Article Author: Jana Reserva

Jana Reserva is a content manager for Workforce.com.

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5 benefits of job rotation + tips to do it right

Summary

  • Job rotation can be a vital part of training and development programs and can help companies upskill employees without incurring high costs. 

  • While job rotation is beneficial for employee engagement and reducing turnover, it can disrupt operations if not implemented correctly. 

  • WFM technology can help managers stay on top of job rotations and ensure employees get the most out of the program.

Job rotation is a business practice that allows employees to temporarily move between job roles. It’s a strategy that, at its core, seeks to develop employee skills and interests in new areas of the organization. 

It is a practice that is vital to many different aspects of workforce management — from employee engagement to succession planning. Here are five key benefits of job rotation and why you should consider implementing a system for it. 

Key advantages of job rotation

1. Boosting employee engagement

Communicating a person’s value to the team is at the core of employee engagement. While the proverbial pat on the back and consistent encouragement are useful, exposing employees to other job roles is a much more concrete way of communicating to an employee the value they bring to the entire organization.

Webinar: How to Drive Engagement

2. Promoting lateral movements and internal promotions

Job rotation can pave the way for employees to upskill. Through this experience, employees can gain the knowledge and technical skills needed for a higher position or role. In addition, hiring or promoting from within the organization can boost employee retention and keep recruitment and training costs low.

3. Training and skills development

Job rotation can be vital to an organization’s training and development program. While employee courses and company-sponsored seminars are great opportunities, job rotation enables employees to learn from first-hand experience. It promotes learning by doing and allows employees to try their hand at all kinds of new skills they otherwise would never have a chance to practice. While job rotation may introduce new technical skills to an employee’s repertoire, it can also hone soft skills they might already possess like teamwork, communication, self-direction. 

4. Succession planning and workforce flexibility

When you conduct job rotation, you get to assess your talent base. You can determine which employees have the potential for specific roles or discover certain gaps needing to be filled. With this insight, you can make your succession planning more effective, especially when a core team member in the organization leaves. 

Furthermore, job rotation equips your staff to be more flexible. In unexpected changes or shifts in the organization, your employees can rise up to the occasion and be more comfortable dealing with these changes — all thanks to the exposure and crosstraining they gained during job rotation periods.

5. Increased collaboration

Job rotation helps break silos between departments by allowing employees to work outside of their traditional teams. This promotes better communication and rapport and helps employees ease into the idea of working on cross-departmental projects or tasks. In addition, it fosters better relationships and a stronger sense of belonging across the organization.

Industry-specific benefits of job rotation

Job rotation generally benefits all kinds of organizations, but it has critical benefits specific to business size or industry. 

Small businesses

Due to their limited talent pool, small businesses must ensure that staff are flexible and multi-faceted, ready to adapt to any situation where they are needed to fill in. Doing this saves on wage costs in the long run, as investing in recruitment and training is not a luxury small businesses typically have. 

Enterprises

Job rotations in large organizations primarily helps professional development and succession planning. Rotating employees allows staff to enrich their network within the company, equipping them with more knowledge and capacity to participate in cross-functional projects or even qualify for lateral movement. 

Service-oriented organizations

Hospitality businesses, retail stores, and restaurants can use job rotation to equip their employees with the skills necessary for better customer service. Aside from that, allowing them to rotate to different roles in the company can improve their agility when facing shorthanded situations. 

Manufacturing and industrial businesses

Job rotation provides employees with a deeper understanding of what happens at every step of the production line. This can broaden their skills, equip them to be more flexible, and provide opportunities for them to suggest how to make things more efficient. 

Best practices for conducting job rotations

While job rotation has advantages, it can also be detrimental if not done right. It can disrupt operations, reduce productivity, and increase training costs. There are also cases when employees tend to resist going on job rotations. So these are factors you must consider as you devise a plan for your organization. 

To make job rotation effective for you, here are some best practices to keep in mind. 

Set specific goals and timelines

Employees perform best when there is clarity. Rotating them in between different roles is no exception. Clearly state why they will be temporarily assigned to a different position and what’s expected of them after training. 

For instance, if you want to move an employee from marketing to support, set a clear goal and objective after job rotation. Is it how quickly and accurately they respond to product-related queries? Or is it the number of content types and topics the marketing team could do based on actual customer questions? 

It’s also essential to set a specific timeframe. For example, job rotation can last a few weeks to even a few years. Regardless of the duration that makes the most sense for your organization, it’s best to determine and specify this right off the bat to manage expectations.

Devise a preparation plan for employees who will go on job rotation

Transferring to another team and doing a new set of tasks can be daunting to employees. That’s why you must allow them to prepare before they go on job rotation. While the goal is to equip them by experiencing the job first-hand, that doesn’t mean that you just allow them to go in blind. It would be beneficial to schedule orientation sessions with the supervisor they will work with. Providing learning materials to help them have a basic knowledge of the job will also help. 

Time job rotations accordingly

Identify if there are periods within a year where there’s not much activity, and consider scheduling job rotations during this period. Then, because it’s not too busy, you have more room for adjustments and coaching. For instance, if you’re in hospitality, you can schedule job rotations during off-peak seasons. 

Gather feedback 

Remember to gather feedback after each job rotation finishes. Doing so will give you insight into your job rotation program’s effectiveness. Make sure to act on employee feedback and improve whenever necessary. 

Develop job rotation policies according to career path

Identify what career paths employees want to take. Some employees are more interested in technical advancement, which means it’s more focused on a particular function or being an individual contributor. Meanwhile, some workers are more inclined to go on a managerial track, where they would be more involved in leadership and managing teams. 

Whatever it is, make sure that you curate a job rotation program according to employees’ preferred track. Employees are more likely to be receptive to the program when it’s aligned with their career goals. 

Managing job rotations with technology

Using the right technology helps you implement and stay on top of job rotations. Workforce.com has the tools for ensuring that staff is scheduled correctly, job rotations are timed at the most appropriate time, and that communication is seamless during this period. 

Scheduling for job rotations

Creating shifts for employees on job rotations is as simple as creating regular schedules. Select the location and department they’re assigned to work in and add necessary notes or reminders before you send out the schedule. 

Workforce.com also gives you an oversight on potential gaps and areas you need to fill once job rotation starts. This enables you to quickly find another team member who’s qualified to work any vacant shift. 

Identifying the right time to implement job rotations

We talked about how crucial it is to time job rotations during slow work periods. Workforce.com’s reporting and analytics give you an insight into these things by looking at your historical data to identify less busy seasons. 

Communication and gathering feedback

Get immediate and regular feedback from your employee during job rotation. Within the Workforce.com app, staff are prompted to rate their shift and can easily share feedback on how it went while on the program. With this, you can address concerns promptly and ensure that employees on job rotation are achieving their goals and objectives. 

 

Workforce.com is a robust workforce management platform designed to streamline performance, skills management, scheduling, and employee engagement for mid-market businesses to enterprises. It’s built with tools to ensure you’re never over or understaffed, regardless of the season.

If you plan to implement job rotation schedules within your organization, Workforce.com can help ensure that your operations are running smoothly, even with staff temporarily assigned to other roles. 

