The workforce management solutions industry is one that is constantly innovating and evolving, bringing with it both challenges and opportunities. Workforce.com is adding to its experienced, talented leadership team to capitalize on the changing needs of the global market.
The latest addition to Workforce.comâs leadership is actually a company veteran who is leaving Australia behind to take on a new challenge in Europe.
Rod Schneider was recently named general manager of Workforce.comâs office in the United Kingdom. Now based in London, Schneider, who previously was head of partnerships for Workforce.com in Australia, will oversee the companyâs operations throughout Europe. With offices in France and Croatia, Schneider said he is looking forward to building relationships across the continent.
âTaking on a whole different market is very, very exciting. Some may think that it’s an odd time to make this move, but if you think about the lockdown nearing an end, it’s really forward looking. Building our external engagement is going to be a big part of what we’re trying to achieve to become more broadly known and have that broader impact here,â Schneider said.
âHis success across the board in Australia, aligning with our global mission, means that Rod is fully committed and his passion and talent is just what we need in the UK as companies emerge from the pandemic,â said Tasmin Trezise, president of Workforce.com.
Schneider, who joined Workforce.com in 2016 following a career as a financial adviser, said he is eager to help companies across Europe rebuild their post-pandemic business. He will be meeting with current customers and develop new business as well. “You have good businesses that are looking to bring back their former staff, but in some cases those staff have found other jobs,” he said. “That presents a real challenge to organisations as they rebuild their businesses.”
With a keen focus on customer relationship management and an increasingly broad workforce management product portfolio that continues to expand, Schneider will work closely with the rest of the Workforce.com leadership team to prepare the organisation for the opportunities that lie ahead throughout Europe.
Workforce.com is perfectly positioned to help companies effectively restart their business, he said. âA paper roster is not going to cut it anymore. Workforce will help organisations make sure they are rostering their teams as efficiently as possible,â Schneider said. âIt’s exciting to help people get their businesses back up and running.â
 A native of Toowoomba, Australia, Schneider has a masterâs degree in business from the University of South Queensland. He currently lives in London with his wife.
Workforce.com, the worldâs oldest organization dedicated to workforce research and product leader in workforce management technology, recently announced its plans to partner with technically ambitious companies to leverage its nearly 100 years of research to build and solve new workforce challenges.
Rachael Keech, Dominoâs Head of Operations Innovation, attested to labor management being one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today and Workforceâs track record. âThe rate at which Workforce.com has worked to adapt and innovate is outstanding. They think outside the box and provide innovative operational solutions.â
âOur guiding mission is to be the industry powerhouse for workforce management research and development,â said Workforce.com President Tasmin Trezise. âOur company is designed to work closely with future forward organizations to prototype and deploy new and disruptive ways of solving age-old problems.â
Workforce.com will propel groundbreaking research and development around traditional workforce management solutions such as scheduling, staffing, and time and attendance. Understanding the numerous HR problems that exist, Workforce.com will ambitiously undertake such challenges as accurately optimizing staffing levels and enhancing the employee experience. Auto scheduling, shift ratings and feedback are among the innovations that Workforce.comâs development team has already brought to market.
Workforce.com research previously has focused on general trends and topics. Further to conducting surveys and polls to establish challenges, Workforce.com seeks to be results-driven, adding a development perspective to that as well. Results won’t just be whitepapers created by the research lab, but viable products that can be deployed into a company for managers and frontline staff to help solve those challenges.
âWe don’t grow as organizations unless we are solving new challenges in new ways,â Trezise said. âWeâre wanting to put together a more formal way of distinguishing the challenges and rapidly prototype and solve those problems. The philosophy here is to work closely with industry to imagine and build better solutions to solve the workforce problems of the future. Thatâs the heart of research and development.â
If youâre looking to innovate in your people practices but not sure how weâd love to talk. Sign up for a free account or schedule a demo to see the exciting lineup of solutions to help your organization succeed and grow.
Organizations were forced to rethink operations in 2020 and shift their strategies overnight, prompting new investments in workforce management technology. So, whatâs to come in 2021?Â
Weâve compiled a list of the top 5 and specific workforce.com technology features we predict will be key trends this year. These include COVID recovery, labor compliance, automated scheduling, advanced workforce analytics and increased cloud and mobility functionality.Â
Labor compliance and minimum wage changes
The Biden administration is pushing to raise the federal hourly minimum wage to $15 by 2025. While legislation has yet to be passed, organizations will be preparing for minimum wage changes and complying correctly. Companies that fail to comply are at risk of facing stiff financial penalties and negative public attention.
Staying abreast of these changes will be crucial, and organizations will be looking to have an automated system in place that will make the transition easier. Organizations will require solutions that can simplify and automate labor law compliance. They will need a proactive platform that accounts for all applicable federal, state and local labor regulations from employee scheduling to payroll processing.
