Jana Reserva Archives - Page 9 of 9

June 23, 2020August 3, 2023

Defining workforce management: Leading teams for success

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In 1922, James R. Angell, president of Yale University and the Carnegie Corp., led a joint initiative between the Engineering Foundation and the National Research Council. The goal was to take workforce science to new heights through unifying modern engineering, labor, management, and educational bodies. It has given birth to what we know today as Workforce.com and workforce management.

Since then, the team behind Workforce have delved deep into the science behind workforce management — from productivity, labor regulations, workforce challenges to the evolution of work. All of these insights have been put into practice with a full-featured workforce management platform that is being used by companies across the world.

The anatomy of effective workforce management

So what is workforce management? Based on almost a century’s worth of research and study, we identified three main components that are crucial at effectively leading teams. Each of them requires a unique approach, but as a whole these areas should function seamlessly. Let’s look at each of them.

Operations. When talking about workforce management, the first thing that comes to mind is operations management. It is all about making sure that quality output is created, within the given timeframe and resources in an organization. This involves planning and organizing. Some of the processes are creating employee schedules, timekeeping, output management and budget forecasting.

Labor compliance. Labor regulations govern workforces around the world. These laws are set to protect workers and regulate certain business practices concerning the welfare of employees such as wages, work conditions and employment relationships.

Labor regulations can differ by country or region, and these are taken into account in company employment rules and policies. While increasingly difficult to remain compliant, failure to do so can mean costly penalties that can greatly damage not just an organization’s bottom line but also its reputation.

Employee engagement. Employee engagement is an area of workforce management that focuses on enabling employees to perform their best in alignment with their individual purpose and the objectives of the organization as whole.

Employee engagement is typically correlated with happiness with work. But it’s important to note that they are not one in the same. Happiness at work is just one of the byproducts of good employee engagement. To achieve good employee engagement, there has to be a clear communication in the workforce — from onboarding to getting the job done.

Also read: How to make your onboarding process engaging and easy

Debunking common workforce management myths

Workforce management can spell success or failure for an organization. Let’s look at some of the common beliefs that can hinder success for an organization.

It’s just scheduling. While creating schedules is an important part of workforce management, it’s not just all there is. It has a lot of moving parts that are tightly integrated with each other. This includes timekeeping, budget forecasting and engaging employees.

Also read: Leave management should be as simple as submit, approve and hit the beach

It can be done manually or using spreadsheets. This can be done manually, but such an option can be prone to mistakes. One wrong value input can mess up the entire sheet and end up being counterproductive. It can result in wasted time to find the problem.

It is easier for smaller organizations. There are many factors at play in workforce management, and one of them is company size. But that doesn’t mean that a smaller organization has it easier than a big corporation. Each organization, regardless of size, has its own unique sets of goals, objectives and needs. And all of these come into play when managing the workforce. What makes it easier or harder is not just how many employees they have but also the alignment of roles, resources and objectives.

Upskilling or training can lead to more skills and less staff. Nurturing the potential of staff is vital in workforce management, but developing their skills and training them to gain new ones doesn’t necessarily mean a lesser need for staff.

There needs to be a balance in mentoring staff to be able to do more and making sure that they still have the space to master their newly acquired skills. Leaders need to be careful not to unnecessarily push staff from task to task or they can risk driving them to burnout.

Culture doesn’t have an impact on business performance or bottom line. Culture is one of the vital components that sets the tone for employee engagement. A company may have a strong set of policies but it will all be for nothing when the culture doesn’t sit well with the employees. It can lead to high turnover rates, lower productivity and overall low workforce morale, which can all impact the bottom line.

Also read: Give managers the time they need to sharpen up their all-around skills

It’s a one-time deal. Establishing processes for operations, labor compliance and employee engagement is a good start. But workforce management continuously evolves. There are always changes that will influence the needs of an organization and leaders need to be quick to adapt to those changes. Optimizing is constant in workforce management, and it’s something that leaders need to pay more attention to.

Setting up the workforce for success

Workforce management involves many processes that can be daunting and time-consuming for managers or team leaders. Here are some best practices that can make workforce management more efficient.

Use a workforce management platform. Leverage technology for the admin tasks involved in workforce management. Use a workforce management platform to accurately keep track of attendance, automate timesheet to payroll processing, scheduling, time-off management, and to make sure that labor laws are accounted for in computing for pay.

An effective workforce management platform goes beyond borders and allows for teams to work together no matter where they are. Go for a solution that can be accessible anytime, anywhere and on any device.

