Tag: human resources

Posted on

Time is money, but not all time is created equal

time clock, workforce management, scheduling, time and attendance

We’ve all heard the saying time is money, but as many employers and HR directors have witnessed, an employee’s time can be used in vastly different ways.

One hour of work for employee A could equate to three hours of work for employee B for the same project, even when employee A turns out better quality work in less time.

As roughly 51 percent of employees report being disengaged or actively disengaged at work, workforce absenteeism is costing U.S. companies around $550 billion a year in lost revenue.

In the 21st century, we live in a world full of distractions, stressors and vastly changing technology that has never existed before, placing our 40,000-year-old brain into new and unforeseen territory. Are we surprised that employee engagement has decreased as a result of this change?

The standard eight-hour workday resulted from Henry Ford’s efforts to attract better workers to his Ford Motor Co., eventually paving the way for unions to demand changes in how business was conducted during the Industrial Revolution. While the eight-hour day has been the set standard over the last century, the workplace has vastly changed since those times.

Is it possible for an employee to put in an eight-hour workday by working fewer hours with greater prioritization of time and focused effort?

After looking at the data, all signs point to a resounding yes.

According to McKinsey and Co., the average business professional spends 28 percent of their workday checking e-mail and answering messages, which can amount to nearly 2.6 hours per day, and roughly 120 messages exchanged between correspondents. Since email is the lifeblood of communication between businesses and their customers, these statistics may seem difficult to change, but they aren’t.

The average employee checks their email 15 times a day, which is alarming, considering it takes an estimated 23 minutes and 15 seconds to reach the appropriate level of resumed concentration to return to the previous state of work. Taking these statistics into consideration, it makes sense why some people struggle to put in an eight- to 10-hour day with few results to show.

Even more alarming is the fact that the average amount of time someone spends on a given task without being interrupted is about 3 minutes and 5 seconds, which decreases to 2 minutes and 11 seconds when using an electronic device such as a computer or phone. Interruptions are bound to happen at work, especially for those stuck in a managerial position, yet 44 percent of the interruptions that occur throughout the day are self-induced.

In the 2020 workplace, we must minimize distractions to maximize our time and overall productivity. And what if we don’t need a 40-hour workweek to achieve maximal results?

In 2019, Microsoft Japan implemented a four-day workweek “Work-Life Choice Challenge” to test a new model of workplace efficiency, which showed some very promising preliminary findings. Their data showed a 40 percent increase in workers’ productivity, with a 23 percent drop in electricity costs and a 60 percent drop in the amount of paper being printed, all while providing a three-day weekend.

Although these outcomes are still in the early stages of adoption, they show promising results and further support the notion that time is relative to the focused efforts placed onto it. And as Parkinson’s Law states, work expands to fill the time allotted.

Limiting the amount of time spent on a project may have the potential to increase performance and productivity vastly, pending that the work performed isn’t truly constricted based on time (i.e., baking goods, laboratory testing, etc.).

These factors are vitally important because they all support many underlying principles held in cognitive neuropsychology and behavioral economics. The recurring trait that all of these statistics hold in common is that they all deal with people.

In order to truly maximize our business outcomes, we must help our employees maximize their brainpower and subsequent use of time. Working smarter doesn’t mean we have to work harder. We merely need to utilize the power of time management to minimize distractions and help our employees optimize their brain to maximize their results.

Posted on

Who pays for employer mandated COVID-19 tests?