Workforce.com continues to invest in our fully automated and user customizable compliance engine, pioneered in Australia to manage the worldâs most complicated and expensive wage laws and costs. Instead of manually updating or having to calculate different wages for schedules, overtime and payroll, organizations will be able to have changes automatically forecasted and updated. We predict labor compliance to continue to become increasingly complicated due to political, regional and union influence.
Higher wages will also mean increased labor cost and a need for companies to be smarter around how they schedule, track and spend on wages. Workforce management features that can boost employee productivity while providing wage oversight for owners and front-line teams to proactively manage will be key.
A way to address this will be the Workforce.com Live Wage Tracker, which provides a real-time view of staff count, exact costs and where there may be overspending per shift factored for compliance. It equips frontline managers to make decisions quickly and adjust staffing levels accordingly throughout the day. With this, businesses can be more efficient in controlling their labor costs and optimizing real-time operations.
As the world recovers from COVID-19 and shift work industries return to normal, it will remain paramount for organizations to have a workforce management platform in place for ensuring employee health, safety and feedback.
As workers return to their shifts in numbers, clear communication will be vital to responding to queries and staying agile as a team. Workforce.com innovations this year include the live 360-degree shift feedback and ratings feature so comments can be gathered from employees after each shift and proactively managed. Their responses enable managers to quickly address issues and apply necessary changes to future shifts. This tool promotes transparency and will provide an avenue for employees to speak up and be heard.
Tracking accurate time and attendance but minimizing contact with communal punch clocks will also continue to remain a priority for organizations. Instead of these older physical devices we predict an accelerated rise of next-gen mobile, app, GPS and tablet clocking in solutions that addresses these concerns.
For instance, with workforce.com GPS Clock ins instead of just one device for clocking in, staff will be able to use this feature to clock in on their own mobile device. Employees who are on the go can also use it to accurately log their start and end times, as well as their break and location while on shift. This results in a lower hardware and maintenance cost of ensuring accurate timesheets while reducing multiple touches to a communal device.
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Workforce.com has also developed a completely free tool called Reopen to help businesses manage their capacity and social distancing requirements as they open. By allowing customers to make an appointment online, this will assist businesses in managing the number of people within their premises at a particular time. Organizations will be able to set opening hours, and customers can book in a time slot using their phone.
Auto employee scheduling
We predict further advancements in automated employee scheduling in 2021 with an introduction of advanced algorithms and automatic demand prediction, shift building and shift filling. The future of auto-scheduling looks to be creating âwin-winâ shifts for employees and employers that drive maximum efficiency whilst optimizing for employee choice and flexibility
Demand prediction is considered the first key step in auto-scheduling. The more applicable information that can be collected about how busy itâs forecasted to be, the more accurate and confident the staff coverage. Workforce.com can currently integrate with any existing business system (I.e POS, MES, HMS, ERPâs etc) to capture this demand data and predict staffing requirements. This can then be adjusted for location unique factors such as events, weather, seasonal changes, trends and manager discretion. Â
I.e., This Super Bowl will be 20 percent busier than last year. Next Tuesday will be as busy as the average of the last three Tuesdays. Next Friday will be 40 percent less busy because it will be raining.
Once managers have confidence in their demand prediction, shift building is the next step. Software like Workforce.com can help managers create shift patterns for the amount of work that needs to be done, while keeping in mind regulations that set limits on how few or many people can be working at a given time. Still, managers need to ascertain certain information from employees to help make this possible, such as by approaching employees and getting hard numbers on how long it takes to complete basic tasks within their shifts.Â
Shift filling is where the most innovation comes in where managers will be able to effortlessly fill shifts factoring multiple constraints, such as labor costs, qualifications, roles and labor laws. If an employee is unavailable, managers can offer that shift to other available staff. Workforce.com can then show managers how much a potential shift swap costs, enabling them to stay on budget.Â
Being smart at shift building and shift filling against projected business demand will ultimately both make employees more satisfied and help control budget efficiency. Managers will be able to accomplish this with the right tools that give them the best potential technology and algorithms while also giving them the opportunity to put the employee in the process. Technology built on this win-win philosophy will be the future of automated employee scheduling with both employee and employer achieving desired outcomes.
These advancements in âone-click schedulingâ are predicted to drastically save on manager administrative time, optimize labor cost and reduce over/under staffing.
Advanced workforce analytics and open APIs
Increased adoption of the workforce.com open API is expected to bring huge advancements in workforce analytics and promote internal innovation, integration and personalization. By leveraging the power of connectivity, enterprises can quickly eliminate the chaos of using multiple applications leading to rapid innovation and deeper insights into their workforces.Â
Companies that can efficiently discover patterns, spot potential problems and optimize their workforce quickly will stay ahead in 2021. This is only possible when organizations have access to their data and have the mechanisms to generate reports that are clear, easy to understand and make the most sense for stakeholders such as HR, payroll, managers and employees.Â
With Workforce.comâs advanced reporting suite and API, organizations will be able create custom reports and workflows for efficient analysis. Companies can choose to use customizable built-in reports or create their own by pulling information from any data point.Â
2021 will continue the rise of native SaaS cloud applications over clunky enterprise workforce management software with organizations preferring improved frontline manager/employee mobility options and ease of use. Employees should love to use the tools provided or they generally wonât use them at all.