To know more, book a call with us today.

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Human capital management: Considerations to better engage employees and promote diversity

Summary

  • Great employees are your most vital resource — human capital management helps you attract, support, promote, and retain them.

  • Your strategy should include everything from a strong recruitment and onboarding experience to an enticing benefits package that’s compliant with regulations. 

  • HCM systems help you optimize your strategy by automating tasks, tracking employee performance, and reporting on key insights for visibility. – More

Think about all the resources it takes to successfully manage your organization. Which of these resources is in the shortest supply? Time is certainly one of them — once you’ve lost a day, you can’t get it back. Financial capital is another tempting answer — but is it really that hard to apply for a loan or build a strategy toward growth when all is said and done?

No, the Harvard Business Review writes. Financial capital is not your most limited resource. “Today’s scarcest resource is your human capital, as measured by the time, talent and energy of your workforce,” it says. 

It’s significantly more difficult to continuously find high-performing employees who can deliver quality work for your organization. While an asset like time or money is generally fixed, the same isn’t true of human capital. One dollar or one hour is functionally the same from one to the next, but employees are unique. Once you lose a good employee, you can’t automatically swap in an employee who will continue performing at the same level.

According to Gallup, it typically takes new employees an entire year to reach their full potential after training and onboarding. And it’s costlier to replace workers than it is to retain them. On average, companies spend about half to two times an employee’s annual salary to completely replace them.

But your employees aren’t just your scarcest resource. They’re also your organization’s most valuable and influential resource. And the best way to retain that resource is through a human capital management plan that helps your employees feel supported and fulfilled when they come to work.

The essential components of a human capital management plan

Human capital management (HCM), as its name suggests, is an area of business management that ensures a holistic experience for an organization’s most important resource — its people. There are five main areas for HR professionals to focus on: 

1. Recruitment

Recruitment is the core foundation of building an organization’s human capital. It is involved in identifying the needs of the company and the particular roles that can fill those needs through talent acquisition. Attracting, screening, and onboarding candidates are all part of the recruitment process. The goal of the recruitment process is to successfully find candidates whose skills, values, and motivations are aligned with the organization’s goals and culture.

2. Compensation and benefits administration

Compensation and benefits refer to what the company gives its employees in exchange for their work or service, and they include monetary and non-monetary components. A company’s compensation and benefits package includes an employee’s salary and government-mandated benefits. Other perks and incentives can be part of the deal, such as insurance coverage, gym membership, housing allowance, and company-sponsored trips and events. 

3. Labor law compliance

Running an organization is governed by employment laws. HR teams create company policies and administrative functions that comply with labor regulations, such as accurate time tracking and paid sick leave. Labor law regulations vary by region, and they can change from time to time. That being said, a crucial part of human resource management is staying on pace with these changes and ensuring that company policies remain compliant. 

4. Training and development

Training and career development focus on nurturing your workforce’s potential, especially new employees who are still onboarding. Training refers to programs that are geared toward improving skills or learning new technical knowledge that’s needed to perform certain tasks. Meanwhile, development is focused more on programs that enrich an employee’s overall growth in soft skills like leadership, communication, and adapting to certain situations. 

5. Retention and engagement

Human resource management (HRM) is also involved in creating strategies to keep employee turnover to a minimum. Retention and engagement programs are proactive steps to ensure that employees are motivated to perform their best, not just for a paycheck but because they have a clear alignment of values with the organization. All of these parts should move cohesively to ensure the best experience possible for staff at every stage of the employee lifecycle. 

5 human resource management challenges impacting your HCM strategy

Human resource management involves a lot of moving parts, and these can come with their own sets of challenges. Here are common challenges in human resource management and ways to solve them. 

1. Difficulty attracting the right talent.

Delays in hiring can be costly, but an unfit hire can also be detrimental to an organization. So how do you know a candidate is fit for the role? While skills and experience are important for assessing whether an applicant is qualified or not, it’s also essential to find out if they’ll fit into your company culture, so you can be sure your workplace is the right fit. Otherwise, you won’t be able to retain them for very long.

Another common challenge is convincing candidates who are highly skilled and qualified yet more deliberative in their job search. These candidates are most likely in touch with a lot of recruiters and are considering more than one job offer. You’ll have to build a truly impressive candidate experience — and a great employer brand — in order to stand out and attract top talent.

How to solve:

  • Create a job posting that highlights what you’re looking for. Include the skills and competencies you’re looking for and what’s in it for a qualified candidate when they get in. Provide information about the working style and culture that you have at your company. This will attract people who have both the required skills and similar values as you. At the same time, this can also filter out candidates who have different working styles and cultural preferences.
  • Invest in employer branding: Boosting your brand as an employer can also help increase your chances of attracting the right talent. According to research from Glassdoor, 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply for a job posting if the company actively maintains its employer brand.
  • Prioritize strong communication throughout the hiring process: Make sure that all details and instructions are clear at every stage of the process. Timely feedback and responses are also crucial. Take a look at your current process and see how it’s affecting the candidate experience and employer brand. CareerPlug found that 84% of job seekers rate “hiring process transparency” as an important or very important factor in their decision to join a company.

2. Dealing with too much paperwork.

Human resource management deals with a lot of information — from employee details to company policies and other essential business documents. And too much paperwork can be a burden, especially when done manually. It can take time away from more valuable tasks, like strategizing and optimizing programs and processes. 

How to solve:

There are digital solutions that can remove the tedious task of processing paperwork. For instance, digital employee onboarding solutions help eliminate the long forms that new hires need to fill out. They enable new staff to log in with their information and upload important documents online. This ensures better accuracy of information, improves the employee experience during onboarding, and allows for a better way for new hires to spend their first day at work. 

3. Understanding and applying labor laws.

Staying compliant with labor laws is a must. However, understanding regulations, applying them in policies, and staying on pace with labor law changes can be very challenging. 

How to solve:

Implement a compliance strategy to avoid any potential financial and reputational repercussions of failing to comply. A compliance strategy is a set of programs and processes that’s geared toward ensuring regular updates and audits of policies and communicating any changes with staff promptly. Given the ever-evolving nature of regulations, it’s best to build a strategy and assign a working group to focus on compliance. 

Technology is also helpful in staying on pace with changes. For instance, some solutions automate labor law updates and ensure that these are reflected in the payroll computation. 

4. Retaining employees.

Talent management goes beyond just attracting the right people for the right roles. The other part of the battle is retaining them and keeping them satisfied with their role, especially those who are performing above and beyond. 

Webinar: How to Stop Employee Turnover

How to solve:

It’s all about consistent growth and learning. Employees are more likely to stay the course when they are given opportunities to grow and are recognized as a vital part of the organization’s success. 

Training and development programs are essential for retaining employees. But creating these programs is not a one-time thing. That’s why it’s important to have regular alignment meetings with your staff. Regular check-ins can help you get a pulse on their current sentiment about working at the organization, their satisfaction with their roles, and the challenges or gaps they’re facing. From there, you can customize programs or identify next steps that can help them stay engaged. 