flu season coronavirus, fever
The inevitable has happened. One of your employees has tested positive for COVID-19.
You do what you’re supposed to do. You clean and sanitize your workplace.
You communicate with your other employees to let them know that you’ve had someone test positive. You reinforce all of your coronavirus safety rules, protocols and procedures. And you require the COVID-positive employee to isolate and not return to work per CDC guidelines.
Those guidelines recommend that a positive employee not return to work for either of: 1) being three days fever-free, respiratory symptoms have improved, and it’s been at least 10 days since symptoms first appeared; or 2) the receipt of two negative tests at least 24 hours apart. You opt for the latter, believing that negative tests will provide you and your employees better confidence that COVID-19 will not reenter your workplace when that employee returns.
Who pays for these coronavirus tests?
We have several of federal statutes, old and new, that guide the answer.
As to the cost of the testing itself, we look to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Both the FFCRA and the CARES Act contain requirements that group and individual health insurance plans cover COVID-19 diagnostic testing without cost-sharing, co-pays, or deductibles. This requirement not only includes the cost of the test itself, but also the cost of any related office, urgent care, emergency room, or telehealth visits.
Second, if for some reason an employee is not covered by applicable health insurance, EEOC guidance strongly suggests that the ADA requires employers to cover the costs of COVID-19 testing. The EEOC’s Enforcement Guidance on Disability-Related Inquiries and Medical Examinations of Employees Under the ADA provides that an employer must pay for all medical-exam related costs when an employer requires the examination because the employer reasonably believes the employee poses a “direct threat.” According to the EEOC, “COVID-19 poses a direct threat.” Therefore, the ADA would require an employer to cover the costs of diagnostic testing related to keeping that direct threat out of the workplace.
What about compensation for taking a COVID test? Is the time an employee spends taking a COVID-19 test (including the time spent traveling to and from the testing site) “working time” such that it must be compensated? The answer to this question is likely “yes.” While there is little guidance on this issue, we can look to a 1997 opinion letter by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, which states, “[A]ttendance by an employee at a meeting during or outside of working hours for the purpose of submitting to a mandatory drug test imposed by the employer would constitute hours worked for FLSA purposes, as would attendance at a licensing physical examination during or outside of normal working hours.” If time spent submitting to a mandatory drug test or a physical or examination counts as “hours worked” for which an employer must compensate an employee, then it’s safe to assume that a required COVID-19 test falls into the same category.
Simple questions, complex answer. Bottom line, pay for the testing if the employee lacks health insurance to cover it, and pay the employee for the time spent related to the testing. It’s not only the law, but it’s also just the right thing to do.
Posted on

Knock out the practice of buddy punching for good

buddy punching; clocking in

Clocking in for a colleague may come as a wink and a nod between coworkers. But the practice of buddy punching is time theft, plain and simple, and it can land a gut punch to managers trying to ring in their scheduling problems and labor costs.

However, advances in workforce management technology and mobile solutions are pulling no punches against those clocking in for a colleague who is running late or worse, randomly decides to take an unauthorized day off.

 What constitutes time theft

It may start innocently enough. The train is stuck. The babysitter arrived late. But without a manager’s approval, time theft is easily defined.

  • Employees start shifts late.
  • An employee leaves shifts early.
  • They take breaks that are longer than scheduled.
  • They work overtime that wasn’t authorized
  • An employee engages in personal or non-work-related activities while on the job.

And then there is buddy punching.

The financial sting of buddy punching

Time theft puts an alarming drain on an organization’s finances. One 2018 estimate pegs the cost of buddy punching at over $370 million in payroll costs annually, and according to research by the American Payroll Association, buddy punching affects about 75 percent of U.S. small businesses.

Also read: Make managers more successful with the tools to retain and engage their employees

Additionally, businesses lose 5 percent of their annual revenue to employee fraud, and buddy punching is fraud. Businesses with fewer than 150 employees are more likely to take it on the chin due to employee fraud schemes like time theft.

What leads to buddy punching 

buddy punching; clocking in

Some employees simply will take advantage of a situation when they know they can. A lack of adequate technology with proper checks and balances often sets the path to one worker punching in for another. Even implementing a system with RFID cards or passwords can be manipulated.

Lacking proper technology, multiple employees can utilize passwords and credentials to punch in for one another if the system does not detect who uses the password, and employers have a difficult time proving time theft.

Employers also naively foot some of the blame. They can develop a false sense of security since they may have hired and gotten to know the people working for them. And, because they know them, they are confident that none are bad people who would steal from them. Adequate workforce management software creates a more objective, unbiased approach to the time and attendance process.

Counterpunching time theft

There are solutions to sparring with buddy punching. By automating how staff members clock in and out with mobile solutions, not only can time theft be curbed but hours of needless administrative tasks be cut back.

Record when your employees punch in and out with Workforce.com’s time clock. From ensuring the right person clocks in for the shift to paying staff correctly, it starts with the mobile time clock app.

Such a solution assures that the right person clocks in for the right shift through electronic photo verification and unique passcodes. These, along with payroll add-ons, also let employers do away with lengthy steps in computing payroll.

Going mobile

Mobile time and attendance solutions also help manage employees remotely without having to question time and attendance records. Such automated solutions also build trust. By not relying on pen and paper bookkeeping, employees gain the confidence to know they won’t have to follow up or scrutinize recordkeeping to make sure they are being paid fairly for their work.

Why pay for hours that weren’t worked? Make the practice of buddy punching tap out and fight the scourge of time theft with Workforce.com’s time clock app.