Simple and modern UI has long been missing from workforce management solutions with organizations needing to solve their problems and complete tasks in the easiest and quickest way possible. Workforce.com remains the leader in workforce management design as we continue to invest in simplicity and ease of use to increase employee engagement, usability and lower support and implementation issues.
Itâs also becoming paramount for organizations to lead with a mobile first strategy for their workforce management. Workforce.com will continue to expand our employee mobile app that staff and managers can use to clock in, see timesheets, create schedules and communicate with the rest of the team.
Implementation expectations adhere to these ease of use and quick-to-learn principles with organizations expecting higher standards and tighter deadlines when rolling out or switching from a legacy solution. Workforce.com implementation is now easier and faster ensuring that users can start using the platform in no time reaping benefits of upgrading faster.
In 2021 we predict an increased migration to cloud computing services like workforce.com due to increased functionality, reliability, scalability, security, continual R&D and decrease in cost.
There are currently 300,000 users on the Workforce.com platform, with a 4.75 app star-rating average and 99 percent client retention. Find out why and try Workforce.com today.
Timesheet rounding is a common business practice that is perfectly legal.
According to one survey, 55 percent of employers utilize the process to simplify their payroll, typically rounding an employeeâs logged hours in 15-minute increments.
Despite potential pitfalls for employers that could lead to costly lawsuits, timesheet rounding is a practice that appears to be entrenched in the payroll process. Automating it with digitaltime and attendance solutions can curb and even eliminate the need for timesheet rounding.
A workforce management solution also will go a long way to keep an employer safely in compliance while fairly compensating employees for the time they have worked.
Issues with timesheet rounding
Timesheet rounding only works when itâs done equitably for employers and employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act states that employers may round time if it averages out so that employees are fully compensated for the time they actually work.
Employers should be aware that timekeeping regulations vary from state to state. Employers also must ensure that their system is âfree from biasâ and that employees are paid for all time worked, which can be a tough sell in front of a labor law judge for companies using a paper-based system. An automated process will make for a much more convincing case.
Avoid guesswork and approximations
Most organizations that still round employee time round up or down to the nearest 15-minute mark on timesheets. Many businesses still use paper-based methods for time tracking, including punching time cards. Accurate logging becomes complicated, since your employees typically punch in at a designated location and then move to their actual workplace.
While having faith that your workers are honest and trustworthy is commendable, most of your employees are not experts inpayroll practices. Allowing employees to manually enter their time on a time card or spreadsheet can lead to errors based on their time estimations, which also can slip past your payroll department.
As a result, youâre likely paying too much or dangerously too little in wages and overtime. And there is lost productivity with every pay period.
Automation helps control rounding estimates
With the technology and tools available today there is no need to play the rounding guessing game. Sure, the FLSA has mandates and rules in place for rounding. But investing in a proven automated online workforce management platform will conveniently track employee time to the exact minute and eliminate the need for rounding, which saves you in hours of overpaid minutes.
A primary reason the Department of Labor keeps time rounding in place is because so many businesses still use manual processes to track their employeesâ time. Yet the DOL can drop the hammer at any time and request an audit of your companyâs timekeeping practices.
With the automated workforce management solutions and resources available to organizations, timesheet rounding shouldnât be a preferred option. For businesses that are still rounding employee timesheets or permitting them to manually log their hours, take the time to take control of that cost. With the right workforce management platform, employers can accurately and effortlessly collect their employeesâ time and attendance data without using the practice of timesheet rounding.
Mobile technology continues to help remodel the construction industry.
From drones snapping aerial photos to safety improvements toemployee clock ins, construction sites have become far more efficient in their day-to-day operations in part because of mobile technology.
Few construction executives, however, could have predicted that mobile technology would play such an important role as COVID-19 disrupted job sites across the nation. Employee safety was the primary concern for construction company BNBuilders. And Shawn Namdar, solutions engineer for the Seattle-based company, was deeply involved in creating a novel form of mobile technology that allowed his employer to keep people safe on the job.
âWhen the initial lockdown went into effect in March, a small subset of our jobs and workers were categorized as essential, so we needed to determine a set of procedures for keeping them open and active while maintaining social distance and the recommended health checks,â Namdar said.
