Workforce man­age­ment (WFM): ob­jec­tives, methods and tools

Employees are one of, if not the most important mission-critical resource in any company. However, they are also a high cost factor. The key is to use this resource ef­fec­tive­ly in order to achieve maximum pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while avoiding staff shortages. This is where workforce man­age­ment comes in. Find out what pro­fes­sion­al WFM is all about and how it can make your day-to-day work easier in the long run.

Workforce man­age­ment is a part of personnel planning which is in turn part of human resources. The latter covers all ad­min­is­tra­tive and routine tasks performed by HR. Meanwhile, personnel planning ensures that the company’s personnel re­quire­ments are met in all respects - quan­ti­ta­tive, qual­i­ta­tive, temporal and spatial. In other words, this means that the right number of employees (quan­ti­ta­tive) with the right qual­i­fi­ca­tions (qual­i­ta­tive) must be available at the right time (temporal) and at the right location (spatial). In doing so, personnel planning is supposed to help achieve the company’s primary ob­jec­tives (e.g. increase pro­duc­tion and increase ef­fi­cien­cy in customer service).

Personnel planning is broken up into five areas:

1. Iden­ti­fy­ing personnel re­quire­ments
2. Re­cruit­ment planning
3. Personnel de­vel­op­ment planning
4. Workforce man­age­ment
5. Re­dun­dan­cy planning

Workforce man­age­ment refers to assigning employees to ap­pro­pri­ate positions. Ideally, the employee’s skills profile should match the job profile perfectly. It also has to take into account the quan­ti­ta­tive, temporal and spatial re­quire­ments of the company as well as the personal pref­er­ences and interests of the employees.

Effective workforce man­age­ment should ac­com­plish the following:

• Ensure con­sis­tent workforce avail­abil­i­ty: The goal is to maintain a constant balance between the workload and the time spent working. This is intended to prevent bot­tle­necks, which can result in decreased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, as well as cost-intensive surplus (e.g. for in­con­sis­tent work orders).
• Increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while reducing costs: By filling positions with the most qualified employees, this optimizes the value chain in the company. However, employee sat­is­fac­tion is also important for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and cost reduction. An effective workforce manager is familiar with the employees’ qual­i­fi­ca­tions as well as their work-related needs and does not demand too much of them. This means that effective workforce man­age­ment minimizes overtime and undertime as well as un­der­work­ing and over­work­ing. It also regularly assesses whether there is a reason or need for further training, new hires, re­as­sign­ments or layoffs.
• Allow for the workforce to be flexibly deployed: A well thought-out WFM system also makes it possible to respond flexibly to peaks in the workload (e.g. during vacation season in the tourism sector) as well as to employee bot­tle­necks (e.g. due to frequent vacation-time requests during a specific period or sudden absences due to illness).

Workforce man­age­ment is based on the basic idea of being need-oriented and op­ti­miz­ing how personnel is deployed. The term is also used in a more general sense to refer to the whole process of in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly reducing costs. This means that personnel planning needs to be able to flexibly respond to changes in capacity. Such actions can have an impact on human resources, re­cruit­ing, personnel sched­ul­ing, needs analyses and HR analytics.

In addition to employees, workforce man­age­ment also deals with “mobile resources” such as work vehicles, machinery and materials. These are also con­sid­ered part of the “workforce” in the fig­u­ra­tive sense.

Workforce man­age­ment can also refer to sched­ul­ing shifts. The main dif­fer­ence is that shift schedules are usually created for a set, long-term period and are thus used for long-term planning. While WFM, on the other hand, is clearly focused on flex­i­bil­i­ty. This means that a workforce man­age­ment plan always covers a limited period and is con­tin­u­ous­ly modified as needed. Hybrid strate­gies are often used in practice. So, there can be a shift schedule, but any peaks in demand related to workforce man­age­ment are then balanced out by adding more shifts.

Since WFM also uses tracking methods for time spent working, it is also related to time man­age­ment to some extent. This includes all methods for col­lect­ing, preparing and using work-related time data.

A workforce manager faces many chal­lenges in their day-to-day work. The largest is to find a com­pro­mise between long-term planning and flex­i­bil­i­ty. It is important to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the different time­frames used for planning, each of which plays a different role in workforce man­age­ment.

1. Annual planning: Since it is difficult to predict changes in capacity over the long term, con­duct­ing workforce man­age­ment on a yearly basis is con­sid­ered par­tic­u­lar­ly demanding. Yet, it is often essential. After all, the further in advance it is known who will be deployed and where, the easier it is for employees to adapt to the set times or to find re­place­ments for them­selves. Annual planning, however, is usually only a rough outline used to simplify planning for the coming fiscal year.
2. Monthly or weekly planning: This planning timeframe includes plans for vacations, trainings and re­place­ments which should be prepared four to six weeks in advance.
3. Planning in the present: Ul­ti­mate­ly, workforce man­age­ment needs to be able to flexibly respond to short-term changes in the workflow, such as un­fore­seen peaks in the workload coupled with many employees being on sick leave at the same time.

