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What is the WFM
process cycle?

Stages of the Workforce Management Process

What is the WFM process cycle

Understanding the Workforce Management Process Cycle

The management of all aspects of the business will help organizations operate more efficiently. The management of workforce (WFM) is a crucial aspect of management for businesses with fewer or more employees. Knowing how to manage your workforce can assist you in securing an entry point into human resources or in upper management.

What is the WFM process cycle? This article will define WFM and provide the key methods, benefits, and steps to create the most successful WFM strategy.

Table of Contents

WFM process cycle

What is the WFM process cycle?

What is the WFM process cycle? WFM process cycles typically include the following steps:
  • Forecasting, which forecasts the future metrics for contact like volume or AHT. (AHT). It makes use of historical data as well as business intelligence you can add for future marketing campaigns. You must then change the volume forecast and AHT into the forecast of staffing requirements and take into account the quality of service you wish to provide.
  • Planning involves ensuring that you hire the correct amount of employees to deal with the expected size of your company in the future. It’s tempting to go through the entire process of forecasting and planning, however if you do not invest enough time in the process of planning the hiring and training program will be built on speculation. This means that you will not have recruited and trained everyone you need for the scheduling phase.
  • Scheduling is the process of creating shifts that meet demand and supply in the most exact way and as frequently as is possible. This sounds simple, doesn’t it? However, anyone who’s struggled with spreadsheets and sticky notes knows that it’s anything but easy. It’s necessary to design shifts that meet demand efficiently and at 15 or 30 minute intervals. You must also consider agents’ abilities and abilities, the laws governing labor, employment contracts open hours, and other limitations.
  • Intraday management is to identify the areas where reality is not in line with the plan. If something goes wrong, it will be wrong. As an example, you may be impacted by an unexpected spike in volume or unusually high levels of sickness or you may find that your staff members aren’t registered when you require them to be. It allows you to swiftly and effectively correct measures to safeguard your KPIs.
  • Analytics provide you with insight that can help you improve your performance continuously. For instance, you could determine your shrinkage rate and incorporate it into the calculations for staffing following the next cycle. Reports on the adherence to schedules and compliance, along with absence reports are crucial tools to hold 1:1 meetings with agents.
  • Employee engagement is at the heart of all points in the process. It’s all about the degree of motivation, satisfaction and commitment that agents at call centers engage in their jobs. This is an essential element to ensure high-quality customer service and operational efficiency. WFM is crucial to this because it allows your employees to interact with the process of planning and have more control. It places your employees in the center.

The power of the management of your workforce lies in the way the various elements are interconnected. If you are able to accurately forecast demand, effectively plan the appropriate personnel and manage their performance effectively and let your agents join you on a journey to success, you’re on the path to achieving productivity and achieving the success you desire.

Understanding Workforce Management

The management of workforce (WFM) can be described as a mix of processes that allows a company to have the best employees in the appropriate roles, at the correct place at the appropriate moment. This helps ensure that the company can function efficiently and provide the highest level of productivity.

Core functions of a WFM system

A workforce management software combines the tasks of onboarding, scheduling, time tracking budgeting, and payroll in one seamless system.

Onboarding
  • New employees are welcomed and you can make sure they are up-to-date quickly.
  • Reduce the chance of data mistakes and paperwork lost by storing and collecting the personal information of employees digitally.
  • Notify managers of employees who have completed their onboarding.
Rostering
  • Find the appropriate mixture of qualifications, skills and costs of labor to ensure that each shift is in compliance with the terms of employment agreements and the law.
  • Automate your workflow to accelerate the process.
  • Get alerts on shifts that overlap, conflicts and violations of regulations prior to employees starting work.
  • Notify employees about changes to their rosters with push notifications to employees about roster changes.
Time tracking
  • Record and track employee attendance and time using mobile apps. Track employee time and attendance on mobile.
  • Control timesheets and approvers using geotagging and capture of photos to ensure that the correct person is in the correct place.
Payroll
  • Automatically load timesheets into payroll to ensure seamless, error-free processing.
  • Time tracking and payroll synchronization for precise reports and data management.
  • Let employees, managers and payroll staff handle requests for leave from beginning to end in a transparent manner.
Budgeting
  • Keep track of your budgets for every business site and calculate the costs automatically to determine the worth of each shift.
  • Include sales that are budgeted within your roster budgets to get your sales results and track the cost of your roster ahead of time.
  • Check how your teams are performing on a daily basis, including hours worked, labor costs in addition to sales, efficiency, and hours worked through a central display.