Posted on

How have employers responded to COVID-19?

A recent survey of businesses reveals a variety of trends about COVID-19 in the workplace.
    • Nearly 6 out of every 10 employers has had an employee test positive for COVID-19 (double the number from April).
    • 92 percent require on-site employees to wear masks in common areas and mandate physical distancing.
    • 93 percent have enhanced cleaning protocols.
    • More than 1 in 2 are taking employees’ temperatures and performing other daily health screenings, while only 2 percent are requiring (legal but impractical) COVID-19 diagnostic testing and 1 percent (illegal) COVID-19 antibody testing.
    • 73 percent are allowing employees to work from home based on a fear of contracting COVID-19 without any risk factors.
    • 20 percent are discouraging domestic travel, and nearly 45 percent are requiring employees to work remotely or take a leave of absence for a 14-day quarantine upon their return.
    • Despite all of these measures, 21 percent of employers have received a COVID-19 related complaint from employees.
What has your experience been? On track with this survey? Or different? Please share in the comments below.
Posted on

Passion for getting it right: Spyder Surf’s secret to workforce success

Spyder Surf, scheduling,

“I fell into the role. I had no idea that I was going to end up in retail for the last 20, almost 30 years now,” said competitive surfer and Spyder Surf managing partner Dickie O’Reilly.

Founded by Dennis Jarvis in 1983, Spyder Surf has been a Los Angeles area mainstay ever since. And it has had no problem keeping up with the trends either, releasing new board models to fit all kinds of needs. O’Reilly has been with the brand from the start, seeing it grow from one small retail space to two Los Angeles locations.

Spyder Surf’s flagship store on Pacific Coast Highway used to be an 850-square-foot space. Today it boasts 7,000-square-feet of signature surfboards, wetsuits and other surfing gear. Likewise, Spyder II in Hermosa Beach has been showcasing their products to millions of surfers since 1997. Maintaining a strong presence in this competitive industry can be quite a challenge. Spyder Surf’s secret? O’Reilly and his team know exactly what they’re doing.

Creating a brand, shaping a culture

Spyder Surf’s story began where all good stories do: the passion for getting it right. Jarvis began competitively surfing in the mid-1970s. As a professional surfer, he quickly learned that his equipment could be better.

Also read: Building a safety policy was vital to Shawmut Design and Construction’s health

He grew up practicing art, so he decided to make the equipment himself. Soon after, he began shaping boards for some of his best contemporaries. “I was shaping boards for competing surfers, and I was surfing against them. We were all friends,” Jarvis said in a 2015 interview.

Jarvis was more than a pioneer though; he was also O’Reilly’s mentor.

“Competing as a surfer myself and dabbling in a little bit of the Pro Junior contests, he was my sponsor and he was making me surfboards. And then you have me working at the store. I worked there through high school,” O’Reilly said. After he graduated from college, an opportunity opened up for him to manage the store. He has been growing the business ever since. “He’s a creative genius and [an] amazing craftsman. A bit of a mentor for me for sure.”

Innovating for Spyder Surf’s workforce

When O’Reilly is not out on the beach, he’s thinking of ways to operate more efficiently. As managing partner, among his duties are monitoring attendance and processing payroll.

But when the administrative work cost too much time and energy, Spyder Surf turned to Workforce.com.

“You know, the fact that you uploaded all of our employee data saved me a ton of time there,” O’Reilly said when asked about his experience. “What was a half a day for me starting out payroll is now an hour at most, and the Workforce.com side of it is about 15 minutes. So that alone frees up my time to do the other stuff that’s more important,” he added.

Workforce.com’s Employee Time Clock App is installed on Spyder Surf’s tablets, which allows them to monitor their stores.

“Love being able to log in from anywhere and see who’s there — exactly when they got there, when they came, when they left, when they took their break or didn’t take their break at the right time. I’ve never seen it before,” he said.

And because it also generates timesheets that can be exported to an existing payroll partner, they are able to pay employees accurately and on time, at a fraction of the effort.

Also read: Payroll challenges eased by software solutions

Riding the waves into bigger things

Spyder Surf is showing no signs of slowing down. The brand continues to evolve, from their product lines to the way they run their stores. O’Reilly looks forward to using more of Workforce.com’s features. “I’m excited about seeing the lifetime salaries and comparing it with our sales,” he said.

Moving forward, O’Reilly’s team is balancing growth with keeping their tight-knit work culture alive.

