leadership – Page 2

October 14, 2020June 29, 2023

COVID-19 causes Radial Inc.’s 25,000 seasonal hires to practice safe shipping

seasonal hires, distribution center, COVID-19, fulfillment center

It’s a common headline this time of year: Retailers and distribution centers staff up as holiday shoppers begin their quest for the perfect gift.

While the news is a huge relief, particularly during a time of record unemployment, 2020 brings new challenges for companies that sell and ship sought-after holiday gifts like Fingerlings, ugly sweaters and smart gardens (yes, it’s a thing) across the country. Recruiting and training tens of thousands of new employees is one thing; doing so in the midst of a pandemic is compounded with an extreme new level of health and safety risks.

Radial Inc., which provides multinational e-commerce services to retailers including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Keurig and GameStop, announced in September it is adding 25,000 seasonal employees to its fulfillment and call centers this holiday season. The Pennsylvania-based company emphasized the safety measures it is implementing in its 20 distribution centers and eight call centers, five of which are in North America.

“The executive team has been proactive about addressing COVID-19 safety concerns since the very beginning of the pandemic,” said Eric Wohl, Radial’s chief human resources officer and senior vice president. “We’ve revamped processes and procedures and researched and tested numerous types of emerging technologies to enforce social distancing and maximize safety.”

Since the annual holiday shopping crush comes as a surprise to exactly no one in the retail industry, Radial is skilled at scaling its workforces four to five times the normal size every peak season to handle the increased demand in e-commerce.

“We expected that there would be even more e-commerce demand this holiday season as the impact of COVID-19 has made shoppers more comfortable buying online,” Wohl said. “We developed hiring projections and safety protocols to account for that going back to the second quarter.”

Wohl said that all seasonal employees being hired for the holidays are hourly workers. Of the current Radial employees, the hourly population represents around 75 percent of its workforce. Including the seasonal staff already onboard, hourly workers account for over 85 percent of all workers at Radial. In peak season, that percentage is even higher, he added.

Implementing mobile tech on a large scale

Technology is aiding Radial’s safety measures for current employees and new hires. Radial has thermal temperature devices and Instant-Trace Contact Badges, Wohl said. The badges utilize Ultra-Wideband technology for proximity measurement to help enforce social distancing requirements by alerting the wearer if someone else is within six feet.

“As we scale for peak season, these technologies are incredibly valuable to ensure safety procedures are carried out in traditionally high-traffic areas, such as training groups,” he said.

Also read: Labor analytics add power to workforce management tools

Enhanced robotics in distribution centers utilizes autonomous mobile technology to assist employees who are packing and shipping orders as they comply with socially distanced headcount capacities and reduce interaction with one another, Wohl said.

Visual camera projection systems at certain sites are also helping onboard new hires with mobile training stations that optimize training layouts and processes to ensure safety. Wearable microphones and speakers also help workers more easily hear their managers across the warehouse while remaining socially distant, he said.

Creating virtual call centers

Call center employees have transitioned to a largely remote workforce, Wohl said.

“Radial is offering more work from home positions than ever before and moved to proactively transition the majority of our team to home in March and April,” he said. “We are looking to have 50 to 70 percent of our customer care workforce work remotely this holiday season, which is over 2,500 employees nationwide.”

Radial also has implemented changes to the interview and training process for call center employees, including virtual formats to reduce the need and number of seasonal workers in previously onsite-only training classes.

Training for COVID-19 and the holiday rush

Still, training 25,000 new hires not only in how to do their new jobs but also in how to act in a COVID-19 work environment can be a challenge. Wohl said that starting with the interview process, they have worked closely with staffing companies to provide low-contact, socially distant interviews at agency offices, drive-through job fairs and other interview formats.

“We have also invested in socially distant interviews and virtual training so customer care and fulfillment workers are set up for success on the job,” he said. “Each site has the resources to ensure socially distanced training of new-hire groups through several voice and visual training projection solutions for trainers, along with Instant-Trace badges.”