Before going for a workforce management solution, it’s imperative to look at your needs as an organization. According to the Workforce Management Trends for Hourly Workers, 46 percent of respondents say that poor integration with other systems is a shortcoming of their current workforce management platform. Avoid this type of challenge by understanding your requirements and considering ease of use for staff.

Monitor and optimize. Workforce management is all about maintaining efficiency and employee well-being. One advantage of automation is having data and analytics that can be a source of insights as to how you can optimize your operations and what areas you can improve on. Analyze your data and make informed decisions about how you can improve productivity and employee engagement in your organization.

Listen to your employees. Communication is key to a successful workforce. Always keep channels open to your employees. Since staff are always on the front lines, it pays to listen to them to gain better insight on customer service, identify operational gaps, and improve working conditions for staff.

Effective workforce management is all about employing smart solutions to spend less time on repetitive tasks and paperwork and more time on improving the business and empowering staff for success. It’s all about creating value for customers and employees alike.

June 16, 2020June 29, 2023

How to recalibrate work dynamics and embrace digital transformation in a post-pandemic workplace

Tsedal Neeley, Harvard Business School professor, award-winning author, and global management and leadership expert, recently caught up with us to share her insights and advice as the workforce continues to go through rapid transformation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. From digital transformation, team relaunch, to leading in times of radical change, she gives a picture of the future of work and essential advice for employees and leaders alike.

Workforce: What do you think are the most significant changes that were brought about by the pandemic to the workforce?

Neeley: The most significant changes that were brought about by COVID is the fact that between 88 percent to 90 percent of the workforces particularly knowledge workers, meaning people who work in offices, have migrated into remote work. A lot of people for the very first time in their professional lives have attempted to get work done virtually, collaborate virtually, be productive virtually, work with partners, customers, consumers, distributors, suppliers virtually in a context of a global pandemic.

The other thing that we’re seeing is the digital transformation for many organizations. When you go to remote work or what I call the virtualization of work, you have to have more robust enabling technologies to support it – communication tools, the tools for cybersecurity, repositories, content management systems. So we’re seeing some virtual and digital advancements that just really have accelerated because of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Even now, if you think about the rush to get a vaccine for COVID-19. Some of the companies are using AI and machine learning. We’re seeing all of these things in action and I think that we are going to be forced to be much more intelligent. I also think that the companies that have had some form of digital capacity are going to do better during this economic times because they will have the predictive analysis to be able to understand how to use the right data, to have the right approaches, to make the right decisions, to come up with countering measures to support their strategic response.

WF: A lot of the working dynamics have changed. What are the ways that leaders can support their team during this time?

Neeley: It’s very important for leaders to ensure that they do what’s called a team launch. If you haven’t done a team launch by now, you should do a re-launch. Which means that you set your team off on a course.

A team launch is one of the success factors for any team. It breathes life to a team. It helps increase the performance of virtual teams by 30 percent. A team launch or relaunch is where you collectively determine the following:

Shared purpose – Be clear about what your shared goals, mission and vision are as a group.
Resources – Determine what your needs are, anywhere from budgets, information, and networks.
Members’ lived experience – Discuss individual strengths, constraints, and gaps. You need to understand task allocation and balance accordingly.

Today, many parents are homeschooling, and many are working in shifts. Days can be longer for them and their hours are not necessarily coinciding with the rest of the group.

Leaders need to understand who is in that situation and the constraints that go along with them. They must accommodate people who have those scenarios because the apparatus that people had built to support their children, to support them as families – the entire support structure has gone away in this global pandemic. You need to understand those constraints.

New norms: Establish or re-establish norms. How do you communicate and how often? What tools are you going to use to communicate?

People have been raising concerns about video conferencing fatigue, and it’s important for you to pick the right media for the right needs. As a group, you need to agree on what’s going to work for you in order to remain connected. Think about informal contact too like virtual lunches and virtual coffee breaks.

WF: What do you think the future of work will look like as businesses start operations again, especially those that have actual establishments?

Neeley: Opening up does not mean that we go back to our old system immediately, especially when we don’t have vaccines yet. So there are many questions around the use of space and technology.

For example, I recently spoke to a company that specializes in beverages and their business has never been better. They’ve started e-commerce first. Businesses need to think about whether it would make sense for them to begin a robust online delivery system in order to supplement their revenue, serve their customers, and remain very present.

Nonetheless, it’s important to keep in mind that when businesses are reopening and they are not using the full capacity of their staff – meaning some are at home still and some have gone into work. There actually creating two groups – those who are out risking exposure to COVID to start the business and those who remain safe at home. What can that create? That can create an us-versus-them culture. Leaders need to be very careful about those dynamics and make sure that no group feels privileged or excluded.

