Imagine a world where every decision you make about your workforce is backed by solid data. No relying on gut instincts, or retrospectively reacting. Just strategic, informed choices that drive your business forward.
Enter: data-driven workforce management.
Data-driven workforce management puts the right data and analytics at your fingertips so you can strategically manage, allocate, and support your blue-collar teams. But more than that. Its power to make informed and impactful decisions drives measurable improvements.
In this blog, we’ll share how businesses like yours can leverage granular workforce insights to boost operational efficiency, optimise resource allocation, and improve employee satisfaction.
Let’s dive in.
What is data-driven workforce management?
As the name suggests, data-driven workforce management is an approach that uses data to make informed decisions about managing your workforce. It involves combining and analysing an abundance of different data—from employee performance metrics and shift patterns, to labour costs, and operational efficiency. It empowers managers to:
- Forecast needs
- Optimise schedules
- Enhance employee engagement
- Reduce risks associated with human error and assumption-based planning.
And ultimately, it increases productivity.
Leveraging big data might sound intimidating at first glance, but it’s really not. Organisations often have massive amounts of data, but it just isn’t processed or used correctly. Workforce analytics tools carry out the hard work for you; by collating it, arranging it, and transforming it into valuable information for intelligent decision-making.
As an interesting side note, it’s important to mention that workforce analytics do not take away the decision making responsibilities from management. Managers bring valuable training, human experience, and an understanding of the workplace and human psychology. Workforce analytics simply provide you with the data insights you need to make informed decisions.
So, with this in mind, let’s take a look at how it all works.
How data-driven workforce management works
Data-driven workforce management allows you to fine-tune every aspect of workforce administration, from scheduling to performance management, and more. There are three key stages in this process:
#1: Data collection
Instead of collating data manually, it’s much easier to use a tool. This way, all relevant employee data is automatically pulled together in one central workforce management platform. This may include checking in data, absence bookings, time to perform specific tasks, and compliance and safety information. When you automate data collection and analysis, it allows for greater accuracy—and better still, real-time reporting.
#2. Data analysis and interrogation
Once you have all your data in one place you can start to ask specific questions. Maybe you’re looking to find the optimal number of staff for a particular shift? The best combinations of team skills? Or high-risk period for staff shortages? Through data analysis, you can spot patterns, trends and anomalies, and even predict outcomes based on historical data. (More on this next.)
#3. Implementation
Then, you can take the insights from the data analysis and use them to tweak plans, shift schedules, and set up training programs for skill enhancement. You might even decide to create new policies for better safety compliance—the list goes on.
As data interrogation is such an important step, and potentially something you’ve not had the tools to do before, let’s explore this in a bit more detail.
How to interrogate data with workforce management software
With the right software, like WFM, you can do so much more with your data. You can really get into the weeds, and interrogate it from lots of angles, such as:
- Employee count ratings and salary ranges
- Absenteeism percentages and trends
- Average employee tenure
- Diversity ratios
- And more.
This kind of insight alerts you to problems and what’s driving them. It displays all your operational data to:
- Sort, filter, and group data at any level of organisational detail.
- Easily create charts and graphs to visualise data, and drill down to further analyse issues.
- Export reports to share with managers, stakeholders, and any investors.
Here are a few concrete examples to bring this to life:
Employees checked-in
Bring life to your clocking-in data with data visualisations. Simply open the insights dashboard to see, at a glance, the number of employees checked-in—at group or site level.
Holiday, sickness, and absences
Get a complete view of leave. Quickly see holidays booked, sickness, and other absences. Click through to inspect the data more. Use this data to optimise staff scheduling, forecasting, and capacity planning.
Staff performance monitoring
Pull performance data from your systems easily. Track employee performance to acknowledge employee’s hard work and find the root cause of any performance issues. You’ll then be able to resolve issues by providing training for any skills gaps.
Ultimately, interrogating your data allows you to become more proactive and agile. Plus, it helps overcome a tonne of issues you likely face with traditional workforce management.
Common pitfalls of traditional workforce management
Without data-driven workforce management, businesses heavily rely on manual processes—such as using Excel spreadsheets. These tools have served the industry for decades but as everything becomes more digitally led, you can expect to see those lagging behind without the right tech adoption.
In fact, 91.9%* of businesses achieved measurable value from data and analytics investments in 2023.
Here’s why:
Manual scheduling: Manual scheduling is time-consuming, prone to human error, and often fails to match employee strengths and business needs optimally.
Reactive decisions: Adjusting staffing and processes only after encountering problems, instead of preventing issues through proactive planning.
Lack of workforce analytics: Without the ability to predict trends and optimise workflows, it’s common to experience missed opportunities for improvement and growth, as decisions are not backed by data.
This may not sound too bad but the impact this has on the business can be damning:
× High turnover rates: Inefficient scheduling and reactive decision-making can cause employee dissatisfaction. This is because of unpredictable work hours, excessive overtime, and perceived unfairness in shift allocations.
× Wasted resources: Manual processes are not only slow but also often inaccurate, leading to overstaffing or understaffing at different times. Both cause financial issues: overstaffing results in unnecessary wage expenses, and understaffing can cause poor customer service and lost sales.
× Reduced productivity: Businesses struggle to effectively identify areas for process improvement if they don’t have access to workforce analytics. The result? A continuous cycle of inefficiency, where workers are not utilised to their fullest potential, and strategic improvements are slow to implement.
× Inability to scale: Rigid and difficult to adapt, traditional systems can’t keep up with changing needs. For businesses looking to grow, this inflexibility can hinder expansion efforts due to the inability to pivot in new market conditions or business opportunities.
To sum up: Traditional workforce management methods are no longer a viable option. With a modern approach, leveraging data-backed insights, you can stop hitting higher operational costs and reduce employee satisfaction. And instead, experience a more agile and adaptable business model.
Leverage data-driven workforce management software
For years, organisations have struggled to gain timely access to the workforce management information they need. WFM reimagines workforce management analytics by giving you complete visibility into your operational data, along with tools for real-time visualisation to help solve complex workforce challenges.
And that’s why businesses turn to WFM:
- Access advanced analytics: Our platform empowers users at every skill level to generate insights automatically, self-service visualisations, and examine and inspect data.
- Real-time data pipeline: Keep your finger on the pulse with real-time analytics that inform immediate actions. Embedded analytics tools ensure you’re always prepared to make informed decisions.
- Connect and consolidate data: Seamlessly amalgamate data from different sources into a single, coherent framework.
- Interactive analytics: Engage with your data through search-based and conversational interfaces, simplifying complex analyses.
- Effortless reporting: Create, distribute, and share reports with ease, ensuring all stakeholders are up-to-date.
- Customise to meet your needs: Tailor and integrate analytics solutions to meet your unique business needs, enhancing your analytics experience.
- Comprehensive data prep and connectivity: Build confidence in your data with robust preparation and connectivity options.
- Automation and collaboration: Simplify workflows with automation and encourage teamwork around data insights.
WFM delivers insights instantly to your frontline and operational managers so they can confidently make impactful labour decisions backed by data. This means you can easily identify, manage, and optimise opportunities for labour cost savings and productivity, with KPIs, metrics, and thresholds created to help you stay on track with your business goals in real-time.
If you’re looking to drive efficiency, productivity, and growth, look no further. Book a demo today and our specialists will talk through how it can solve your exact needs.