Distribution and call centers have their own dedicated training teams for seasonal and full-time employees, he said, retooling their entire process and technology platforms to manage COVID-19 impacts.

Case study: PFS dials up a rapid work from home solution for its call center staff

Radial’s human resources department, which consists of 47 employees as well as 13 employees on the HR Partner team, also has played a pivotal support role ensuring that training teams and new hires have what they need to be successful, Wohl said.

“We conduct regular assessments of training and onboarding effectiveness for continuous improvement and partner with our training teams to share best practices and collaborate on program development,” he said.

Support for all employees

Everyone has a role to play in slowing the spread by following basic precautions and looking out for one another, Wohl said. Radial has assigned a social-distance champion at distribution centers who regularly monitors the facility to help remedy problems through coaching or procedural changes.

“We’re also continuing to find ways to adapt perks to boost morale and in ways that fit in with today’s new circumstances including flexible work schedules and enhanced support for employees dealing with the impacts of COVID personally or within their family,” he said. Boosting morale also is important, he said. Trivia contests, raffles, quarterly awards and dress-up days have helped, he said.

“We try and maintain a family-like environment in all our sites and teams,” he said. “We listen to our employees. We ask for regular feedback on how we are doing to support their needs during COVID and adjust our plans when we can.”

Retailers still must hire seasonal workers to help ramp up for the holiday season. Data shows that despite the impact of COVID-19, shoppers won’t significantly change their holiday spending compared to 2019. With this high level of activity in mind, employee health and safety must be the top priority for every retailer right now, Wohl said.

“If they can’t keep their employees safe, they can’t deliver on their promises to customers,” he said. “Fulfillment and customer care centers are where the behind-the-scenes holiday magic happens. Dedicated employees are behind every package, phone call or text.

“For retailers to meet their holiday goals and make sure packages arrive on time, safety needs to be the mantra at every single store, warehouse, customer care center and delivery center.”

Whether you have 10 or 10,000 employees on staff, make building schedules an easier and faster process with Workforce.com’s scheduling app. You can optimize staffing levels, forecast wages and manage shifts with ease.

October 12, 2020

Coronavirus update 10-12-2020: Schadenfreude

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

If you and I are connected on LinkedIn or Twitter, you may have noticed that my headline describes me as a (the?) “Master of Workplace Schadenfreude.”

I’m often asked, “Jon, what the heck does that mean?” Today, I have the answer.

Schadenfreude is a German word that most commonly translates to “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.” Yet, after listening to a recent episode of Vox Media’s Today, Explained podcast, I’ve decided that definition is way too cold and narrow.

The episode discusses the moral conundrum some felt with upon learning of President Trump’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis. In doing so, it takes a 2:45 deep-dive into the moral philosophy behind Schadenfreude. Being a college philosophy major who, 26 years ago, dabbled with the idea of continuing those studies in grad school instead of going to law school, the discussion made me giddy.

Vox reporter Sigal Samuel discussed four different possible meanings of Schadenfreude as seen through the eyes of four different philosophers—

1. Arthur Schopenhauer, who defined Schadenfreude as a moral failing or diabolical cruelty, calling it “an infallible sign of a thoroughly bad heart and profound moral worthlessness.”
2. Charles Baudelaire, who thought of Schadenfreude as a sense of superiority, taking delight in the fact that you’re smarter and better than the person whose suffering you’re enjoying. He used the example of watching someone slip on the ice: “I don’t fall, I don’t; I walk straight, I do; my footstep is steady and assured, mine is.” It’s not cruelty for the sake of being cruel, but instead, an unconscious boosting of your self-esteem, albeit through the failings of others.
3. Michel de Montaigne, who likened Schadenfreude to one’s own vulnerability. You’re not celebrating someone else’s calamity, you’re celebrating the fact that by comparison, you’re safe.
4. René Descartes, who believed that Schadenfreude is an act of justice, arising when something bad happens to someone who you feel has earned it. It’s joy in seeing someone deserving get their comeuppance, elation in the fairness of the situation, and delight in karma getting its due.