One of the things to keep employees happy and help them feel valued is to provide not just what they need to get their job done but also offer other incentives that will motivate them to perform better and stay aligned with the values of the organization. Your benefits administration can show employees you care about more than just their performance, for instance. Succession planning is a great way to engage employees who are growing in their current roles while preparing for employees who may eventually move on.

5. Keeping talent engaged at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

Human resource management plays an important part in employee engagement, and it is a continuous process throughout every stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding up until the time an employee leaves an organization. All of these stages affect culture, staff morale, and the success of the company.

Webinar: How to Drive Employee Engagement

An organization is only as good as its employees. It’s imperative to nurture and cultivate staff no matter where they are in their tenure with the organization. Doing this takes time. That’s why it’s important for human resources to have the right technology in place so that they can reduce time spent on administrative tasks and focus more of their energy on engaging employees.

How to solve:

An effective onboarding process can help you engage employees who are new to the organization and need to get up to speed — without overwhelming them. Ongoing training sessions, team events, perks, and upskilling opportunities are all great ways to help your workforce stay connected at work while growing in their careers. 

Ultimately, you should look at your employee data, like plan enrollment and activity engagement, to see what HR processes and initiatives are having the biggest impact on employee retention and where engagement can still be improved. Then you’ll know which programs to add and continue to invest in.

Use a human capital management system to serve employees with ease

Manually keeping track of the key HR processes to support your human capital management strategy is bound to cause headaches — for your team and your workforce. Many companies implement HCM software in order to manage employee engagement programs, track performance and productivity, and provide things like onboarding and benefits to employees.

Workforce.com is a workforce management software that provides visibility into your scheduling and shift data, so you can better manage your hourly workers. You can accurately forecast demand, optimize labor costs, and build the best schedule for your team based on real metrics. And our solution integrates directly with other human resource information systems (HRIS) to streamline human capital management.

Read more about how Workforce.com optimizes how you manage your human capital by checking out our HCM software buyer’s guide below:

Best HCM Software

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Employee Retention Strategies in a Tight Labor Market

Summary:

  • Effective employee retention strategies are crucial in today’s labor market, where there are more available jobs than job seekers.
  • Flexibility is a primary factor in retaining current employees, but it can mean different things for employees, depending on the industry and roles
  • Technology plays a vital role in gathering data and feedback that can help measure employee satisfaction and spot potential issues that trigger employees to quit.

The COVID-19 pandemic. The Great Resignation. Quiet Quitting.  

All of this has created a much tighter job market with low labor participation. Currently, there are around 10 million vacancies for just 5.7 million unemployed workers. The labor participation rate is at 62.6%, down from 63.3% in February 2020. This is the equivalent of 1.8 million fewer workers.     

All of this has made it trickier as well as vital for HR professionals to keep positive employee retention rates and hold on to their top talent, particularly since remote work has become more commonplace and sought after. Employees now have a much larger job market to find new opportunities, which, in turn, means tighter competition for talent. 

Webinar: How to Retain Hourly Employees

With more jobs and a smaller talent pool, how do you retain top talent and increase your chances of attracting new employees? There are several ways to boost employee retention, but what’s challenging is implementing a strategy that makes the most sense for your organization and people. We spoke with Jack Light, a labor economics Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, to provide us with more insight.

Understand why good employees quit and why they stay

It’s impossible to identify the best employee retention strategies for your specific circumstance without finding out what causes attrition. According to the Work Institute’s 2022 Retention Report, over 47 million employees voluntarily quit their job in 2021. This is the highest turnover rate since 2001 — when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began measuring this metric

According to the report, some of the most common reasons why people quit their jobs include:

  • A lack of career development opportunities
  • Stress due to a lack of resources or training
  • Prioritizing health and/or family – caring for dependents, personal health reasons, or health-related issues due to work
  • Searching for different opportunities that will give them a better work-life balance
  • Issues with their current work environment

These areas are well within leadership’s control, and they can quickly improve these conditions by implementing changes and using the right tools.  

It’s always easy to assume that compensation is the main motivation for employees to stay at a company. However, that’s not always the case. What’s valuable to your team is not always as apparent as you think. Beyond a competitive salary and benefits package, there are other areas that can be equally valuable to employees.

  • Fulfillment or finding purpose in a role
  • Job satisfaction
  • Workplace culture
  • Relationships with bosses and colleagues and teamwork
  • Company values
  • Processes such as onboarding
  • Flexibility

Once you understand what your employees value most, you’ll be more equipped to make changes and create programs that compel them to stay. 

Watch: How to Predict an Employee Flight Risk

Establish a feedback system

There are two sides to feedback that are crucial to employee retention. The first is feedback from employers about job performance. The second is feedback from employees regarding operations, policies, and colleagues. Both are key to creating a culture of employee appreciation.

And both are important and should be gathered and addressed promptly.

Employees value feedback that’s immediate and clear. It helps them improve their work, makes them feel appreciated, and shows how valuable their contribution is to the organization. 

Meanwhile, encouraging employees to provide feedback about the company and their tasks helps with retention, too. When employees are comfortable enough to share their thoughts on what works and what needs improvement, you’ll have a goldmine of insights on how to keep your best talent.

“The goal of gathering employee feedback is to try and surface low-hanging fruits that you can be actioning on that you may not otherwise be aware of,” says Light. “So it might actually turn out that a lot of your employees are struggling to get to work, for example, because there’s a bus route that’s been canceled. Or maybe you have a particular manager who many people are struggling to work with. Those are the sorts of things that are valuable from the perspective of an employee but can be quite difficult to find out.” 

That’s why having a healthy company culture that embraces feedback is crucial. And it shouldn’t stop at gathering employee sentiments. Another equally important part of the equation is the mechanism to act on them.

“If you don’t do anything with that data and that feedback, you’re probably going to get less and less of it as time goes on,” says Beau Grzanich, head of solutions at Workforce.com. Transparency is key here. You need to inform your employees about the actions you’ve taken based on feedback they’ve provided. Doing so will incentivize people to provide more information that can drive more results and benefits in terms of employee retention. 

The frequency of feedback is also important. Typically, companies do it regularly — quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. While this provides some structure, feedback tends to be more effective when it’s fluid and immediate. Moreover, it doesn’t always have to be in a formal setting. It can be casual, during quick catch-ups, or through automated tools like Workforce.com’s Shift Feedback and Rating feature. 

Engage your managers, and they’ll engage their teams

People leave managers, not companies. This popular phrase regarding employee engagement and retention is supported by data from Gallup that shows that “it takes more than a 20% pay raise to lure most employees away from a manager who engages them”. And it takes almost nothing to poach disengaged employees.

Empower your managers to engage their teams effectively. One way to do this is to take administrative and repetitive tasks off their plate. This makes it easier for them to focus on the people-centric aspects of their work.

Implementing the right technology can help managers work smarter and spend less time on tasks like scheduling, time tracking, labor forecasting, and payroll. As a result, they focus more on coaching their employees and understanding and addressing potential issues.

Offer flexibility

Employees tend to stay with a company that offers flexibility. Research has shown that flexibility at work is becoming increasingly important for job seekers, particularly among younger employees. But before you think about implementing policies around it, you first need to understand what flexibility actually means for your employees. 