“We would love to keep growing, but we’ve got a small core group of really good people that have been with us for a long time too. It’s a family,” he said. If their progress so far is anything to go by, Spyder Surf is riding the waves into bigger things.

O’Reilly is keeping a level head, though. “We do it slow and we’re going to continue to do it slow and make sure we do it right.”

Posted on

Building a safety policy was vital to Shawmut Design and Construction’s health

Shawmut Vitals, mobile technology, HR technology, safety, COVID-19 construction

Like many companies Shawmut Design and Construction faced the dilemma of protecting the health and well-being of its employees as the COVID-19 pandemic tore through the U.S. workforce.

While the safety of its 900 employees was Shawmut’s top priority, no one-size-fits-all solution was evident. Shawmut’s staff includes in-office employees as well as workers in the field at sites across the country.

With a diverse portfolio of jobs including cultural and historic buildings, academic institutions, commercial properties, luxury homes and Major League Baseball stadiums, Shawmut’s executive team had to act quickly and decisively to assure that their workers could function safely while still productively maintaining their commitments to hundreds of clients.

Shawmut, COVID-19, pandemic
Les Hiscoe, CEO, Shawmut Design and Construction

“We experienced added complexities on many projects that continued to work right through and were not impacted by shutdowns,” said Les Hiscoe, Shawmut’s CEO since 2015. “We had to make real-time adjustments on the fly to keep our people safe first and foremost and to make sure we continued to deliver for our clients.”

Also read: Whether you have a staff of 10 or 10,000, scheduling is easier with Workforce.com software

One of Shawmut’s core values even before the pandemic struck was “find a better way.” Company leaders realized early on during the pandemic that making decisions on the fly was not sustainable and determined the “better way” was developing solutions internally.

Initially partnering with trade unions, industry peer groups and other construction companies, Shawmut developed its COVID-19 safety plan to minimize coronavirus exposure and risk across all job sites. The company soon rolled out safety protocols as well as a COVID-19 risk assessment and response plan to project sites across the country, Hiscoe said.

Shawmut’s leadership looked inward to develop a technology-driven solution that addresses worker safety as well as on-site productivity. Built in-house, Shawmut’s IT, safety and marketing teams developed Shawmut Vitals, a custom technology platform designed to track COVID-19 symptoms and manage contact tracing to minimize and control infectious disease spread.

Implementing a vital technology solution

Shawmut staff quickly took the platform to market, transforming the idea from concept to rollout in under two weeks, Hiscoe said.

“The platform allows employees and subcontractors to self-certify daily health screenings by scanning a job-specific QR code that pulls up a health survey to fill out,” Hiscoe said. “If an individual is experiencing COVID-19 symptoms or has been exposed to someone who is either infected or at risk, the individual is flagged for further care and action.”

The platform reduces friction points as people enter a site. Shawmut Vitals also frees a site superintendent’s time since the data is integrated into Shawmut’s systems, resulting in thorough recordkeeping and generating reports that previously had been done by hand.

Virtual communication in the office and on site

Frequent communication played a huge role in Shawmut’s safety response and employee engagement when offices began reopening, Hiscoe said.

“We held daily executive team huddles that begin with conversations around the best ways to keep our people safe, sharing successes and lessons learned across our job sites and regions,” Hiscoe said. “This also includes connecting with our Virtual Crisis Command Center, a COVID-19 crisis team that is constantly monitoring developments and helping to guide actions. We can provide constant guidance to our on-site client and office teams and ensure we are following all federal, state and CDC recommendations.”

Shawmut’s Future of Work Task Force also evolved out of their meetings.

Created to implement the best processes, systems and technology as employees began returning to the organization’s 10 offices, the task force is made up of cross-region, cross-department staff members.

The team meets virtually every week to develop thorough office-specific plans that adhere to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state and local government guidelines to keep everyone as safe as possible. Each office has a core team that examines the specific needs of that space and workforce to ensure every detail is taken into consideration, enabling staff to work safely and efficiently.

Hiscoe added that before entering the office, employees complete a health screening using Shawmut Vitals. This not only prevents those exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms or may have been exposed from coming into the office but also helps with contact tracing. Offices are also clearly marked with signs including traffic flow, conference room capacity limits and common-area closures.

Those who are not ready to come back to the office utilize Shawmut Flex, Hiscoe said, a flexible work program allowing teams to work remotely.

“Having flex options is rare in the construction industry so Shawmut was uniquely positioned to be able to transition to work from home arrangements,” he said.