WF: We are talking about leaders being at the forefront of this. So for leaders, where do they get support because they are in a unique position of experiencing the effects of the pandemic and taking care of a team?

Neeley: That is an excellent question. People need to ask that question more.

Every organization needs to have a very visible CEO who is communicating regularly so that leaders can lead. The leaders of leaders have to set the tone. They have to help them figure out how to lead through a crisis.

There are two things that are important for them to identify. They need to recognize that they are leading during times of crisis, which requires a certain type of leadership. They are also leading radical change, but many of them don’t think they are. When your entire workforce has shifted to work from home; when your client base is in this extraordinarily dynamic period; when your entire patterns of work have changed, you are going through a radical change during a time of uncertainty. You don’t know what the future will look like. People are anxious. People need new skills. People need new equipment. Entire organizations have turned upside down. It’s a radical change. And you’re leading it.

Organizations need to set the tone and they need to equip their leaders to be able to lead accordingly. That’s the first step.

Second, leaders should form groups or task forces to help align their messaging, to help align their movements and actions and to bring together the best ideas and best practices. This way, no leader is trying to figure it out all on their own especially since no one has gone through a global pandemic of this scale in our modern times, right? To create the best practices collectively within the organization, that’s a way to get your support system.

Finally, leaders always need to have a set of mentors or kind of their own board of advisors, not formally necessarily. But leaders should have three or four people who they can turn to to think through things. These are not ordinary times and during times of crisis, you need your mentors. They are people you trust or people you build trust with if you don’t have them yet. These people have some serious expertise in a certain area that you really want to thrive in and be unafraid to hear truth from. You need to reach out to make sure that you have those.

This is not a time to be a solo leader. Leaders need to understand how to lead change, lead during times of crisis, and innovate. There are so many things that they need to figure out very quickly and they can’t do that alone.

May 5, 2020June 29, 2023

The new normal: Navigating workforce challenges during and after the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has catapulted workforces around the world into remote work or a different environment than what employees are used to.

Businesses are making adjustments to their operations in adherence to social distancing and in joining the fight to curb the pandemic.

As the search for a vaccine continues, it seems like flexible work will be here to stay. But what does that mean to the workforce? And what must managers do to help navigate the new normal involving remote work?

Same principles, different times

Jacob Morgan, an author, speaker and authority on leadership, employee engagement and the future of work, said in a recent blog post that more companies will embrace flexible working arrangements.

“With the current pandemic, millions of people around the world are working from home,” he said. “This will likely continue over the coming months but even after the pandemic is over, I expect we will see a dramatic rise in flexible work arrangements. However, in order for these efforts to be successful organizations need to use a new set of digital technologies and embrace a new way of working.”

Morgan also wrote about the things top companies do to succeed at implementing flexible arrangements during COVID-19 and even after the pandemic. He mentioned implementing the right kind of technology according to an organization’s unique objectives.

“Before rushing to pick that shiny new collaboration and communication platform, focus on developing a strategy which will help you understand the ‘why’ before the ‘how.’ This is crucial for the success of any collaboration initiative,” he wrote. “You don’t want to be in a position where you have deployed a technology without understanding why. Especially during this pandemic, make it clear what the desired goals are so everyone is on board.”

Aside from implementing suitable solutions, Morgan also highlighted the importance of collaboration, measuring the right metrics, leading by example and listening to the voice of the organization, among others. Morgan explained the challenges in applying them and practical ways to overcome them.

“Collaboration should never be seen as an additional task or requirement for employees,” Morgan wrote. “Instead collaboration should fit naturally into their flow of work. For example, with my virtual team of ten employees turning on Skype every morning and looking at what’s going in Asana is how we all start our day, it’s not an afterthought or something additional we do … it’s how we get things done.”

He reiterated that collaboration is an ongoing initiative and goes beyond simply rolling out initial guidelines, thinking that it will stand the test of time. It’s all about adjusting and being agile to changes.

“It’s important to remember that collaboration is perpetual,” Morgan wrote. “It’s a never ending evolution as new tools and strategies for the workplace continue to emerge. This means that it’s important for your organization to be able to adapt and evolve as things change. Keep a pulse on what’s going on in the industry and inside of your organization. This will allow you to innovate and anticipate. So many organizations were caught off guard by this pandemic because they had neither the tools, the training, the leadership, or the guidelines to help make flexible work successful.”

Clear course of action is vital

The pandemic has disrupted global workforces. Management consultancy Gallup has seen massive changes in different aspects of work and employee life, and they are seeing record levels of stress and worry among the U.S. workforce. So how are employers faring in terms of their response?