The basic idea behind this “funnel-shaped” approach is thus to first draw up a rough, long-term plan and then refine it over time based on ex­pe­ri­ence. To be able to predict the future needs of employees more ac­cu­rate­ly, the workforce and its work-related needs have to be con­tin­u­ous­ly analyzed. Recurring patterns and forecasts of future de­vel­op­ments are inferred from per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors such as revenue or the number of employees. These “forecasts” on workforce re­quire­ments and personnel avail­abil­i­ty can then be used to develop measures for avoiding over­staffing and un­der­staffing.

Among the most important tools for workforce man­age­ment are duty rosters and shift schedules. While these were hand­writ­ten in the past, there are now numerous technical tools to simplify and speed up the planning process.

One such tool is the Microsoft Excel spread­sheet. It is primarily used by smaller companies, but is also used in many medium-sized companies. It can be used to quickly and easily create duty rosters for weekly workforce man­age­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, you can find numerous ready-to-use Excel templates online such as templates for shift schedules.

In addition to enabling you to visualize work hours and shift schedules, the Excel spread­sheet also provides many useful formulas and macros. These allow you to automate com­pli­cat­ed cal­cu­la­tions (e.g. for weekly hours or wages) and program ad­di­tion­al functions such as employee lists and check­box­es. You can then either print out the finished work schedules as hard copies or send them directly to employees by email or via intranet.

However, since most in­for­ma­tion is entered into Excel spread­sheets manually, this tool is rel­a­tive­ly error prone. This can lead to duplicate entries if the person is not paying careful attention, which cannot be prevented by formulas. Fur­ther­more, this Microsoft tool’s range of functions is quite limited when compared to dedicated WFM software.

Due to Microsoft Excel’s func­tion­al lim­i­ta­tions, many companies rely on spe­cial­ized tools for their workforce man­age­ment tasks. There are two main types of software for this purpose:

• Freeware: Freeware such as the workforce man­age­ment tool developed by Bitrix24 is more suitable for smaller companies.
• Pro­fes­sion­al WFM solutions: Companies with a large number of employees, and thus a high ad­min­is­tra­tive workload, prefer to use pro­fes­sion­al WFM software which is usually in­te­grat­ed into an ERP system (en­ter­prise resource planning). These programs can usually be used as part of a paid sub­scrip­tion with a minimum period of up to 12 months. Prices range from around 40 to 130 euros (ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45 to 146 dollars). Typically, you pay a monthly flat rate or a variable rate based on your number of employees. It is worth noting that there are both industry-in­de­pen­dent programs as well as spe­cial­ized programs, such as those for call centers, temp agencies, the food service, health care and shift sched­ul­ing in the man­u­fac­tur­ing industry. We recommend Humanity and Planday.

Good WFM software can usually be used for a wide variety of tasks, such as for tracking work hours and data, managing ab­sen­teeism or managing tasks and actions. Most programs are similar in design and func­tion­al­i­ty:

• A well-designed and visually appealing user interface provides a clear overview of employees’ work capacity, vacation days and absences.
• Through direct syn­chro­niza­tion with the employee database, you can use the software to directly match up employees’ skills profiles with job profiles.
• Task sched­ul­ing is done via the drag-and-drop method. Using a mouse, you simply drag and drop employees onto their shifts on the calendar.
• Workforce man­age­ment is done in real time. This means that every change, no matter how last minute, is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly forwarded to the back office and can be accounted for im­me­di­ate­ly.
• Many tasks are automated such as the billing of work hours and overtime.
• Automatic alerts are used to let you know when more than one person has been assigned to the same task or when shifts overlap (conflict man­age­ment).
• By giving your employees access to the WFM system, you can ensure that all employees are always informed about their work hours and shifts. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, you can receive direct feedback on your workforce man­age­ment and enter any changes into your system promptly. Naturally, you can still print out duty rosters and shift schedules as usual or send them by email.

The ad­van­tages of this software are obvious:

• Access to all pertinent data
• Easy to use
• Flexible
• Reduced or­ga­ni­za­tion­al workload
• Saves time and money
• Less error prone than al­ter­na­tives (e.g. Excel, hand­writ­ten lists)
• Can be accessed ex­ter­nal­ly
• Can receive direct employee feedback
• Visually appealing

Workforce man­age­ment is first and foremost man­age­ment’s job. However, the employees in question should be involved in the planning process. This begins by de­ter­min­ing whether company policy actually permits flexible workforce man­age­ment. Whatever the case may be, you should involve the workers’ union or employee rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the design and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the WFM system before, during and after its rollout. This is the only way to ensure that the em­ploy­ees' right to code­ter­mi­na­tion is protected.

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