Contact tracing mobile solution
Contact tracing presented a particularly difficult prospect to monitor, Namdar added. BNBuilders executives realized they needed a process to document people on location. With 850 total employees â 485 of whom are hourly and 730 assigned to job sites stretching from Seattle to the Bay area, Los Angeles and San Diego â they needed to track who came in contact with whom and whether anyone had been exposed to someone with symptoms.
Senior leadership sent everyone home and met for back-to-back working sessions to come up with a solution âfast,â Namdar said.
The meetings helped determine and establish a safe standard of job-site processes and operations that are compliant with government regulations, he added.
Separate solution from clocking in
âIt was clear that we needed a sign-in process for all individuals on a job site,â Namdar recalled. The company had transitioned to digital time cards about six years ago, so this was a completely separate challenge, he added.
âOur IT director was in the meeting and interjected that a technology-based solution would allow us to maintain social distancing and prevent the spread of germs through shared pens and a sign-in sheet. Thatâs where I came in,â he said.
In one day, Namdar pulled together an on-site mobile check-in form developed using process automation software Nintex and presented a demo to his HR director and executive superintendent.
Shawn Namdar, solutions engineer for BNBuilders.
âThe next day, the executive team approved the process and we were off to the races on the production side,â he said.
When workers arrive at a job, there is a specific QR code and once scanned, the form populates with the specific information for a particular job site. Namdar also created a database for workers, and by just typing in their phone number, their information is pulled so multiple pieces of information donât have to be re-entered each day.
âIn just a few days, we went from zero entries to thousands,â he said. âIn the six months since implementing this mobile check-in process, we have seen 144,000 form submissions.â
Complying with government guidelines
Initially HR played a large role in ensuring that the processes were compliant with government regulations and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, he said.
âThey paid close attention to the types and phrasing of the questions we asked,â Namdar said. âHR had a big hand in the vetting and rollout process to make sure it was a solution that was easy to use by all.â
As a general contractor, BNBuilders executives are responsible for the safety of everyone on the job site. Safety is the absolute top priority on their job sites and the contact tracing process is one key reason they can continue operating, he said.
BNBuildersâ offices are operating at minimal capacity and serving as a command center for safety and critical departments such as IT and accounting, he said.
âWeâve seen a lot of success with our office workers working from home,â Namdar said. We didnât experience the initial productivity slump that was common within the industry because our organization had prioritized digital transformation before the pandemic.â
Adopting the mobile check in
Pivoting so quickly to the on-site mobile check-in process happened quickly since they had previous success with Nintex digital forms and workflows, he said. âWithout it we would have been contact tracing with pen and paper and manually inputting that information at the end of each day,â he said. âI could create a custom web app in only a day, which could have taken three to four weeks if I was starting from zero.
âTechnology speeds everything up and if organizations arenât leveraging it, they are limiting themselves.â
Use a mobile solution to build and send your employee schedules in seconds. Workforce.comâs leading scheduling app allows you to optimize staffing levels and manage shifts with ease.
Cloud workforce management solutions have consistently become the norm in recent years, but some organizations continue to stick with their same old on-premise HCM systems.
As organizations look to the future of their organization and how technology will manage HR tasks, consider these differences between cloud-based and on-premise solutions.Â
Pricing for cloud workforce management solutions versus on-premise solutions
While on-premise solutions remain in use, eventually all solutions will be cloud-based, priced per employee per month, said Karen Piercy, a partner at Mercerâs Philadelphia office. Still, many organizations are still using the same on-premise solution theyâve had for years.Â
If a large organization has bought many different technology solutions and constantly moves to the latest upgrade every few years, the costs come through in the large upfront sum to purchase the original technology and smaller annual maintenance costs, Piercy said. Additionally, companies generally choose to upgrade every few years and pay the cost for those upgrades.
Compare that to a cloud-based solution, which updates automatically and relies on totally different pricing models.Â
âFor some organizations, if you bought [an on-premise solution] 15 years ago and havenât done much upgrading, your costs for that technology is not that significant. Now in the new model, the pricing will be different,â Piercy said. âBut I do think there are [cloud] solutions for different sized organizations, and there are different pricing models for different types of employees. Some software vendors cost a lot less if theyâre contingent employees or if they donât have full access to the system or theyâre part-time.âÂ
Regarding cloud workforce management solutions, Piercy believes organizations can find a pricing model that fits their needs regardless of the technology budget theyâre working with. Plus, itâs a change theyâll have to make eventually. âI do think eventually everything will be priced this way and all vendors will move to that kind of model,â she said.Â
On-premise decline
While 70 percent of organizations have deployed at least one cloud-based HR application, 40 percent still use at least one on-premise solution, according to the Sierra-Cedar â2019-2020 HR Systems Survey.â
However, now many software vendors are no longer selling on-premise solutions, Piercy said.Â
âNow if you want [something] new, you canât really get on-premise. That 40 percent will continue to drop as organizations continue to replace their solutions,â she said.Â
The future of cloud solutionsÂ
Piercy expects that growth will continue in many different HR areas in this marketplace. For example, she believes that we will see more features like artificial intelligence and chatbots as part of the core product.Â
Of course, she added, organizations will need the right data in their systems to use some of these features correctly.Â
âYou need to have skills linked to employees to be able to do analyses and recommendations around that. But I think as itâs baked into the core solutions, companies are going to use it more and more, and it will get more refined. Thatâs one area where I think weâll see a lot of growth,â she said.