If I had to choose where I fall on this moral spectrum, it’s somewhere between numbers 3 and 4. I take joy in seeing someone getting what they deserve because of who they are or what they’ve done, combined with the celebration that I’m not in their shoes. I’m definitely not diabolically rejoicing over someone else’s failings or failures.

There you have it. Wonder no more about why I call myself the Master of Workplace Schadenfreude.

Tomorrow, back to your regularly scheduled COVID-19 workplace updates.

September 28, 2020

What one debate question would you ask each candidate?

On Sept. 29, a mere 16 miles from my home, President Trump and Vice President Biden will step in front of the cameras to make their respective cases to America in the first of three debates. Eight years ago, some of my blogging friends and I got together to propose the debate questions we’d ask each of the candidates if we had the power to do so. Given the current state of our Republic and what’s at stake when we vote, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit this collective idea and do it again.

Here are my “one questions” for President Trump and Vice President Biden.

For President Trump

Last week, you said the following during a White House press briefing, about your intent to uphold a peaceful transfer of power following the election: “[G]et rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very … there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.” Our democracy—in fact, any democracy—is premised on the people choosing their elected representatives and the loser of an election ceding and allowing for a peaceful transition of power. On the contrary, a “continuation” of a regime without counting ballots is the hallmark of a dictatorship, not a democracy. Mr. President, this evening will you commit, without exception, that come January 20, 2021, that if Congress declares Joe Biden, and not you, the winner of the 2020 Presidential election, you will step aside and allow for the peaceful transition of power as has occurred every four years since 1793? And if not, why not?

For Vice President Biden

To date, COVID-19 has killed more than 200,000 Americans. If the numbers and trends merey hold steady, by Inauguration Day that number will increase by more than another 100,000. Some models project the death toll will be even higher. We’d be approaching, if not surpassing, the number of U.S. combat casualties in both World Wars combined. Can you please tell the American people the steps you will take from day one in office to contain this deadly virus and decrease the tragic trajectory of death and loss?

For the questions that my employment law/HR blogging friends would ask, head over to the following:

Kate Bischoff — tHRive Law & Consulting Blog

Suzanne Lucas — Evil HR Lady

Jeff Nowak — FMLA Insights

Dan Schwartz — Connecticut Employment Law Blog

September 7, 2020June 29, 2023

How to cultivate innovation in the workforce

Innovation is key to an organization’s success, but what is it really? Workforce.com recently caught up with Victor Assad, managing partner of InnovationOne, LLC and author of “Hack Recruiting: The Best of Empirical Research, Method and Process and Digitization,” to discuss how companies can foster innovation and see actual results from doing so.

DEFINING INNOVATION IN THE WORKFORCE

Workforce: We always hear that innovation is key to success in an organization. But what does it really mean?

Victor Assad: It means that an organization is churning out innovations that drive financial value in products, services, or new business models for its customers in a manner where it leads its peers. Typically, for companies to do that, they have to know what their customers need, and secondly, they need to have great cultures of innovation that are very transparent and very agile.

WF: How can companies start innovating and see actual returns or impact from these activities?

Assad: Organizations need to first think through where they need to innovate. What is their desired end state, and how quickly do they need to get there? Is it new products? Is it new services? Is it a new business model? Is it digitizing their processes to move more quickly? Or a combination thereof?

To get that vision, they need to reach an agreement among the executive staff and articulate it to their workforce and external partners. It’s important to articulate it so often and so fervently that executives feel nauseated by talking about it. And when you’re nauseated talking about it, then they have made a good first step.

The next thing is to share data on new technologies, social-economic trends, and marketing trends with the workforce and external partners, who can also be customers. Invite employees and partners to get involved. Executives have to make sure that their middle management is on board with this and that they will be leaders who will entertain questioning and allow people to collaborate, go off on their own, come up with something and experiment. They need to have a well-known process to move ideas forward. Everyone has to know that process, and it has to be credible. Meaning, everybody that makes a suggestion is going to get a response. It might be yes, It might be no and here’s why.