Typically, people view flexibility as being able to control their work arrangements. This means having the option to work outside of the typical office setting and set hours, enjoying a flexible schedule, or being able to attend to important matters that typically warrant PTO or waiting until the weekend.

“An important thing to remember is that flexibility is often quite loosely defined. It’s much harder if you’ve got regular opening hours or you’re a retail store, and there are fixed tasks that need to be done and planned in advance,” explains Light. If that’s the case, how do you create a certain level of flexibility for hourly workers? 

Light says that offering a certain level of predictability is important for hourly workers. This means providing their schedules ahead of time, so they can plan their activities outside of work accordingly. In fact, data shows that employees who get their schedules a couple of days before their shift are more likely to quit compared to staff who receive their schedule at least 10 days in advance.

Create programs and perks that are valuable to your employees

Competitive benefits, incentives, and perks can compel employees to stay with you. But again, the key here is to know what types of benefits they find valuable. Game rooms, free meals, and company-sponsored gym memberships are all nice to have, but those perks are not always good enough reasons to keep employees from looking elsewhere. 

Get to know your employees to understand what matters to them. Consider that you have employees who are probably in different life stages. Looking at your workforce’s demographics is a good first step in determining what programs you can devise that will make the most impact. 

Your employees’ age group, seniority level, gender, as well as their personal circumstances will all dictate what they deem important. Some perks and incentives to consider:

  • Professional development. Opportunities for employees to learn new skills, such as training programs or attendance at industry-specific conferences
  • Health and wellness stipends or reimbursement. To cover costs of things like sports activities, healthcare, and mental health programs
  • Company culture. Activities, such as team-building games, that help establish a stronger company culture

Whether it’s additional time-off benefits, family activities, upskilling, professional development opportunities, or employee recognition programs, make sure that your benefits package includes items that make the most sense for your operations and where your employees are — both in tenure and life in general.  

While it’s not easy to figure this out, you can always drill down on data and employee feedback to determine the specific types of programs you should implement within the organization.

Enrich your onboarding process

Convincing and attracting new hires is just half the battle. The other half is making sure they stay. Employee onboarding sets the tone for a new hire, and you need to make it count to retain them. According to Gallup, 70% of employees who had a positive onboarding experience say that they have “the best possible job.” 

Employee onboarding is a crucial process where companies must deliver on what’s promised during the hiring process and integrate new hires into their role and the organization. Successful onboarding is not attained overnight. It is a process that can last through a new hire’s first year with the company. 

Here are some of the ways human resources teams can make employee onboarding successful:

  • Create a clear and intuitive onboarding roadmap. Define where you want your new hires to be at specific time frames, whether monthly or quarterly or what makes sense for your organization. Gather feedback about the process and iterate your roadmap and programs as you go along.
  • Incorporate onboarding programs that will help employees build initial rapport and cultivate healthy working relationships with other team members. It’s vital for new hires to feel included and part of a group.
  • Equip new hires with mentorship and training. New employees become more productive faster when they have the tools to learn and carry out their responsibilities.
  • Provide clarity when it comes to expectations and goals. Employees, especially new hires, become more efficient when they clearly understand their roles, career paths, and how they directly contribute to the organization’s overall success.
  • Use technology to organize onboarding files, keep track of employee details, and streamline new hire paperwork. This frees up time for more critical parts of onboarding. Besides, no new hire would want to deal with a pile of documents to sign and information overload on their first day of work. 

A well-structured onboarding process not only gives new employees a good first impression of the company but also plays a big part in reducing employee turnover. 

Maximize the offboarding process to benchmark market trends

On the other end of the employee life cycle, you must also pay attention to your offboarding process. While it is the stage where an employee transitions out of the company, it can still help with your employee retention strategy. 

You should ensure that any employee leaving the company has a smooth exit. So maximize exit interviews and use them to gather feedback on what you can improve and what departing employees think will make current staff stay. Use this opportunity to understand their motivation for leaving. Is it career advancement, a more competitive salary, or burnout?

You can also use the exit interview to gain insight into their new job and what other companies are doing to attract and retain employees. Inquire about what compelled them to move. Is it a generous sign-on bonus, more comprehensive learning and development, or the promise of a healthy work-life balance? 

“Exit interviews, in particular, are beneficial for benchmarking where people are going and what the wages and working conditions are gonna be like in the firms that they’re moving to,” says Light. 

With this information, you can create benchmarks on how the market is, compare it to where you stand, and strengthen your programs and processes accordingly.

Harness technology to boost employee retention

Data and feedback are crucial in strengthening your programs for retaining your employees.

“Something that’s particularly interesting at the moment is that the data is getting increasingly available in real time” remarks Light.

For instance, when an employee is coming in late more often, the right tool can help you identify this and address it before it becomes a real issue.

“Moving from the sort of survey done at fixed points in time to more proactively identifying when you need to be stepping in and checking in if everything is okay is super exciting,” says Light.

Furthermore, technology significantly contributes to the employee experience. It helps organizations streamline administrative processes so that managers can focus more on being on the ground with their teams and coaching their staff. It also helps employees perform their tasks better and more efficiently, allowing more opportunities for innovation or additional time for training and development.

Streamline workflows and improve the employee experience with Workforce.com

Workforce.com provides efficiencies around demand-based employee scheduling, time and attendance, and labor forecasting. It helps improve the employee experience by providing staff with a straightforward way of clocking in, accessing their schedules, and filing leave requests. It has real-time insights, shift rating and feedback, and an in-depth reporting functionality that can provide managers with actionable insights on key metrics. 

Book a call today if you want to know how Workforce.com can improve your workforce management and employee retention. 

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4 Ways to Maximize HR and WFM Data

Technology and cloud-based applications and platforms enable companies to gather more data, but can they use it to make more effective HR and business decisions?

Virgin Media exemplified how to turn HR data to improve the candidate experience and recruitment process, ultimately reducing a potential loss in revenue equivalent to $5.4 million per year.

Another example is Lake Elsinore Storm, a minor league baseball affiliate of the San Diego Padres. They can track different WFM data, giving them information on how labor dollars are being spent. Using Workforce.com, they see labor costs and revenue per week, per team, and per individual. Because of this visibility and system, they can spot gaps and potential opportunities that help them not just be more efficient with costs, but more importantly, improve customer engagement.

However, the same cannot be said for other organizations, and most are still looking for the best way to utilize and make sense of their data better. In fact, according to a Workforce.com study, 64% of respondents say that labor analytics is a priority when they are evaluating any new software for their organization. It’s a clear indication of a gap between how organizations want to utilize data and how they currently do so. 

How to Maximize HR and WFM Data

1. Have everything in one place

Integration is key to ensure accuracy, access information fast, and analyze information alongside relevant metrics. 

“Over a really long period of time, everything seems fine. And I think it’s true for most HR data. No one really needs it for anyone. No one’s asking, so people tend to forget that this is important. And then there’ll be some event—something regrettable and unexpected. When that does happen, not having this data correct and accessible becomes very, very expensive,” Josh Cameron, Chief Strategy Officer at Workforce.com, said. 