Meanwhile, there are new entrants to the cloud marketplace, like the Microsoft and Google, Piercy said. Theyâre companies to watch as they could choose to do thingsvery differently than the norm.  Â
Thereâs also been a boom in the products and services involved in every aspect of talent acquisition, especially now since processes like onboarding are not being done in person, Piercy said. Onboarding is an example of something that can be difficult for HR to do, and therefore different cloud vendors are seeking to address this gap, coming at it from different directions.Â
Analytics are easier with the cloud
Analytics are a heavy area of growth in HR software solutions. Organizations have often struggled with on-premise solutions in terms of getting data in a way where the numbers are actionable and make sense, Piercy said.Â
In the past when the leadership team would be making a decision on something, it was often the case where HR would bring in one set of numbers and finance would bring in a different set, she said. If people couldnât come to a consensus, generally employers would end up siding with financeâs numbers, not HRâs. The cloud, however, allows teams to more easily access the same data.
Additionally, the new technology that’s being baked into HCM systems is allowing for much better basic reporting and much more detailed analytics around that, Piercy said.Â
One of the key results of the new technology is that organizations are going to be able to leverage the data.Â
â[People will] finally be able to leverage their data much better and do the deeper analytics that HR has been wanting to do â being able to prove business cases and value of HR programs, and understanding their workforce in more detail,â Piercy said. âWeâll see more and more of this promise coming through with technology.âÂ
Your time and attendance system does a vital job for the organization, keeping track of hours and saving managers time to do work that canât be automated. But with so many software options to choose from, picking the right time and attendance management system for your organization can be complicated.Â
An HR technology expert spoke about what organizations should consider as they shop for a new time and attendance system.Â
Set guiding principles around time and attendanceÂ
Organizations must decide on these guiding principles before they seek out potential time and attendance management solutions, said Will Manuel, partner in Mercerâs Digital Practice. Questions to consider include:
Do we want to use one system for everything?
Do we want to use a system that can integrate with other HR or payroll software?
Do we want to allow mobile or something that can only be accessed onsite?
Further, an organization must understand what makes it unique, Manuel said. Its geography, industry, employee composition and unique business needs will determine what kind of time and attendance system and features will be the best fit. Time and attendance is a functional area of workforce management that varies much more depending on these factors than other areas of human capital management like performance management, he added.
The employee composition aspect is important because full-time salaried employees generally have different leave and vacation policies than hourly employees, he added. A time and attendance system must be able to account for the types of employees an organization has and the types of leave they have access to.Â
Manuel also suggested that organizations should decide where the time will be calculated. Will it be in the time and attendance system or will it be simply recorded in that system and then calculated through the integrated payroll software?Â
âFor the hourly population, it becomes a lot more complicated, because youâre calculating it by hourly rates, which may factor things like overtime. The complexity of the calculator sometimes goes beyond the basic time and attendance system,â he said.
Integrate when possible
Organizations generally want to adopt a time and attendance management system that can integrate with payroll systems, Manuel said. This allows the company to access much more robust data and analytics. Also, âyou can make much more informed decisions around productivity measures and cost of labor when they are integrated into more of a single system,â he said.
âThat doesnât doesnât mean data cannot be fed from a standalone time and attendance system into an HCM system, which would be able to provide that more robust set of data, analytics and reporting. It just should not be assumed that can happen,â he added. âYou have to understand what is the time system and its capabilities, and what is the HR or payroll system and its capabilities.â
As a guiding principle, one system that meets an organization’s requirements is better than using two systems, he said. But what it ultimately comes down to is the companyâs unique use cases and if a single system can handle everything that is needed to support the business. Sometimes, multiple standalone systems will fit these needs better. Â
Growing trends in time and attendanceÂ
Labor forecasting is the major trend to keep an eye on in time and attendance management, Manual said. It helps guide managers by providing actionable insights on how to improve their scheduling.Â
There are also solutions that have come out to minimize flukes like payroll leakage and buddy punching, he added. “But itâs really the reporting and analytics that is whatâs helping to differentiate the best in breed,â he said.Â
Look to your future needs, not just your present ones
One mistake organizations make when picking out a new software system is only considering their present needs, Manuel said. âThey also need to look at where they think their workforce composition is going to be and what they may need three or five years down the road from now.âÂ
The norm for time and attendance systems may change in the next few years, he added. Looking forward allows organizations to âsee the picture beyond time and attendance and more the employee experience and what the [system] needs to support the business.â
The simple question to ask is, âWill my workforce composition be the same as today in three to five years?â If the answer is that it will look different, organizations should consider the ramifications of choosing the time and attendance system they chose.Â
The risks of picking a system that canât adapt to your unique needs
Again, organizations should understand what makes them unique, and the right time and attendance system will be able to address these needs. It helps ensure there are no surprises, Manuel said.Â
âIâve unfortunately seen it too often where something is selected, but it can’t configure to the handful of complex rules. And therefore [the organization] has to change the business to fit the time system as opposed to the time system supporting the business,â he added.
