Workforce Management (WFM) comprises of all the responsibilities for maintaining details of a productive labor force which is the most valuable asset of any organization. It is organizing an accountability framework that ensures that a department's strategic priorities and objectives are administered in an efficient and cost effective way.
Workforce is also referred to as Human Resource Management Systems. It may include details of active / inactive employee's human resource, time and attendance, career and succession planning, talent management and/or applicant tracking, performance management, and forecasting and scheduling. Workforce management is the strategic configuration used in order to replenish the organization's business processes with the right quantity and specialization of human capital. Its methodical process include analyzing current workforce, figure out future workforce essentials, and enforcing business resolutions to attain the organization's mission, vision, goals and objectives.
Key aspect of workforce management is scheduling. This is achieved by establishing likely demand by analyzing historical data such as the number and duration of customer contacts, sales figures, check-out transactions or orders to be handled. Many workforce management workforce management systems also offer manual adjustment capabilities. The calculated forecast values are then converted into actual staffing requirements.
The basic functions associated with a workforce software system are as follows:
1. Staffing Calculations
Workforce management is important to ensure that an organization has sufficient and qualified human capital to accomplish its mission. It is crucial to have the right quantity of people in the right places equipped with the right skills at the right times. Because all employers compete for employees from the same labor pool, workforce management may be integral to persuade, employ and retain the talent needed to serve the clients.
2. Staff scheduling
Staff requirements along with non-productive time estimates including breaks, trainings, meetings, etc. are used to determine a schedule requirement for each half-hour or quarter-hour period. A set of optimal schedules is then created based on these requirements and a call center's unique scheduling rules and constraints. These schedules are then assigned to staff based shift bid rules and employee preferences.
3. Day-to-day performance tracking
Perhaps the most critical component of a online workforce management system is the intra-day comparison of actual performance against the plan. Human Resource management must actively compare actual workload by half-hour to the forecast, and actual number of staff on the phones to the schedule plan. The call center manager needs to see these changes as they are happening, in order to make necessary adjustments to meet service goals.