Following the rules

The pandemic has had a significant effect on how Shawmut employees work together on their job sites, Hiscoe said. They identified several new requirements: 

  • Self-awareness

“We encourage any individual who is feeling sick or who is presenting any symptoms of a cold, flu, or COVID-19 to stay home and/or seek medical attention. We enforce a 100 percent zero-tolerance policy that does not allow for anyone showing symptoms to be on the job site.”

  • Hygiene

All projects provide access to hand washing stations, which are spread at least 6 feet apart to maintain social distancing. Hand washing stations have corresponding signs with proper hand washing and hygiene techniques.

  • Personal protective equipment

All standard requirements apply. When two workers are operating near each other, face shields, safety glasses, hard hats and face masks are mandatory. PPE is disinfected before brought in personal vehicles or to homes.

  • Site safety requirements

A COVID-19 officer is on site 100 percent of the time to enforce all site safety rules, including the twice-daily cleaning of high-contact and common areas, pre-task planning meeting, health screenings, limiting of only essential personnel on the site and frequently cleaning high-traffic areas, equipment, and tools and devices. 

  • Communication

The team hosts toolbox talks related to COVID-19, distributes regularly written communications on best practices to job-site teams and reinforces all messages with signs in English and Spanish.

  • Emergency procedures

In the event of possible COVID-19 exposure, Shawmut teams will strictly follow CDC regulations.

Hiscoe added there is no wiggle room with Shawmut’s procedures either in office or on a job site. “Alongside my executive leadership team and virtual crisis team, we’ve made our enhanced safety protocols mandatory for both our staff on site and in our offices,” he said. “We’ve shared our enhanced protocols virtually with our partners and any guests who may need to access our offices making them fully aware of our mandatory procedures.”

Keeping in contact with all employees

Hiscoe said the pandemic has severely disrupted his own schedule and halted all travel for him.

“As a quintessential extrovert, this has been a challenge in an age of social distancing, both professionally and personally. As a leader, I pride myself in making connections with our people, projects and partners.”

Hiscoe’s limited travel schedule established unforeseen ways to manage his stress.

“I made sure to regularly work out, which helped immensely. And during quarantine, I have really enjoyed being home with my family and having dinners together.”

Knowing who is where and when is crucial to their safety and well-being. With staff working in an office, remotely or in the field, automate how your employees clock in and out with Workforce.com’s GPS-enabled time clock app that works everywhere in the world.

Posted on

If your employee treats COVID-19 like a hoax

terminate firing

At the always fabulous Ask a Manager, Alison Green posts the following question:

One of my employees has been vocal about the coronavirus being a hoax. I had to have a talk with him during our last few days in the office at the end of March because he was openly criticizing and mocking coworkers for “being afraid of the flu” and practicing social distancing. While the rest of us isolated and worked at home, he went on two different vacations out of the state and did not isolate upon returning as required.

We’re now phasing people back into the office, and he believes that all of the safety guidelines are violating his freedom. He still won’t practice social distancing without being told, he will not wear a mask without being told, and he even planned another vacation when the company has asked us not to travel except in the case of emergencies. …

I am at an absolute loss regarding how to get this employee to take these safety precautions seriously when he still sees the coronavirus as a political issue instead of a public health issue. I am very worried that he will bring the virus into the office and get others sick. Do you have any advice for handling this employee and protecting the rest of my staff?

Alison suggests that this employer “should be prepared to fire him.” I couldn’t agree more, and would go one step further and just say that this employer should fire him, period.
COVID-19 is not a hoax, it’s a public health emergency. There are rules businesses must follow as a condition to reopen and stay open during this pandemic, including the maintenance and enforcement of certain basic safety guidelines such as social distancing and face masks.
If an employee is refusing to follow these rules for any reason, that employee is putting the health and safety of the business’s employees, customers, other visitors, and their family members at risk. That employee has no place remaining employed. If you’ve counseled and warned and the behavior hasn’t changed, you’ve done all you can do.
If, as Alison suggests in her answer, you want to offer the employee one final warning, I’m okay with that. This employer, however, has done everything it can to secure compliance with its safety rules, and the employee has still failed to comply. If the employee genuinely believes that COVID-19 is a hoax and that safety rules are “violating his freedom,” nothing an employer says or does will change his mind or secure compliance. It will be a constant battle against an employee who refuses to believe science and do what is necessary to protect himself and others.
I see little choice other than pulling the plug, terminating the employee, and letting him take his backward and dangerous thinking elsewhere.
Posted on

Make managers more successful with the tools to retain and engage their employees

shift scheduling for hourly restaurant workers, shift swap

Many managers cannot pinpoint their employee headcount at any given moment.