When COVID-19 first hit, HR departments were suddenly being asked for a lot of information regarding employee statuses, PTO balances, and pay rates. “Instead of having a week to work it out, HR teams need to provide information right away. We certainly saw that in the market and saw organizations wanting to implement systems really fast to handle all of that,” Cameron shared. 

Webinar: The Hidden Cost of Bad HR Data

When HR and WFM data are integrated and can be found in a single place, it would be one less thing organizations need to deal with when something unexpected happens. 

2. Automate what you can

A good place to start is employee onboarding. A digital and automated onboarding system helps you keep track of employee information from the get-go. This helps keep everything in one place without too much paperwork. An efficient system stays on top of qualifications, certifications, and employee pay rates and alerts HR teams and managers when they need to be revisited. 

3. Optimize operations with data

WFM data can be powerful when used to optimize operations, and it begins with access to vital data and ensuring that frontline managers can use it too. 

It’s all about having access to crucial data in real-time and being able to make decisions on the fly. Typically, managers receive an end-of-week report on their labor analytics, but the crucial decision point has passed by then. When they have a real-time view of their operations, they’re able to adjust according to how the day goes. 

Read: Labor analytics and reporting starts with access to the right data

Access to WFM data can also help managers build cost-efficient employee schedules based on historical data and metrics. It takes out the guesswork and ensures that there are enough employees scheduled to meet the day’s demands. 

4. Avoid compliance issues

When HR and WFM data are tracked and analyzed correctly, they can prevent compliance issues from happening.  Leveraging data for HR compliance is about preventing potential violations. It means having the information to make sure everything is compliant—from wages, implementing schedules, to workplace policies. But at the same time, it’s also about not having to scramble getting information when it’s requested by authorities.

An integrated system is vital to realize the positive impact of data on your organization. When systems are integrated, consolidating a vast amount of information proves to be much easier. Ultimately, integration allows teams to generate reports fast, act on them quickly, and stay agile if something unexpected happens. 

Workforce.com can sync with any platform an organization uses, allowing for scheduling driven by actual labor insights, automated employee onboarding, custom BI reporting, and easier labor compliance, among others. See it in action by trying Workforce.com today. 

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Data and WFM Technology: The Essentials of Leading a Successful Team

Anticipating changes is part of running a business, and the past year has magnified how important that is. But what does it actually take for businesses to stay agile and prepare for the most unexpected things? Quick answer: Access to real-time data and being able to act on it. However, it’s not as simple for most organizations. 

97% of respondents to a Deloitte survey said that they need additional information on some aspect of their workforce. However, only 11% of organizations were able to produce information on their workforce in real-time—and this challenge has been around even before the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Given today’s landscape, organizations need to have the mechanisms in place that enable them to use data to stay ahead even amid unexpected circumstances. The question is, how and where do they start?

Why keeping everything in one place is essential

The key to having access to every vital data point is keeping them in one place or having the means to see all of them at a glance. It starts with having an integrated workforce management system. 

“There are cases when organizations use separate platforms for clocking in, building employee schedules, and tracking time and attendance. Such practice can create silos, resulting in inaccuracies, and affect the integrity of workforce data,” Travis Kohlmeyer, vice president of sales at Workforce.com. 

Organizations can run into different risks when implementing various platforms for processes that could otherwise be done on a single system. Cross-checking data from separate software can be time-consuming and prone to errors that can even become costly compliance violations. Complexities can also happen later on, especially when these systems update and become difficult to integrate with each other. Scalability is also a potential roadblock because it can be challenging to work with different vendors as you grow your business and your requirements change. “It’s just not sustainable and can be costly in the long run,” Kohlmeyer said. 

Having a myriad of different tools and systems can also be difficult for frontline teams to use and counterproductive. “Employees should love to use the tools provided, or they generally won’t use them at all,” Tasmin Trezise, president of Workforce.com said. One of the biggest trends in workforce management is emphasizing ease of use, especially for frontline teams. “We will continue to see the rise of native SaaS cloud applications over clunky enterprise workforce management software with organizations preferring improved frontline manager/employee mobility options and ease of use. Simple and modern UI has long been missing from workforce management solutions. Organizations need to solve their problems and complete tasks in the easiest and quickest way possible,” Trezise explained. 

Workforce data is vital to staying agile, but at the core of it is an integrated workforce management system. When systems are well integrated, it’s easier to gather data and build algorithms that can automate processes or provide insights into how your team or organization is doing. 

In Workforce.com, for instance, managers can do auto-scheduling based on demand and other relevant information. The platform does this by integrating with the different systems an organization uses for appointments, reservations, events, sales volumes, to name a few. Algorithms are then created from information from these systems to anticipate staffing levels needed to meet demand and stay cost-efficient. 

Workforce.com also equips managers and frontline teams to make data-driven decisions on the fly. Because the platform is well integrated, it shows data about the operations in real-time, allowing managers to make adjustments in operations as the day goes. 

It’s also essential to check in on your team and get their feedback and sentiment on how things are going in the frontline. Workforce.com makes this easy for managers and leaders through functionalities like shift rating and feedback and shift questions. These features allow for timely feedback and help managers spot and address issues more quickly. In addition, data gathered from these functionalities can be easily compiled, which decision-makers can use to improve performance and employee engagement.

 

The secret to successful system integrations

The most advisable thing for organizations is to use a single platform for workforce management—which is time and attendance tracking and employee scheduling at its core. “These are the fundamental functions involved in workforce management, and workflow would be more seamless if they are all done on a single platform. This system can then be integrated to other systems that the organizations use such as payroll, appointment systems, POS, and internally built platforms,” Kohlmeyer advised. 

Simplified workforce management and robust integrations are two of the most crucial factors that companies should be on the lookout for when thinking about implementing a WFM platform or any system for managing their teams. “The first part is having a powerful platform that simplifies workforce management, and the second part is making sure that it’s robust enough to be customized according to unique operational needs and variables. Of course, the second part will only be possible if the WFM platform can integrate to other systems a company uses,” Kohlmeyer said. 

Workforce.com has an open API, which means that it can sync into most systems and software. “Its increased adoption is expected to bring huge advancements in workforce analytics and promote internal innovation, integration,  and personalization. By leveraging the power of connectivity, enterprises can quickly eliminate the chaos of using multiple applications leading to rapid innovation and deeper insights into their workforces,” Trezise remarked. 

Leveraging technology and interconnectivity can bring a lot of wins to any organization. It can bring about increased revenue, more significant labor cost savings, resilience in times of market volatility, and an engaged workforce.

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Time and Attendance Challenges and How to Solve Them

At the core of workforce management is employee schedules and making sure that they are accurately implemented. Tracking time and attendance is crucial to this. It seems elementary, but it tends to become challenging and complicated when different factors are at play, such as business size, various locations, labor regulations, and unique operations and processes.

Here are common challenges that companies face when accurately tracking time and attendance and ways to solve them.

Outdated and inefficient WFM platforms

The biggest roadblock companies have to contend with is an outdated system not just for tracking employee clock ins, but for managing their workforce in general. 