He gave the example of XYZ unions, for which there are a number of complex calculations based on factors like how long an employee has worked, what union they belong to and what their hourly rate is. Also, they may be working different shifts and have varying rates.Â
âCalculations can be pretty complex for certain groups, and you need to make sure that if you’ve got complex calculations, the system can handle it,â he said. âDon’t just assume that the system can handle it because somebody said it could. Assume that the system can handle it because somebody showed you it could handle it. Rely on âshow me,â not âtell me.â â
As the world throws curveballs at businesses, new workforce management tools are created as old ones may become irrelevant or even more daunting to use.Â
Luckily, new technologies are constantly being created to address these challenges.Â
GeofencingÂ
With more employees clocking in on their phones, it could be possible for them to clock in anywhere. Geofencing â a capability in which time and attendance tools can put a fence around a location that that workers cannot clock in unless they are on premise â is one solution thatâs gaining momentum.Â
Karen Piercy, a partner in Mercerâs Philadelphia office, said that sheâs recently seen more clients ask about geofencing when looking for vendors. While it used to be something that clients were not directly seeking when looking for a vendor, now itâs something on many wish lists.Â
One of the biggest challenges of recent years is the quick pace of transformation and innovation, said Jan Bruce, CEO and co-founder of meQuilibrium. These changes can impact the way that employees work on a day-to-day basis. Even before COVID-19 hit the U.S. in early 2020, companies and employees were struggling with how to deal with change effectively.
She gave the example of distribution workers, who years ago may have gone about their day with a clipboard and a manifest and did their daily deliveries based on that paper document . Now itâs more likely they used an iPad, where tasks can be updated whenever it is convenient. In the future, itâs possible that self-driving cars are instructed where to go, and the employee is essentially only used to offload products.Â
People donât change as quickly as technology does, which can lead to change fatigue and burnout, Bruce said. Change fatigue refers to people feeling tired out by constant change, and burnout refers to people feeling overwhelmed by not having enough resources to deal with these changes appropriately. Â
Bruce suggested that resilience training software can help employees deal with change better. Resilience refers to not necessarily working harder but adopting the skills to solve problems or address a situation as efficiently as possible with the resources available.Â
Additionally, managers have a role, as well. Itâs not all on the employees. Managers should understand how employees as a group are feeling and learn the overall climate of the workforce, Bruce said. If workers are stressed, managers can explore the question of what is causing burnout and hindering their productivity.Â
For this, Bruce recommended using a HR tool or software that provides managers data-driven insights, rather than something that simply shares tips and guidance. Good workforce management tools here will deliver actionable insights to managers.Â
Adopt workforce management tools with personalizationÂ
In the context of burnout, personalized tools can help in many ways. Bruce said the right tools could help people track their stress levels and get instant feedback from a chatbot if someone is seeing a pattern of feeling more stressed than usual.Â
Users could get insights like that theyâre always a little more stressed on a certain day of the week or after a specific type of meeting or event. From there, they can identify a specific stress point and go on from there trying to deal with it better, Bruce said.Â
Personalization is also something that applies to the broader spectrum of workforce management tools and technology.Â
Machine learning is gaining traction
The Gartner report âSix Emerging Human Capital Management Technology Trendsâ explored different tools and technologies likely to become commonplace in the near future. One of these tools is machine learning in HCM, likely to see mainstream adoption in the next five to 10 years, according to the report.Â
Machine learning is broadly applicable to most, if not all, HCM processes, the report stated, and in order to be successful, organizations must have access to rich data sources, including historical data. By adopting this tool, organizations may be able to take advantage of the many benefits from helping people and processes evolve to guiding talent planning and investment decisions.Â
The report also included some warnings regarding the impact of machine learning. âBeware of the limitations of machine learning in HCM. A decision based on bad data or a bad analysis will usually result in an unexpected/poor outcome,â it stated.Â
Additionally, deploying machine learning as a one-off initiative is not the most effective use of the tool, the report said. Itâs better used consistently for continuous improvement over time.Â
Voice of the employee technologies
The Gartner report also highlighted âvoice of the employee,â or VoE, technologies, which are able to collect and analyze the opinions, perceptions and feelings of employees through means such as surveys or feedback tools. It is estimated that these tools will see mainstream adoption in five to 10 years, according to the report.