Finally, organizations have to overcome what I like to call, the graveyard of innovation. And that is to get your organization’s attention to commercialize your innovation. Different functions like marketing, sales, manufacturing, service centers, and quality assurance are all focused on making the numbers for this quarter. You have to work very hard to get their attention to produce this new innovative product and develop a market for it.. That’s very different from what all those functions do for a mature, profitable product.

WF: Innovation takes time and resources. What return or value can organizations gain with innovation activities?

Assad: At Innovation One, we have an index that measures innovation. And organizations that score on the top quartile have 22 percent higher financial measures like profit.

In addition, they attract the best talent. They lead in the market. And when they keep these cultures going, they have all sorts of significant financial returns and other good things that happen to them.

TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

WF: Are there certain types of technology that can help with innovation?

Assad: Every company these days needs to be a digital company. Helpful technologies include big data analysis, (true) artificial intelligence, digital project management software, and chatbots to accelerate communications. Coronavirus, the digital era, our politics have exposed every organization’s weak points. And the first ones to figure out the new normal are going to be the winners as we re-emerge.

Remote work and the pandemic uncovered that there’s a false narrative about innovation — which is you have to work together, face to face, to be innovative and collaborative. While there are advantages to that, you can also do it digitally. There are tools for whiteboarding, internal crowdsourcing, and project management. I’ve been to virtual meetings where you have 60 people, and you can all go into digital breakrooms and come back as if you’ve had a day at a conference.

According to a study from McKinsey, companies that lead in adapting these digitization tools, not just in R&D, but in sales, marketing, supply chain and across the HR platform — the early movers get the best returns.

WF: How can organizations find the right type of technology to invest in?

Assad: Artificial intelligence and digital technology are tools, not a strategy. What’s important for the chief people officer and the executive team is to determine what’s important for talent strategy in the workforce. Do you want to get rid of all the paperwork and have more digital streams of information? Terrific. Prioritize that.

The advice that I would give is to only buy digital tools that are 80 percent out of the box. Don’t buy something that they say would be under development and given to you in three months by the time they will launch it for you. Buy 80 percent out of the box and go in there knowing the criteria for your needs, whether it be to improve your recruiting, talent management, driving out bias, or improving diversity and inclusion.

Companies need to be very good at using an approach to involve the workers to put in place new technology. Digitization efforts may fail, and technology may not be used broadly when there’s a lack of worker involvement and collaborative culture.

INNOVATION IN HIRING TO RETENTION

WF: Is there a connection with HR or workforce management tools and how innovative an organization is?

Assad: Yes, there is. HR has the same tools that have been available to different functions like sales and marketing and R&D. It’s time HR use those same tools to build an employee brand for new employees and current employees. These tools are data analysis, artificial intelligence and chatbots.

Technology now can help in finding, tracking, and screening the best talent without bias.

So what’s the leading cause of bias in the hiring process? The human being. So human beings have an incredible amount of unconscious bias that is there to protect us. It may be something we experienced. It may be something that we have been taught as children or culturally taught.

But research shows that we make decisions in five minutes about somebody, and we spend the rest of the interview trying to verify that decision we made. And you need to break that. A great way to break that is through a structured interview where you’re going to see if somebody has the competencies you need on the job. You need to be trained to interview this way.

Another way is to use artificial intelligence before the interview. There are tools that go on the internet, and they take the competencies that you need and find those who exhibited those competencies by where they worked or what they put on their online resume. This is very different technology than a LinkedIn or an Indeed search.

The artificial intelligence technology ranks results from top to bottom candidates. It gives you the ranking, but you don’t see a job candidate picture. You don’t see a name until you’ve picked a group of candidates based on the competency and experience matching. And then, you can unblind it, learn more about the job candidates, and reach out to them.

It’s not going to protect unconscious bias in the interview. Hopefully, structured interviews will. It’s also actually fantastic for matching people who are already in your applicant tracking system but haven’t applied for a job opening. It can find that talent in an instant where a recruiter would be hunting for many hours inside their applicant tracking system.