According to a Workforce.com study, the top time and attendance challenges that companies face with their current platforms include:

  • Manual errors (48%).
  • Lack of integration between HR and payroll (40%).
  • The inability to demonstrate compliance with wage and hour laws (19%). 

WFM platforms should take out the complexities of these areas and make processes smoother and not the other way around. However, most companies experience the pain points of dealing with WFM platforms that complicate processes instead of simplifying them, which results in heavy admin work, manual errors, and compliance risks. 

How to solve: Go for a robust platform that can provide efficiency with every area of workforce management, beginning with time and attendance tracking.

A WFM platform may claim to have the most advanced features, but it will not be of much help if it can’t integrate with your operations and existing systems. “Integration is key to automating time and attendance tracking, employee scheduling, labor compliance, and reporting. It’s only through integrations that you can truly customize the platform to suit your needs and goals. However, a WFM platform that can do that for you is hard to come by. That’s why it pays to do your due diligence before implementing a WFM platform in your organization,” explained Travis Kohlmeyer, vice president of sales at Workforce.com.

How Workforce.com can help:

  • Open API –  Workforce.com can easily integrate with other software and systems, even those that are internally built within organizations. Through this, the platform can generate algorithms that help simplify and automate time and attendance tracking, labor forecasting, employee scheduling, labor compliance, payroll, and reporting.

Ensuring that employees are at the right place at the right time

It can be challenging for businesses operating in multiple sites to ensure that staff are where they should be, especially when you do it through inefficient systems. Time theft, gaps in operations, and inaccuracies in payroll are the typical results of not keeping track of employee locations and clock ins the right way.

How to solve: Use a time and attendance technology that can record GPS locations upon clock ins and set geofences. Such functionality makes record-keeping more efficient and closes the gap for inaccuracies and errors. “Efficient time and attendance tracking will never happen after the fact. Managers need to have a system that will provide them with complete oversight of all their locations and teams—from who’s clocking in and where, who’s running late, and who’s about to go overtime—and all of this should be in real-time,” Kohlmeyer explained.

How Workforce.com can help:

  • GPS Tracking –  Workforce.com can record the GPS coordinates of employee clock ins. It is automatically recorded on the timesheet and can be easily verified by managers.

  • Geofencing – Workforce.com enables organizations to set geofences where employees can record clock ins. Being able to impose such limitations helps time and attendance tracking more efficiently and also avoids time theft. When an employee tries to clock in outside the geofence, the platform flags it and notifies the managers. It can also prompt employees to state why they are away from their scheduled location.
  • Shift questions – Shift questions can be posted for employees to answer before clocking in or out. It can be asked when specific criteria are met, for instance, when an employee clocks in a location where they’re not scheduled to work.

  • Workforce.com dashboard – Managers have a single view of upcoming shifts, employees who are clocked in, late, or have yet to be in their assigned locations and shifts.
  • Key alerts – Managers are notified about their teams’ time and attendance and any last-minute absences they need to fill. Just the same, Workforce.com also informs employees when schedules are coming up and reminds them to clock in for their shift.

Tracking attendance of staff who work in multiple locations in a day

Some companies have employees assigned to work in different locations in a single day, which can be troublesome for managers to track and easily result in payroll or compliance issues.

“We’ve come across companies that are having problems with keeping track of their staff who work in multiple locations in a day. They needed a system that can automatically note such clock ins without having any issues once the timesheets are exported to their payroll system,” Kohlmeyer shared. 

How to solve: Provide employees a fast and straightforward way to record their clock ins, even when they move from one location to another. 

How Workforce.com can help:

  • GPS clock ins – Employees who need to work in two or more different locations in a day can record their start and end times using their own mobile device via Workforce.com’s mobile app via GPS clock in functionality. All they need to do is go on the app before starting and ending work in one location and repeat the process in the following location they’re scheduled to work. Workforce.com automatically logs that information on the timesheet, which can be easily verifiable and exported to payroll.

Ensuring employees take their breaks

Failure to assign and track employee break times is a common risk for non-compliance, especially for businesses operating in locations that have strict rules around breaks. 

How to solve: Have a system in place that helps managers schedule the appropriate break times for each employee according to their employee classification and laws that apply in the area of business. Likewise, it’s crucial to have a system in place that prompts employees to take their breaks. 

How Workforce.com can help:

  • Easy access to data and analytics – Workforce.com provides easy access to all of your data and information. That being said, you can easily see time and attendance records and identify whether or not employees used or recorded their break hours. This can be helpful in case authorities check on your compliance when it comes to employee breaks. When you have access to your information, it’s easy to find lapses or identify whether there’s non-compliance or not.
  • Alerts and notifications for breaks – The Workforce.com platform sends alerts to employees and managers about breaks—prompting staff to take them and notifying managers in case team members didn’t do so.
  • Scheduling alerts – Workforce.com flags potential mistakes with assigning break durations to employees during scheduling. This ensures that managers assign the correct break times to the right employee in accordance with labor laws.

The ideal platform for tracking time and attendance

Organizations experience difficulties with time and attendance tracking because they don’t use the right system in the first place. The ideal system is not a one-size-fits-all software but a WFM platform that can quickly adapt to how your organization works and changes. 

Workforce.com is a robust WFM platform that simplifies the core elements of workforce management, ensuring that the factors unique to how you operate are taken into account, resulting in more efficient schedules, lower labor spend, increased profitability, and compliance to labor rules. 

See Workforce.com in action. Book a call or try it for free. 

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Systems integrations: A crucial factor in choosing a WFM platform

To make work easier — this is the main reason why companies look for workforce management systems, and they typically gravitate towards providers that claim to be automated, simple, and cloud-based.  

With different WFM platforms available in the market, it’s easy for organizations to get lost in all the sales and marketing talk, demo calls, and claims of why a particular product is better than the others. But if there’s one thing that organizations should focus on, that would be how the solutions they’re looking at will fare in terms of integrating with the current systems and software they use. 

“A workforce management system can only be truly efficient if it can integrate with systems or platforms in place in an organization. It is the only way to ensure accurate forecasts, break silos, and make workflows more efficient, especially for companies operating in different locations,” Travis Kohlmeyer, vice president of sales at Workforce.com said.

Beyond common software integrations

Software as a service, like WFM platforms, is expected to integrate with other relevant software. In WFM’s case, this includes software for payroll, PoS, and HR systems. While these integrations are helpful, there are cases when an organization’s needs go beyond that.

“Big companies typically use different software and systems, and some of these are built internally. A WFM platform can only be of value when it can integrate to custom systems and make sure that you have the right staff on for appointments, reservations, events, and sale volumes and much more,” Kohlmeyer explained.

The power of a fully integrated WFM system

Cost savings and higher productivity happen when WFM systems are fully integrated. A truly robust WFM system can do that despite the unique needs and processes of a business. 