Benefits of a well-implemented Workforce Management Process

An effective Workforce Management Process offers numerous benefits for companies. Some of them are:

  • Increased operational efficiency: A well-structured WFM optimizes the allocation of resources, decreases wasted resources, and enhances overall efficiency of operations.

  • Enhanced productivity: Proper resources and schedules for work allow the maximum utilization of employee skills, which results in higher productivity overall.
Benefits of a well-implemented Workforce Management Process
  • Cost reduction: By implementing improved resource management, an efficient WFM assists in reducing operating costs, for example the reduction of unnecessary overtime, or avoiding employee overlaps.

  • Improved customer experience: Better customer experience through proper human resource management allows for high-quality service, reducing wait times and fulfilling the demands of customers.

  • In-depth exploration of the benefits: An effective Workforce Management Process allows companies to swiftly adapt to changes in demand by providing top-quality service throughout the day. In addition, reducing operational waste and cost reduction help businesses increase their competitiveness in the marketplace.

Challenges in the WFM Process Cycle

The Workforce Management Process Cycle involves planning, scheduling, monitoring and optimizing the workforce to achieve the company’s goals. The most common issues encountered in this process are:

  1. Inaccurate Forecasting: Forecasting demand too long in advance could lead to mistakes in the staffing levels, whether staffing levels are too high or low.

  2. Scheduling Conflicts: Balancing the employee’s availability preferences, schedules and skills sets, while still ensuring adequate coverage for the company can be a challenge.

  3. Adherence to Schedules: Employees might not follow the schedules in all cases because of tardiness, absences or personal problems that affect service levels.

  4. Real-time Adjustments: Rapidly adapting to sudden changes (e.g. demand, increased demands or less) isn’t easy without the appropriate equipment or procedures.

  5. Employee Engagement: Keeping employee satisfaction while meeting business demands can be difficult, especially when working with rigid schedules and long hours.

  6. Inefficient Communication: A lack of communication between managers and employees could lead to confusion about expectations, work schedules, schedules or even work.

  7. Technology Limitations: Inefficient or inefficient systems could cause problems with accurate forecasting, scheduling or performance tracking which can affect the overall effectiveness.

These issues can affect customer satisfaction, service quality and efficiency of operations If they are not addressed.

What are the 5 R’s of Workforce Management?

A successful workforce management strategy starts with the five R’s. The five R’s of planning for workforce are an approach to strategic planning that ensures that organizations have the best workforce in order to achieve their goals.

Budgeting
  • Right size: Ensuring that the company has the right number of employees required to meet the goals of its present and future effectively.
  • Right shape: This concentrates on reorganizing the organization to be in line with its strategic objectives. It is essential to ensure that the organization is able to balance roles as well as levels and functions.
  • Right staff: Concentrating on attracting employees with the right characteristics and behaviors that are in line with the culture and values of the company.
  • Right site: Ensuring that workers are located in correct locations to maximize operational efficiency and achieve the strategic goals

Emerging WFM Trends and Best Practices

Similar to other industries, WFH changes constantly and new trends are popping up constantly. The most recent trends include:

  • AI and Machine Learning: One of the major WFM trends is obviously artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence can help enhance all WFM processes including forecast accuracy, schedules and automatized real-time adjustments. For instance, AI can analyze call patterns to determine the most busy periods and alter staffing levels automatically.

  • Agent Self-Service and Empowerment: Empowerment and empowerment Options such as shift bidding, quick shift swaps and scheduling access via mobile are becoming more popular. For instance, a service center could allow employees to bid for their preferred shifts, which can increase job satisfaction. In an office self-service tools allow agents to control their schedules as well as request time off, increasing employee satisfaction and engagement.

  • Cloud and Centralized WFM: Cloud-based WFM solutions enable businesses to access their software without needing to install it on their premises. With cloud computing, companies are able to enjoy benefits such as easier scaling at a low cost upfront and also have the ability to manage their workforce in several locations.

  • Workforce Engagement Management: Workforce Engagement Management expands over the traditional WFM by incorporating the management of performance and learning components. Its principal objective is to provide an overall method of managing and improving the overall customer experience. For instance an office call center which combines WFM with tools to engage workers will improve the performance of agents and satisfaction as well as retention.

Frequently Asked Questions

The cycle of planning for the workforce can be described as the procedure of looking at current staffing levels, forecasting the future requirements, addressing the gaps and changing strategies to ensure the workforce is in line with the organizational goals.

WFM schedules are a method of determining the number of employees that are needed for a specific task at any particular time. The more diverse and larger the workforce is, the more difficult and challenging this process gets.

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