On top of that, data published in global leadership consultancy DDI’s 2019 Frontline Leader Project establishes that 57 percent of employees quit because of their boss. DDI’s study also reports that 14 percent have left multiple jobs because of their managers and an additional 32 percent have seriously considered leaving because of their manager. 

Many managers are ill equipped and poorly trained to efficiently run a workforce. Whether it’s tallying employee headcount or engaging workers, employers can arm managers with the tools to ensure they become valued top-line supervisors prepared to retain and sustain their employees.

Start with scheduling software

One of the most confounding aspects of a manager’s responsibilities is properly scheduling staff. Tracking employee rosters, hours worked and remaining PTO on paper or on outdated spreadsheets is fraught with opportunities for mistakes.

According to a 2017 survey, 38 percent of employees who track time said they still use manual processes like paper time cards and traditional punch clocks. By eliminating tedious and time-consuming paper-based systems, managers can easily and accurately schedule the right person in the right place at the right time. 

Employee scheduling software allows managers to see the big picture and make more accurate, data-driven decisions in just a few clicks. Following are five ways that workforce management software eases scheduling headaches.

  1. Implement scheduling technology

Efficiency is the key to workforce scheduling software. Determining staffing levels is a constant challenge and can be the most perplexing aspect of staff scheduling. Labor analytics fueled by a comprehensive software solution can forecast resource needs and gaps. It also integrates both timekeeping and attendance functions. Employee profiles — who is available when, or who is on paid time off — are available with a few clicks.

  1. Know organizational needs to create a smart schedule

Don’t let your schedule dictate you. Be the boss — literally and figuratively — with software that puts you in charge of the process. Eliminate the gut instinct and implement a software solution to accurately assess customer needs and employee resources. Effective, analytical employee scheduling lowers the company’s labor costs and maximizes customer satisfaction by matching resources to demand.

  1. Make changes on the fly? Go for it!

There are plenty of times when the unexpected occurs. From freak snowstorms that impede travel to a flu bug sweeping across the workplace, scheduling adjustments have to occur quickly and effectively in times of an emergency. 

Scheduling software allows for quick communication with workers. Incorporating a scheduling tool with mobile technology including a communications app builds 24/7 schedule access and puts real-time communication at a manager’s fingertips.

  1. Shuffle the deck: Matching A + B + C players shouldn’t be a game of chance

Good managers know how to mesh the strengths and weaknesses of their employees. 

Pairing varying talent levels can be a game of chance unless there is data behind the decision. Scheduling software removes the guesswork and incorporates analytics-based information into the decision making process.

  1. Measure, assess and fine tune

OK, so a schedule is a tool and not an employee. Still, like all staff members, scheduling should undergo regular performance reviews and frequent analysis. 

Incorporate employee feedback and business performance indicators into the assessment. Robust scheduling software will collect crucial data to assess and reveal insights. By understanding and evaluating the data, managers can better optimize their scheduling process.

Like a carpenter has a hammer and a plumber relies on a wrench, supervisors need the proper online tools to effectively manage their employees. Workforce.com’s scheduling software helps managers control costs, enhance communication, build engagement and focus on the bigger picture of the business. Shifts can be scheduled a month in advance. Give your managers every opportunity to succeed beginning with scheduling software by Workforce.com.

Posted on

COVID-19 and reassessing workforce management

COVID-19, workforce management WFM 2.0, ethics

Over the past several months workplaces across the globe were forced to embrace the future of work in ways they never considered. COVID-19 may fundamentally change the workplace and in this context, here are three key considerations as employers work through this recovery phase in reaction to the pandemic.

  • Rethinking workplaces: Ensuring the health and safety of workers will be crucial to reopening plants, offices and stores and determining new team models.
  • Rethinking workforces: An estimated 2.7 billion people, or more than four out of five global workers, have been affected by stay-at-home measures. In addition to looking at new ways to deploy existing workers across an organization, many organizations are looking to identify opportunities to connect furloughed workers to job openings in areas with growing recovery demands.
  • Rethinking work: As organizations look toward the realities of a post-pandemic world, it’s likely that new business priorities will need to redesign teams and workforce policies, addressing the benefits and risks of a dispersed workforce while building flexibility.