When a WFM seamlessly syncs with other systems and software, it’s able to deliver the following:

  • Accurate labor forecasts – An integrated WFM platform can predict labor demand which can aid managers to create more efficient and accurate schedules. When it’s synced with systems that involve appointments, reservations, room occupancies, and even historical sales information, it’s able to create an algorithm that will inform managers how many employees they need at a given time.
  • Labor compliance – When a WFM platform is fully integrated, crucial information and data are accounted for, especially on the compliance side of things. For example, it ensures that labor rules apply to scheduling and payroll. It also keeps track of training and certifications that are required to perform certain tasks.
  • Timely and actionable reports – Decision-makers and managers can easily spot trends and nip problems in the bud when data and reports are readily available to them. Integrated WFM platforms can generate reports gathered from various data points and do so in a few clicks. This is especially helpful for providing relevant and valuable reports for different roles in the company.

“A fully integrated WFM offers a high level of customizability. Businesses have varying needs, and a WFM platform that can seamlessly sync with other systems can deliver results.” Kohlmeyer explained.

Tips when searching for a WFM platform

Finding the WFM platform for your business requires due diligence. As you look through different options, here are factors that you need to consider:

  • Integrations – While it’s essential to look at the features of a product, it’s equally crucial to see if a WFM can sync with the systems you currently have. Remember that ‘powerful’ features will be for nothing if it doesn’t integrate well with the current systems.“It’s also crucial to figure out how the integrations will be done. Organizations usually seek to make their work easier, so it’s best to go for a solution provider that will take care of the integrations for you.” Kohlmeyer said.
  • Nature of business operations – A WFM platform may claim to be the best, but does it have any experience working with an organization similar to yours? It pays to ask if they have worked with companies in the same industry or at least with an organization that has a similar operational model as what you have. If not, determine if they have the capability to address your specific needs or business model.
  • Reviews – Client feedback is another way to gauge whether a WFM vendor is worth your time and money. Checking reviews can give you an idea of the possible pros and cons of working with certain providers.
  • Required functionality – Discuss with potential vendors your required functionality. See if they can offer it out of the box or if they need to build it for you. If they need to build it for you, ask about the timeline, requirements needed from your side, and possible roadblocks to implementation. 

“Aside from meeting your requirements, it is also vital to discern whether a WFM provider is willing to really help you out and not just close a deal. Normally, you’ll see it in how they steer the conversation when certain functionalities are not available in their product yet.” Kohlmeyer added. 

Workforce.com makes integration easy for companies worldwide

Workforce.com has an open API, which means that it can easily integrate with other software and systems, even internally-developed platforms. It is through this technology that algorithms out of different variables are built, which aids our customers to get accurate demand and forecasts, generate custom reports, optimize operations quickly, and automate processes such as employee scheduling.

Companies need something to simplify workforce management with, and it takes a genuinely robust system to do that. “Taking the complexities out of scheduling, time and attendance, compliance, and reporting has a lot to do with integrations,” Kohlmeyer explained. “Workforce.com is a highly customizable and easy-to-integrate system that helps companies around the world do exactly that.”

See Workforce.com in action. Book a call or try it for free.

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Rococo Chocolates makes day to day operations more efficient with Workforce.com

“I could create a schedule for a month in less than an hour, which is something that will take me a whole afternoon in my past jobs,” said Stephen Jaundrill, Manager at Rococo Chocolates, about using Workforce.com. 

Rococo Chocolates is a shop of fine and luxury chocolates in London. They are known for employing only the highest standards of chocolate craftsmanship. To sustain their growth and quality of product and customer service, they need to have an effective workforce management solution to manage their five stores in London. 

Easiest scheduling system to work with

Employee schedules are the core of any operation, but it can be tedious and prone to error when done manually or on an insufficient system. But it’s not an issue for Rococo Chocolates when they started using Workforce.com. 

“The scheduling side of Workforce.com is the easiest system I’ve ever worked with because you can drag and drop shifts. You can create templates for each store,” shared Jaundrill. Scheduling around holidays, leave, and unavailability is also simple as the platform can autofill shifts with available staff. “In effect, it’s doing the work that I should be doing manually. It’s saving me so much time,” he added. 

Working around your labor budget is also simple and intuitive with the platform. Workforce.com enabled the team at Rococo Chocolates to see schedules in monthly and weekly views which greatly helped with managing their costs. “So you can check your total hours each week and how much of your payroll budget is coming out,” Jaundrill added.

Simple and efficient for staff

The success of rolling out a workforce management system is how it is easy for employees to use. The staff at Rococo Chocolates love Workforce.com because it’s simple and provides them transparency about their shifts. “The staff feedback I’ve had regarding the Workforce.com app has been really positive. They find it easy to use. It’s nice that it doesn’t just show their shift, but allows them to see who they’re working with on any particular day,” Jaundrill shared. 

Timely and effective product support

After sales support is also a crucial part of using software solutions for any organization. Implementing a workforce management platform for a business involves getting assistance with using the platform, especially when issues arise and updates are released.

“When we deal with certain issues, we need a response within an hour or so, and when support comes, the staff (at Workforce.com) is really helpful. Generally, any request that I’ve had has never been left unresolved,” said Jaundrill.

Technology is vital for businesses, not just in automating tedious tasks, but also with providing them insights to run their operations better. That’s what Workforce.com does with Rococo Chocolates.

If you want to know more about Workforce.com, book a demo or start a free trial.

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The link between employee engagement and good brand image

employee engagement

Companies can spend millions of dollars on campaigns promoting their brand each year. But aside from building connections with potential customers and nurturing relationships with existing ones, there’s another side of branding that businesses need to pay attention to — employee engagement and perception. 

Kay Phelps, director of British workplace communications company PR in HR, discussed the impact of employee engagement on a company’s brand and why authenticity is especially essential these days for elevating brand perceptions.

Good branding comes from within

When employees find purpose in their roles and feel valued, they can be a company’s greatest brand promoter. But if they are not heard or treated well, what they have to say can be detrimental to your brand image. 

“Employees who are engaged are likely to spread positive thoughts around your brand — be it through word of mouth or social media,” Phelps said. Engaged employees are also likely to interact with their company’s social media pages, therefore boosting the reach and engagement of the brand via digital channels.

Kay Phelps, director, HR in PR
Kay Phelps, director, PR in HR.

Leaders also need to recognize that there are online platforms where employees can air out their experiences with the company, whether positive or negative. “Combine this with the potential for posts on social media, not only should employers be motivated to treat staff well for their wellbeing, but to protect their image too,” Phelps added. 

According to a Glassdoor survey, 86 percent of employees and job seekers research company reviews and ratings to decide on where to apply for a job. Further, a negative reputation can cost a company as much as 10 percent more per hire. 

Bad employee reviews not only hurt the perception of potential hires but can also discourage customers from doing business with a company. 

“If staff feel that their employers genuinely support them and take their views into account, they’ll be more likely to go to them first with any problems instead of heading online to air their opinions,” said Phelps.

Also read: How technology can help your employee engagement strategy

Authenticity is essential

Customers are paying more attention to how brands are living up to their core values and treating their people. A Stackla report said that 86 percent of consumers say that authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support. 

“After last year, people want to see that brands care about their people and their customers — not least in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, wellbeing and health and safety,” Phelps said. 

