Seven salient reasons in favor of digital workforce management

Digitalization has long since ceased to be a catchword for a fad. This megatrend is the driving force behind more agile and efficient business processes. In today’s markets, resources must be deployed as cost efficiently as possible, while processes must be consistently optimized along the entire value chain. Especially in the time and attendance management area, there is still a great deal of potential to be tapped in many companies. Here are seven salient reasons for digital workforce management.

WORKING TIME RECORDING WILL SOON BECOME MANDATORY

The European Court of Justice provided the first good reason on May 14, 2019. The court handed down a ruling whereby companies within the EU are obligated to record the working hours of their employees. Member states must now create the necessary regulations for this. Read on for the next six key reasons.

Lower administration input

Employees are an indispensable company asset in value creation. Maximum profitability, however, can only be achieved if employees concentrate on their core tasks and are not diverted from value-adding activities by time-consuming manual processes. This applies, for example, to administrative HR processes, where routine tasks such as time controls or holiday or absence requests consume substantial chunks of time and often necessitate multiple data maintenance. Automated time and attendance management in connection with company-specific workflows saves time for employees, supervisors and the HR department while creating greater transparency at the same time. All the relevant information is available at a glance, and evaluations of working time can be retrieved at the touch of a button.

Employee satisfaction trending upwards

There are sound reasons why the automation of processes enhances employee satisfaction. First of all, employees are entrusted with more personal responsibility if they are actively involved in personnel processes and can even influence the way they organize their working hours. In addition, a modern software solution featuring self-services and mobile apps translates as greater transparency. Every employee can access his or her time data – any time, any place – and can also submit applications while on the go. When staff are also integrated into the planning processes, for example through shift requests or shift exchange platforms, work-life balance is enhanced and individuals become more productive. This also promotes personal responsibility, while company loyalty grows automatically.

Greater transparency

The consistent collection and strategic evaluation of HR information remains difficult in many companies. Due to insufficient data sets and a lack of system support, analyses and reports are often still created manually, involving a great deal of input and expense. Given an appropriate connector, however, it is possible to link a digital workforce management system with professional business analytics tools. This creates the foundation for detailed management analyses addressing time and attendance management and deployment planning. Time accounts, absences, the reasons for absences, sales per employee, productivity of specific units or cost centers can be evaluated according to an extremely wide variety of criteria. This creates the necessary transparency for efficient personnel controlling, which in turn forms the foundation of strategic decision making.

Planning input measurably reduced

In order to ensure efficient workforce scheduling, it will not suffice to merely determine employee working time and workplaces. Individual demand drivers, such as turnover or customer frequency in the retail sector, hospital occupancy rates, call volumes in call centers or order volumes in production are becoming increasingly important. Only by taking these factors into account can planning be genuinely optimized in terms of demand and costs. A digital workforce management system can easily and quickly create a rule-based planning proposal at the push of a button – including all the relevant legislation, tariffs, qualifications and employee preferences and requests.

Data protection takes top priority

The failure to automate HR processes may give rise to legal problems regarding data protection. The data protection regulation (DSGVO) stipulates comprehensive documentation and verification obligations, strict reporting requirements and imposes fines on violations ranging up to EUR 20 million. In some cases, this presents companies with major challenges, as well as an ample measure of processing input. A system-based workforce management solution handles employee data in a secure and legally compliant manner.

The planning quality on the up and up

The larger the company size, the more complex it will be to keep an eye on legal, company and collective bargaining regulations.

• Are rest periods observed?
• Are the maximum working times exceeded?
• Is there a risk of working time violations?
• Are there sufficient properly qualified employees on duty to ensure that important requirements such as first-aiders or fire safety officers are met?
• Are employees with the right qualifications planned for the task?
• Are employee preferences and requests taken into account?

Monitoring all of these factors manually is virtually impossible. Violations are usually only detected at a later date, and may prove costly. With a professional workforce management solution in place, the system performs the entire monitoring of rule conformity and actively points out violations or rule infringements – preventing problems from arising in the first place. This results in higher planning quality, in connection with significantly less planning input.

Savings of millions

In any case, one thing is undisputed: Digital workforce management delivers impressive added value. Just consider, for example, 80 percent less planning input, 50 percent faster delivery times, 25 percent less overtime and a four percent gain in employee productivity. The results of our projects show that the average annual potential for a company with 1,000 employees stands firmly in the millions. Customers such as Ritter Sport or EDEKA have launched their entry into professional workforce management with a comprehensive potential analysis of their processes and possible optimizations.

Would you like to find out what latent potential is waiting to be tapped in your company? Then take a look at our homepage atoss.com.