Another area where technology can help is by quickly providing information to staff. Most HR (and IT) organizations get the same 20 questions regardless of the company. A chatbot can answer these common questions, like when does open enrollment begin? How do I get into a VPN when I have lost my code? Where do I get information about onboarding? Chatbots or intelligent digital assistants curate these data and enable employees to find answers quickly in Teams or Slack, allowing HR staff to focus on other matters.

These technologies can foster innovation from the get-go by helping find the right talent. While others equip them to have easy access to information, allowing them more time to focus on activities for innovation.

FOSTERING A CULTURE OF INNOVATION

WF: Culture is an essential element in innovation. Why is it necessary, and how can companies foster that?

Assad: Without innovation companies will fall behind the competition in our fast changing, digital world. Protecting the status quo is a sure bet for failure. The empirical evidence shows that companies seldom become innovative from one great idea or technology. It takes a culture of innovation. Innovation requires an evolution of ideas that are continually developed by their workforces and external partners, aligned to common goals. Executives foster this by continually articulating their strategies for innovation, deploying innovation goals, sharing competitive information, promoting real time learning, inviting employees to suggest ideas and collaborate, and providing an easy and well known process to advance ideas, prototype, collect data, and make decisions rapidly.

A lot of organizations these days have only a compliance culture. Do what I tell you to do and don’t ask questions. Companies employ this to assure goal attainment, quality and reliability because nobody wants a pacemaker that won’t work. No one wants to fly on a jet where the engine is going to conk out. We need to have good reliability.

Companies can have both predictable quarterly results and innovation. It is a matter of focus. HR has a big role in this culture change by realigning the goal setting and performance management systems to motivate and reward innovation and quarterly goal achievement. When executives prioritize excellence for this quarter’s goals and their best innovation projects, great business outcomes are achieved.

August 24, 2020July 24, 2024

Coronavirus update: Back to school

Today is my kids’ first day of school. Not virtual school. Not distanced learning. Not a hybrid model. In-person school. I just returned home from dropping them off for their respective first day of high school and middle school.

We are blessed to have the resources to send our kids to small, independent private school that is uniquely positioned to open for full-time in person learning in the midst of a pandemic. With approximately 400 students in the entire school across grades K-12, class sizes are already naturally small. With a 93-acre campus, many classes will be held outside. With no cafeteria, lunch time is greatly simplified. It’s the perfect school to educate in-person while we live with COVID-19. And it has a great plan to keep my kids, the rest of the students, and its faculty and staff as healthy and safe as reasonably possible.

But this will be a different school year. Everyone will be masked. There will be no interscholastic sports. Certain classes have to be modified. For example, my daughter was accepted into its School of Fine Arts as musical theater major, yet there won’t be any group singing for the foreseeable future. And for the school year, my wife and I will be the bus (something made easier by the fact that we are both working from home, as the school is 25 minutes from home in the opposite direction of both of our workplaces).

Which brings me to the point for today’s post. This school year will require all employers to be flexible, understanding, and empathetic. Gone are the days when parents will be able to send kids who wake up with a cough to school. Employees will have children at home with them, who will need varying degrees of support and hand holding through the work/school day. Employees will serve as transportation to and from school. Employees will have to drop everything when the school calls to let them know that a child is ill, or when a sick child is at home or, worse, hospitalized. Many schools that are open close during the school year.

Those employers who provide nimbleness and compassion will have an engaged and thankful workforce. Those who only offer rigidity and animosity will foster resentment and lose employees. I know which type of employer I want to be and for which I’d want to work. Be that employer.

As for me, I hope this is the only first-day-of-school when my kids’ smiling faces are hidden behind COVID masks.

Finally, today I was going to write a treatise of the legal issues back-to-school raise in a COVID world, but my friend Jeff Nowak beat me to it at his FMLA Insights blog. I cannot more highly recommend his thoroughly excellent post on this topic.