Phelps sees this as a huge opportunity for companies to be talking about their successful programs that promote employee welfare. However, she cautions about the dangers of claiming to have such initiatives without clear actions, “Companies should take action before talking about it in their comms. Your messaging can’t be ingenuine. It must reflect real action and support in these areas. Fail to do this and you’re likely to be called out by onlookers or your employees,” Phelps explained. 

Also read: Human capital management: Considerations to better engage employees and promote diversity

Empowering your biggest promoters

“Part of understanding why people want to associate with your brand is being able to recognize their struggles and when you do this, you can create targeted messaging that addresses pain points and provides solutions,” Phelps said of boosting brand awareness, and the same principle can also be applied to creating a better working environment for your employees. 

According to Glassdoor, employee voice is three times more credible than the CEO when it comes to talking about working conditions in the company. 

Phelps says that a reason for poor brand awareness is unclear messaging. Just like customers, employees tend to be disengaged when expectations for their role are unclear. When not addressed this leads to confusion and conflict, resulting in poor performance and worse, a bad company review. 

The second reason is assuming knowledge on the part of the target audience. “Companies need to be able to get their messages across to the ordinary person in a clear and simple way. If a person is confused, they’ll simply turn off,” Phelps explained. 

Just with managing the workforce, managers should not assume that their employees know it all. They need to lay out all essential information for their people to do their jobs well. Open lines of communication are a must for fostering a culture of trust in the workforce. Employees need to feel a certain sense of safety that allows them to raise questions and concerns without fear of being shut down. 

Companies should prioritize enabling their employees to perform at their best. This means providing them with the right tools and platforms that will allow them to be more efficient. Tools that enable them to collaborate, make data-driven decisions, and just generally make admin work easier are essential to keeping them engaged. 

What employees have to say about a company is just as crucial to what customers think about the brand — sometimes, even more. Employee engagement can resonate outside the organization and can either make or break your business. Given today’s business landscape, taking care of your employees is essentially protecting your brand image and bottom line.

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Ferguson Plarre saves over $100,000 a year using Auto-Scheduling

Ferguson Plarre, Workforce.com, retail, scheduling

Ferguson Plarre is one of the longest standing and most renowned producers of hand baked goods. The family-owned business has a rich history of providing customers with sweets and savories since the 1800s. 

The company faced a number of workforce challenges such as difficulty navigating excessive amounts of administration and spending on overtime due to scheduling inefficiencies. 

Since finding Workforce.com, Ferguson Plarre has seen great success in improving day-to-day operations and employee satisfaction. “It has just freed up so much time for my leaders to be able to actually focus on the projects that make us money and are better for the business, rather than sitting there putting spreadsheets together, trying to figure out what labor is going to cost,” said Chris Tankard, culture and human resources manager at Ferguson Plarre.

$100,000 saved on wage spend, hundreds of hours saved on administration

After implementing Workforce.com, the company saved $100,000 on wage spend and reduced hundreds of hours in administrative work. They saved the equivalent of two full-time staff members when it comes to cutting of administration across production, scheduling and reporting. These valuable savings allowed them to reallocate their resources to other more valuable areas of the business. 

Following their implementation of Workforce.com, Ferguson Plarre has adopted a highly optimized scheduling process, allowing them to accommodate for the constantly shifting demand for their products, significantly reducing the time spent maintaining staff schedules, absences and staffing costs.

How legacy systems and processes can dramatically hinder success

Ferguson Plarre is committed to delivering freshly baked goods to its stores. With a staff of more than 150 employees, their goal is to provide the best quality products while catering for constant shifts in their day-to-day sales. As such, they require a staff management system that can optimize their schedule according to demand data. 

Previous systems used at Ferguson Plarre failed to achieve the results they needed to achieve their business mission. Their previous scheduling software was a platform that employees throughout the company avoided. Staff were reluctant to use it due to issues with reliability. Meanwhile, the managerial team found a great deal of effort was required to make basic adjustments to staff schedules, pay rates and documents. 

Not having access to the tools they needed led to higher staffing costs, frustrated staff and the inability to dedicate time and energy to areas of the business that add value. As a result, the company was left with significant sunk costs in a system that didn’t give them outcomes and satisfaction in return.

Implementing a system that helps your business grow

Tankard set out to find a user-friendly system that would be eagerly adopted by his team, a solution that would allow his frontline staff to start thinking like business owners. Finding a great system functions more like a partnership than a service, especially when it comes to managing areas of the business as important as your employees.

Here’s how the team at Workforce.com works with Ferguson Plarre to manage and improve their operations and business:

Auto-scheduling software

  • Ferguson Plarre uses Workforce.com’s automated scheduling platform to create more efficient shifts for their staff.
  • Scheduling according to demand allows Ferguson Plarre to schedule staff on a room-by-room basis, ensuring they never over- or under-staff stations.
  • The shift swapping software lets staff easily request altered schedules, reducing the time managers spent maintaining it. It also helps protect the bottom line as the platform shows how much swaps will cost.
  • Auto-scheduling ensures that Ferguson Plarre keeps unnecessary overtime to a minimum, reducing staffing costs across the company.

Digital timesheets

  • Automatic timesheet generation means Ferguson Plarre can generate and approve accurately costed timesheets in bulk each pay period.
  • Timesheet software automatically flagged any variance in wage spend, aiding Tankard and the team in adhering to their budgeting KPIs.
  • Workforce.com’s timesheet software synced to Ferguson Plarre’s payroll system, allowing them to export the data without any manual entry each pay period, significantly reducing the required labor hours.

Reporting

  • Workforce.com’s dashboards and reporting suite means Tankard and the team could access valuable workforce metrics and modify their business practices for efficiency.
  • Digital reporting and storage means Ferguson Plarre can easily access historical reports and monitor their performance over time.

Compliance

  • Workforce.com’s labor compliance engine applies the correct pay rates, overtime, and allowances to completed shifts, eliminating the need to manually calculate pay rates and amend timesheets.

Thorough implementation guarantees a fast return on investment

Business tools only begin to return benefits when they are implemented quickly and adopted fully across the company. It’s not uncommon to find businesses adopting newer and better processes, only to be caught in the implementation stage, receiving fractional value for an extended period of time. For Ferguson Plarre, a gold standard implementation process was imperative.

Workforce.com assigned a dedicated implementation consultant to Ferguson Plarre. This ensures that the implementation would run smoothly, so they could start getting value from the system as soon as possible. Workforce.com assisted Tankard and his team through the setup, integrating their existing systems into Workforce.com and ensuring that staff knew how to use the system. 

Simplifying the administrative processes to focus on creating value

Workforce.com provides Ferguson Plarre with greatly simplified administrative processes, allowing them to focus on the things that matter. 

Moving forward, Ferguson Plarre will continue to build on its rich history and continue to delight customers. As the business landscape continues to shift, they are well-equipped to face these changes because they have a platform that enables them to be agile and make data-driven decisions. 

Workforce management has a lot of moving parts, but it doesn’t have to be a burden. Workforce.com can take out the administrative side of managing your team so you can focus more on growing your business. See our platform in action and book a demo today.