It has become even more critical to look at the COVID-19 pandemic and how it exposed two key problems in managing the workforce. When cost management is not designed into daily workforce management activities and decisions and when there is no dedicated business unit focused on owning timekeeping and scheduling outcomes, it can be difficult to manage your bottom line or your workforce effectively.

The pandemic created an extreme disruption for workforce management. Many employers are concerned about costs and how to reconstitute their workforce to be optimally productive under different conditions.

If they are operating today, things like store hours and cleaning have changed. If they are planning to reopen, the restart may change when and how much labor is needed and can be afforded. Labor cost and revenue models are under pressure to adapt to such changes.

Unfortunately, workforce management has been mainly focused on efficient, automated, transactional processes such as reporting time and automating staffing interactions such as requesting time off. These activities and decisions aren’t likely designed to act as levers to drive critical outcomes or adapt to disruption in the workplace.

Such processes typically work well for what these standards are designed to do, but not for what functions employers should be doing. Transactional, routine scheduling and timekeeping processes aren’t capable of solving for pandemic-level issues impacting the workforce.

The pandemic created an extreme scenario that laid this fact bare. Employers should be operating differently and doing more. It exposes two everyday problems that have long been overlooked.

  1. Cost and productivity should be treated as dynamic outcomes that are actively influenced by the employer in real-time workforce management activities.
  2. Cost or productivity should be managed and influenced well with a workforce center of excellence and people who specialize in workforce management.

Labor cost and productivity can determine if an organization is competitive, profitable and serving its customers well. However, in too many organizations, it almost feels like workforce management is on auto-pilot … until something goes wrong.

If the employer is already operating with workforce management 2.0 — which we will call WFM 2.0 for brevity’s sake — it likely has the following characteristics allowing them to (a) design and control their labor spending for different workplace conditions and (b) know how to assign the work to the modified workforce for the ideal productivity and outcomes.

Characteristics of WFM 2.0 — managing cost and productivity outcomes.

  1. Ownership — A designated business unit known as the WFM Center of Excellence should be responsible for labor outcomes (cost, compliance, productivity, quality, scheduling experience, etc.) and the enabling tools required to manage (timekeeping, scheduling, absence management, mobile and web-enabled devices, dashboards, etc.). This team knows the current model and is able to design the future state and the strategy to get there.
  2. Capability — Specialized workforce management professionals who plan, design and support the timekeeping, absence management and scheduling practices and platforms. Post-COVID-19 operations will rely on these experts to know what policies, system configuration and scheduling models need to change to optimize cost and utilization.
  3. Access to leadership and support — the WFM Center of Excellence — the CoE — reports directly to executive-level stakeholders who sponsor the function, hold it accountable, prioritize its needs and fund its operations. Post-COVID-19 transformation will require support from finance, HR, IT and operations to execute on planning, retooling systems and testing and monitoring workforce performance.

Signs that WFM 2.0 is operating effectively.

The WFM CoE understands the workload and work priorities:

  • Secures accurate forecasts. This will be challenging and essential in the post-COVID-19 world to recast the labor supply-demand model.
  • Defines what good work and workforce look like at a detailed, task and practice level blending in the new protocols such as cleaning and distancing.
  • Creates solid data from time and schedule data to determine what labor should cost.
  • Decides what types of workers to engage or what work to automate for the lowest cost and optimal outcome. It may be time to pivot some work to machines, work from home or third parties.

The WFM CoE understands the optimal workforce:

  • What good work looks like — updating labor standards relative to COVID-19 protocols.
  • What workforce is available — WFM differs from workforce planning and headcount management. WFM is about knowing the workforce that is available “today, right now” from the active, skilled and healthy workforce.
  • Who are essential workers.
  • How much the workforce requires to earn (what compensation is necessary to make work attractive — in other words, hazard pay, shift premium for evening, overtime for excessive hours, on-call pay, paid sick time, etc.).
  • How to connect to the workforce using up to date, reliable contact mechanisms.

The WFM CoE understands how to put the proper combination of shifts, people and pay practices together to meet the business needs to drive cost and productivity:

  1. Use the right mix of part-time, full-time, contingent or machine workers.
  2. Design optimal shift patterns and rotations for new health protocols and regulations.
  3. Deliver schedule equilibrium (predictable, stable and adequate schedules).
  4. Score schedule quality.
  5. Prevents payroll leakage (avoiding time inflation, overstaffing, gaming the system to inflate pay and benefits).
  6. Turn on self-scheduling, shift swapping and other self-service scheduling processes as needed.
  7. Use float and standby staffing appropriately.
  8. Is up to date on scheduling laws such as the fair workweek, wage and hour rules, and collective bargaining requirements.