These solutions offer a way for managers to measure and improve employee engagement and retention, and they better allow managers to identify any commonplace issues among staff.
One important recommendation Gartner has for organizations interested in this technology is to build a VoE strategy with data privacy and security requirements in mind.
Organizations have been incorporating AI-enabled chatbots in their HR systems for years, but that becomes difficult to manage when thereâs a different bot for each HR function, said Will Manuel, partner at Mercer.
One of the newer innovations is bots for bots, he added. Socrates.AI is one of these software technology companies that helps manage the bots an organization uses so that the way questions are being answered is consistent across bots.Â
âOtherwise, even though youâre leveraging new technology, youâre still creating silos. And integration is better,â Manuel said.Â
Taking the initial steps to finding your workforce technology partner
To find the right workforce technology partners, the first step organizations must take is to define and identify their business requirements, said Karen Piercy, a partner in Mercerâs Philadelphia office. Also, they should define what the key user experience requirements are:Â
How will users interact with it?
Is it mobile enough?Â
Will HR be able to adapt to it?Â
Another important factor is to consider the organizationâs unique needs. When a company puts together its extensive list of requirements, generally speaking the large vendor solutions will already cover around 80 percent of them, Piercy said. Rather than focusing too much on these standard requirements, companies should spend more time considering their unique needs for their business and situation.Â
âCarve out the critical things that are somewhat different and figure out how each solution will meet those needs. That will really help separate the marketplace,â she said.
Another area to consider is the service and support aspect of the vendor solution, she added. How does the vendor work with the organization on an ongoing basis after the partnership has been made? How do they handle problems, and how much do they let customers be involved in new technology or new functionalities that theyâre in need of?Â
Consider your unique needsÂ
Enterprises should go after partners that can accelerate their business goals, said Chris Bruce, co-founder and managing director of Thomsons Online Benefits.Â
According to Thomsonsâ research, 49 percent of organizations with fully centralized HR operations exceed their employee engagement targets. Meanwhile, only 33 percent of firms that have not fully centralized their HR operations have seen the same result.Â
âBy working with partners that can help businesses meet or exceed their goals, whatever they may be, they will be better positioned to thrive,â Bruce said.Â
Common software customer concernsÂ
Most HR professionals are not intimately familiar with all the HR solutions available, Piercy said. Thereâs a lot of ongoing change in the marketplace including mergers, acquisitions and new technologies, and HR needs someone who understands whatâs going on in the industry.Â
Experts can help HR prioritize how theyâll evaluate vendors on everything from functionalities and features to user experience, she said.
âCompanies often list a whole lot of requirements, and consultants know that 80 percent of them are standard functionality. So we donât need to focus as much on that. Itâs finding that 20 percent that are the things that not all technologies do well or that they might do very differently,â she added. âThat role in helping pull out that 20 percent is very valuable, and helping them prioritize how theyâll evaluate the vendor.â
Questions for companies to consider include: Whatâs important to me? Is it mostly about user experience? Is it mostly about features and functionality? Whatâs the balance between these things for me? From there, these experts can help evaluate what vendors meet these needs and this balance the best.
While this is a best practice, many companies do not make decisions this way. The Workforce Business Intelligence Boardâs â2020 HR State of the Industry Survey,â developed by Workforce.comâs research team, asked 809 survey respondents what their top three most important factors are for choosing a workforce management technology vendor. Unsurprisingly, 32.5 percent of respondents put âcostâ in their top three. On the other hand, only 19.4 percent chose âability to customize for our business needs.â
Experts can also help organizations compare costs for different vendors, Piercy said. Each vendor prices differently, which makes apple-to-apple comparisons more difficult, and certain experts can peel back these pricing models for the closest cost comparison possible.Â
The longevity of the selection process
Organizations should expect the vendor selection process to take at least two to three months, Piercy said. âYou donât want to short-cut a lot of that process,â she said. âAlso, once youâve picked the technology, you need an implementation partner, so thereâs another round of selection right there.â
She advises that organizations start looking six months in advance and stay on task.Â
A lot of organizations know how early they need to start, but where they falter is they start to lag after that initial start date, she said. Then suddenly they realize theyâre going to have to rush the process in order to get everything done on time.Â
Consider total cost of ownership
Once you have decided on the top vendor choices, that next step is to build the business case for leadership.Â
While getting that apples-to-apples cost comparison is important, leadership needs more cost information before they make the vendor selection. They also want the total cost of ownership of the technology, Piercy said.
