client satisfaction and employee engagement. Even more, your workforce management strategy is an ongoing endeavor, not a set it and forget it initiative.
Seven key outcomes of an effective workforce management strategy
- Delivering on client outcomes
- Employee engagement
- Customer experience
- Employee experience
- Staffing levels and gap identification
- Raising performance and efficiency levels
- Financial
Each of these outcomes measures the success and sustainability of your workforce management strategy. Take a balanced approach to achieve these outcomes because over-emphasis in one area will negatively impact another. To achieve operational excellence and effective balance, include the following in your workforce management strategy.
- Data
- Technology
- Policies and process
- People
- Outcome-centered staffing approach
Data
Objectivity is critical for effective workforce management. Therefore, a data-driven approach to managing your workforce is required. When setting your workforce management strategy, consider client, market, employee, and operational data when making staffing and scheduling decisions. Your organization likely has an abundance of this data. However, it won’t provide any value if it isn’t organized into actionable insights. Data enables the organization to make timely and informed decisions, especially when demands change.
Technology
Organizations are full of various systems that house different data. An effective workforce management strategy includes technology that bridges the entire organization’s data by pulling disparate information together. It should facilitate efficient and cost-effective workload balance with data-driven insights.
Real-time, daily, weekly, and monthly monitoring of automated analytics and command-center dashboards encourages proactive information use, empowering the workforce management team to make better staffing decisions. As a result, the dashboards ensure employees can deliver optimized results. Even more, they can improve the employee experience, which results in higher engagement and job satisfaction. Ultimately dashboards provide a better client experience which significantly benefits the organization.
Maximize workforce technology benefits by expanding it beyond the contact center to ancillary and service delivery teams. Taking your workforce management strategy beyond the contact center allows you to streamline and standardize client engagement touchpoints across the organization. Additionally, it maximizes revenue and improves efficiency.
Policies and processes for your workforce management strategy
Many workforce management policies and processes are antiquated. They have been in place for years and now dwell in complacency. Develop new methods to break the status quo that persists in daily operations. Your workforce management strategy should include a systemic and systematic approach to standardizing policies and processes. Leverage new data to uncover evidence of process or policy flaws. Fine-tune your policies and processes to optimize staffing, optimize revenue, maximize margins, and improve employee experience. In turn, you reduce variations and ensure client outcomes are consistent, repeatable, and predictable.
Your workforce management strategy should help the organization standardize toward best practices. As a result, it will attain better outcomes, higher quality, increased productivity, and sustainability. Even more, it minimizes siloed decision-making. Standardized staffing procedures, consistent expectations, and continuous cross-training empower employees to deliver to the organization’s needs confidently. Above all, with standardized scheduling and development practices, employees know that everyone is treated fairly and equitably, which will boost your DE&I initiatives.
People
Everything that happens in your organization is for people, by people. Every person in the organization touches business and financial outcomes. Every employee impacts the client experience, profitability, and the success of the organization. Therefore, people are at the center of your workforce management strategy.
Workforce management connects HR, training and development, finance, payroll, reporting and analytics, service delivery, client success, and the front-line. An effective workforce management strategy includes operationalizing how these departments and teams interact and impact each other. As a result, it can improve collaboration while breaking down silos. In addition, your strategy should create transparency so people feel invited to develop processes and find solutions because more innovative alternatives can come forward. As a result, there is greater adoption, support, and utilization of the workforce management team.
Even when there isn’t a business interruption, your workforce management strategy provides a world-view of the employees, their qualifications, training, experience, and skillsets regardless of where in your organization they sit. As a result, it becomes possible to quickly and accurately match the right employee to the right job at the right time. It is a client-focused approach because it maximizes outcomes with predictable, repeatable, and consistent delivery.
Outcome-centered staffing approach
Each client is unique. Even more, their needs change based on the market and environment. As a result, staffing is a complex process. Your workforce management strategy simplifies that process by integrating data, effective technology, people, and processes. In addition, having an outcome-centered approach to staffing delivers consistent, predictable, repeatable outcomes. Above all, it will enable your organization to continue delivering desired outcomes during day-to-day and in crises.
Building a workforce management strategy to achieve operational excellence is critical to your business. Changes to the business climate and business interruptions will continue to challenge your organization. Your workforce management strategy is built before a business interruption but is evaluated after so you can create new and more efficient strategies for the future.