The WMO (workforce management office[DM1] ) or WFM CoE understands what tools the business needs and how to use them, such as:

  1. Timekeeping systems and devices will drive cost and payroll.
  2. WFM devices that improve safety so workers can return to work.
  3. Scheduling systems and communication tools to engage with the workforce in real time as situations change.
  4. Ideal absence management systems to easily facilitate planned and unplanned time off.
  5. Dashboards to monitor cost and utilization, react in real time to problems happening on the front line to ensure consistency in how managers operate.
  6. Data-supported insights to inform internal and external stakeholders to show how cost and productivity are being delivered to support and satisfy workers, managers, investors, regulators and the community.

WFM 2.0 was bound to happen. The pandemic is a catalyst for immediate business transformation.

Labor cost and productivity are critical to the financial and competitive viability of employers. Leaving things on auto-pilot isn’t a cure for COVID-19’s impact on any organization’s health.

Businesses that will recover and thrive can start by establishing a permanent workforce management center of excellence acting as the command center for managing labor cost and utilization.

Lisa Disselkamp is the managing director at Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Posted on

Ethics and the future of workforce management

ethics

As the future of work rapidly evolves and organizations integrate people, technology, alternative workforces and new ways of working, leaders are wrestling with an increasing range of ethical challenges.

These challenges are especially pronounced at the intersection between humans and technology, where new questions top the ethics agenda about the impact of emerging technologies on workers and society. How organizations combine people and machines, govern new human-machine work combinations and operationalize the working relationship between humans, teams and machines will be at the center of how ethical concerns can be managed for the broadest range of benefits. Organizations that tackle these issues head-on – changing their perspective to consider not only “could we” but also “how should we” – will be well positioned to make the bold choices that help to build trust among all stakeholders.

Ethical concerns are front and center for today’s organization as the nature of work, the workforce and the workplace rapidly evolve. In Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends report, 85 percent of survey respondents believe that the future of work raises ethical challenges but only 27 percent have clear policies and leaders in place to manage them.

And managing ethics related to the future of work is growing in importance: More than half of the respondents said that it was either the top, or one of the top issues facing organizations today, and 66 percent said it would be in three years.

According to our report, four factors rose to the top of the ethics concerns: legal and regulatory requirements, rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, changes in workforce composition and pressure from external stakeholders.

The leading driver that respondents identified was legal and regulatory requirements. Given that there is often a lag in laws and regulations relating to both technology and workforce issues, this perception is surprising. However, outside of a few moves including fair workweek rules for hourly workers, policy changes have been slow in coming.

The pressure on ethics created by the rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, however, is much more understandable. AI and other technologies make ethics in the future of work, specifically more relevant because the proliferation of technology is driving a redefinition of work. Perhaps the issue that has attracted the most attention is the question of how technology affects the role of humans in work.

While our survey found that only a small percentage of respondents are using robots and AI to replace workers, headlines of the forthcoming “robot apocalypse” continue to capture global attention and raise concern. Organizations that are implementing technologies that drive efficiencies can expect to make decisions whether and how to redeploy people to add strategic value elsewhere, and what, if they decide to eliminate jobs, they will do to support the workers thus displaced. AI will also be a part of scheduling work across a blended workforce of machine and human workers.

As technology becomes more embedded into work, its design and use needs to be assessed for fairness and equity. Organizations should consider questions such as whether their applications of technology decrease or increase discriminatory bias; what procedures they have to protect the privacy of worker data; whether technology-made decisions are transparent and explainable; and what policies they have in place to hold humans responsible for those decisions’ outputs.[1]

Our research found that the third driver of ethics’ importance in the future of work is changing workforce composition, which raises issues about the evolving social contract between the individual and the organization and the organizations and society — the growth of the alternative workforce is one major phenomenon contributing to these concerns.

The number of self-employed workers in the United States is projected to hit 42 million in 2020. “Invisible labor forces” are being exposed in the recent research by Mary Gray and Siddarth Suri’s “Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass,” which talks about the unsavory working conditions of many workers performing the high-tech piecework (labeling data, captioning images and flagging inappropriate content) that powers automation and AI.

The fast growth of this workforce segment is calling to attention related ethical concerns, including alternative workers’ access to fair pay, health care and other potential benefits.