âLeadership is going to need to know the total cost of owning the technology. Whatâs the business case or ROI involved in that?âÂ
While cloud-based human resources applications are now the standard for new buyers, many organizations still use on-premise systems, according to Sierra-Cedarâs â2019-20 HR Systems Survey.âÂ
The report noted that 40 percent of organizations still use at least one on-premise HR application, and that number is decreasing at a relatively slow rate. Meanwhile, 70 percent of organizations use at least one cloud HR system, the report stated.Â
Organizations that arenât investing in cloud workforce management systems may be missing out on many advantages.Â
âIf youâre not in the cloud right now or if youâre not on the path to the cloud, then you are considerably behind,â said Wilson Silva, senior vice president of outsourcing at Alight Solutions. âYou’re missing out on the opportunity for many workplace benefits.â
Typically with a cloud workforce management system, a big benefit is that organizations just have to deal with one source of information, Silva said. A manager could enter a data element in one place, and that can be considered for multiple processes. They donât need to use several competing platforms and make sure they are all in sync with the correct shared information.Â
A united platform allows managers to be more efficient with data entry and focus on the quality of data entry rather than the amount of time it takes to sync up multiple platforms with the same data, he added.Â
More frequent updates
Most cloud-based workforce management systems come with automatic updates multiple times a year, unlike older types of workforce management platforms for which organizations must wait a year or more for more hands-on updates, Silva said.Â
Anything that allows you to adopt new functionality and apply it in a timely manner is a strong benefit for any organization, he added.Â
Compliance with new lawsÂ
While cloud-based software canât do all the compliance work for a manager, it can make their job much easier, Silva said. For example, with payroll, cloud workforce management systems can consider tax rates of different geographies. And the cloud allows companies to more quickly address legislative changes.Â
The ongoing update piece of this also allows companies to feel comfortable that they are on the same page as competitors, said Jake Soliman, vice president of cloud services solutions at Alight Solutions. They have access to the same functions and features as others. Given this standardization of much of the workforce management process, organizations can more easily benchmark themselves against their competitors and see where they stand.Â
âThis is what the software delivers. âThis is the best practice for 90 percent plus. Letâs use it as our benchmark and use it for a more standardized process.â It can be that driving engine behind helping HR to be as efficient and standardized across the globe as they can,â he said.Â
Easing the workload of your workforce
The cloud essentially allows organizations to offload infrastructure onto a third party, Soliman said. The costs, resources, time and expertise that in-house IT or HR departments used to save for maintaining a workforce management system can now be used for something else.Â
âYou get out of what might not be a core competency for your organization, and are able to move that into a company that specializes in that delivery. Itâs a cost save and a resource save as well,â he said.Â
Better data securityÂ
While some people might worry about the safety of their information in the cloud, the reality is that for cloud workforce management systems, data security is usually better than the old way of doing things, Soliman said. Â
âDo your due diligence and put your security team on it, and I think you will be pleasantly surprised that their standards are more likely than not better than what youâre running now,â he said. For cloud based systems, he added, âthey all understand their business is predicated on data security, and one breach could be catastrophic to their organization. So their budget and their attention to controls are above and beyond what most would do on their own.â
Thereâs always the implication that âoutside my networkâ means ânot safe,â but thatâs just not true, Silva said.Â
âIt is possible to have your data outside of your network or in the cloud and it is just as safe if not safer for them as when it was in your network,â he added. âWhere you find potential for breaches is when the data is when somebody is handling data outside the cloud or passing spreadsheets around.â
Rely on the experts
For the customer who hasnât moved on to the cloud yet, thereâs no need to do the switch alone, Soliman said.Â
âHaving the in-house resources can be daunting, but having a partner help build that design and run it is becoming much more commonplace,â he added.
Having someone who has expertise in deployment is critical, Silva said. Whether an organization chooses to rely on the vendorâs expertise, there are many consultancies that also help clients maneuver the cloud because learning a new software takes time, he added.Â
âItâs not just a data entry system. Itâs a transactional system, and understanding the configuration and workflow that goes with it is sometimes harder than it may seem,â he said. âIf people view that an HR or payroll system is simply âYou just enter data in,’ I think they find out pretty quickly thatâs not the case. The skill set around it is a whole lot more challenging.Â
âSo get some help,â he added. âItâll make your project way more successful.â
The future of the cloudÂ
Wilson noted that there is a level of maturity in the cloud software marketplace now. Large players have either through acquisitions or in-house developments created comprehensive services that offer everything including HCM, payroll, compensation, time tracking, performance and recruiting. But now rather than building out their product offerings they’re moving on to analytics and benchmarking.Â
The question software companies are seeking to answer is, âHow do you leverage the data that companies input to give them analytics on how to drive performance?â Wilson said. How can analytics help drive value through data companies already have?
The next direction he sees things going is benchmarking, he added.Â
âItâs not just about the ability to let customers utilize data, but the question now is, âI have this metric or insight. But is this good or bad?â â he said. Cloud systems can allow companies to compare themselves to what competitors are doing. An organization can assess âif I’m doing well or not based upon what other companies have the ability to do.â