Leaders need to have a clear course of action and communicate it clearly to their employees. A survey from Gallup shows that 52 percent of employees strongly agree that their employer fared well in terms of sharing information to them about the next steps.

Technology is key to implementing action plans

Having a strategy is just half of the battle. The other half is implementing it. Technology plays a crucial role in that.

A workforce management platform is helpful in this regard as it can help you operate efficiently beyond borders, staying on top of your operations, and improving overall communication with staff. It can help you automate and customize certain processes and adjust quickly to market changes.

There’s a lot of factors at play when managing a workforce, especially so at a time like this. It’s vital to have the right solutions in place that will help you focus on enriching your people and equipping them to do their best even in this era of remote work and beyond.

March 19, 2020June 29, 2023

How to strengthen workforce communications during the COVID-19 crisis

Communication is at the heart of every sound workforce management practice.

From establishing clear expectations, setting a bigger purpose, building company culture down to fostering accountability, communication will always be at the core . Clearly messaged, trusted communication can either make or break operations and enhance employee engagement.

A study by The Economist Intelligence Unit shows how poor workplace communication is detrimental to an organization. Survey respondents say that communication barriers result in delay or failure to complete projects (44 percent), low morale (31 percent), missed performance goals (25 percent), and lost sales (18 percent). And it can be worse when a crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic hits.

Clear communication is crucial to stability

Effective communication becomes even more critical during times of crisis and uncertainty.

Workforces globally are facing a massive challenge to their business operations with the COVID-19 pandemic. It has prompted businesses to take drastic measures to ensure the safety of staff and customers alike. Depending on the nature of the business, some have ceased operations or function under a skeleton workforce and limited hours, while other organizations have implemented work from home arrangements.

Effective communication can still bind your team together.

Given the shifting workplace situation, effective workforce communications are more critical than ever. A crisis, whether a natural disaster, a corporate meltdown or the outbreak of a disease affects employee morale. Effective communication can still bind your team together even during times of uncertainty. Leaders need to do their part to address issues promptly and clearly.

It’s also important to note that social media and online platforms can turn employees into de facto spokespeople for your organization. Whatever they share on their platforms about working for your company will reflect how you communicate with them. Those communications — or lack of a clear, consistent message — can result in a better brand image or sprout into a new crisis.

So how can leaders effectively address their staff during a challenging time?

Act fast

When a crisis strikes, it’s essential to address employees as soon as possible.

Leaders might not have answers to some of their questions right away. In the case of rapidly developing situations, like the COVID-19 pandemic, this is understandable. But it’s crucial to let employees know that you are looking into the issue and finding solutions to their concerns. What matters is to give them the assurance that the organization is aware of the situation and that the welfare of staff is a priority.

Solidify the message

Consistent messaging is key. While different roles have different concerns, it’s essential to keep the overall message continuous and consistent.

Address all of their concerns and frequently asked questions. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the questions will revolve around remote work, schedule changes, payment arrangements, leave management and other operational issues.

Diversify message delivery

How you relay the message is equally important as how it is crafted.

Empathy is important during a crisis, but what if face-to-face communication is no longer possible?

Video conferencing or a recorded video message are viable options, but how do you let staff know about it? Email is a common communication channel for organizations, but it’s best to diversify delivery channels when the situation is urgent. In a 2019 survey by text-messaging platform SlickText of over 1,000 employees across the United States, 43 percent of respondents say that timely notifications and emergency alerts are best sent through SMS and not email. Chat platforms also are useful in this case as they can quickly disseminate information and concisely. Employees are likely to open chat platforms frequently, too.

Keep the feedback loop open

Effective communication to staff goes beyond issuing announcements or bulletins. It’s about keeping communication lines open and soliciting feedback.

During a crisis, it’s imperative to open channels for discussions and to raise questions. Chat applications are suitable not just for discussing in groups but in one-on-one correspondence as well. It’s more immediate than email too and helps pass information more quickly.

See how it works: Workforce.com’s employee app includes chat features.

A platform to stay connected

A good communication process is vital for any organization. It’s important to equip a workforce with different ways to stay connected.

Thanks to technology, employers and staff can still stay connected. But a more effective approach is to keep all necessary communication in one place. A workforce management system provides crucial features to stay on top of operations and team communications.

For Workforce.com users there are features on our platform available to keep communication lines open during this difficult time. Chat with your staff, schedule according to operational changes, manage leave, clock in and out remotely, and communicate changes through custom events, among other things.

COVID-19 is rapidly changing how businesses operate. We recognize that organizations need an extra helping hand right now. So we’re offering our platform for free to new sign-ups over the coming months. Sign up today and our Workforce Success team will gladly provide a personal, online walkthrough of our platform to help you get started.