August 11, 2020June 29, 2023

Unify those far away workplaces with global mobility tools

Expanding from a domestic business to a global entity is an exciting prospect. Yet tapping into new worldwide markets brings a unique set of workforce management challenges.

Success depends on a variety of factors but it ultimately comes down to building a consistent, equitable plan to manage employees at home and abroad. Implementing a workforce management software solution that can track and facilitate the needs of a global workforce is crucial to successfully developing an organization’s worldwide ambitions.

A global workforce balancing act

How executives supervise their workforce in one country may vastly differ in another nation for many reasons. What motivates an employee in Argentina will likely vary from a worker with the same title and responsibilities in Belarus or Pakistan.

Studies also have shown that while a population in one country prefers a particular management style, that same approach probably is not as effective in another country. Other differences can include:

Holiday celebrations.

Social attitudes.

Cultural backgrounds.

Language and currency.

Unifying global employees

Despite the myriad differences that come with managing a global workforce, there are common bonds and responsibilities all employees share.

Also read: Global workforce management is complex but more relevant in the remote workplace

They all work for the same organization. As such, human resources leaders should work with heads of other departments and regional managers to create uniform workforce management precedents, policies and standards that cross all borders and incorporate relevant and useful tools for all employees to use no matter where they are located.

Technology and a global workforce management system

When choosing an automated workforce management solution for a global company, organizations should seek ease of use through mobility tools that can quickly show a return on investment. Workforce management software enables savings by:

Controlling labor costs — Workforce management software cuts costs beginning with the initial clock in by eliminating time theft due to employee fraud. Automating payroll processes also minimizes the need for supervisors to make interpretations and ensures strict compliance with corporate policies.
Boosting employee productivity — Managers can monitor when their employees punch in and when they actually begin work. A mobile solution can help spot an excessive time lag and can immediately investigate the causes no matter where the employee is located.
Minimizing risk — Implementing a global workforce management system can provide key regulatory requirements up front and provide alerts to ensure organizations can comply with regional regulations consistently and with confidence.

Mobile solutions ease the burden

Managers need to know where global staff is at any given moment. Whether it’s due to crisis communications during a natural disaster or monitoring employee safety through their whereabouts on a particular job site, mobile workforce management solutions allow managers to quickly identify and assess staff safety and location through a platform’s photo-verified clock in system.

GPS also plays a key role in global workforce management. Timesheets can automatically sync GPS locations of all employees when they clock in and clock out, so there’s no need to worry about an employee’s whereabouts.

For a number of organizations operating in industries that function globally, pay rates also can get complicated. By implementing the Workforce.com platform, employees’ GPS clock in data automatically assigns pay rates depending on registered location, saving employers valuable time and payroll administrators the headache and complexities of computing pay.

Integrate Workforce.com’s time clock app with payroll and POS systems already in use and have those far-away employees available in an instant via your mobile device.

August 7, 2020August 4, 2020

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.

July 26, 2020October 19, 2021

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

July 24, 2020May 1, 2023

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.

Cost and productivity should be treated as dynamic outcomes that are actively influenced by the employer in real-time workforce management activities.
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.

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.
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.
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:

Use the right mix of part-time, full-time, contingent or machine workers.
Design optimal shift patterns and rotations for new health protocols and regulations.
Deliver schedule equilibrium (predictable, stable and adequate schedules).
Score schedule quality.
Prevents payroll leakage (avoiding time inflation, overstaffing, gaming the system to inflate pay and benefits).
Turn on self-scheduling, shift swapping and other self-service scheduling processes as needed.
Use float and standby staffing appropriately.
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:

Timekeeping systems and devices will drive cost and payroll.
WFM devices that improve safety so workers can return to work.
Scheduling systems and communication tools to engage with the workforce in real time as situations change.
Ideal absence management systems to easily facilitate planned and unplanned time off.
Dashboards to monitor cost and utilization, react in real time to problems happening on the front line to ensure consistency in how managers operate.
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.

July 24, 2020October 22, 2021

Ethics and the future of workforce management

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.