Your projects are only as good as your workforce. The employee base is the biggest asset of any organisation. From managing client demands to mitigating project risks, your workforce makes sure that all your deliverables are on time, every time.
Managing your resources while maintaining and improving the company’s bottom line can be like walking on a tightrope. Maintaining the productivity of multiple resources while retaining the same level of efficiency is hard work. As companies are increasingly focusing on digitally transforming processes and workplaces are becoming dynamic, a robust workplace management system is quite frankly necessary for you, the project manager.
Workplace management comes in handy when there are multiple teams and projects to manage. With the correct strategy, you can improve employee morale while keeping your projects profitable. Let’s look at some of the reasons why workforce management is necessary for your business:
1. Improve efficiency with technology
Every manager looks for ways to improve project and work efficiency. Having the right workers on your team is half the problem solved, with the other half hinging on your ability to manage them and keep their workloads optimal. And the right resource management tool can help you improve your resource utilisation by allocating a suitable workforce for your projects based on their skills.
Businesses fear digital disruptions in the workplace. But with clear visibility of the projects and better planning of project schedules, introducing technology can definitely make your work easier. And technology is here to stay, with most of the larger companies planning to shift to digital processes in the near future.
AI, IoT and cloud computing are concepts which your business would adopt soon in the future to make processes efficient. Chatbots, FAQs and automation of recurring processes are examples of some of the solutions where technology can help save time for administrative processes.
2. Better contribution through skill management
Skill development and training are essential for any employee, and it should be a prerogative for you if want your projects to perform better. Tracking the skilling needs in your workplace can help you get better resource utilisation and improve the project quality. Improving skill levels can also prepare you better for market volatilities and would also help you explore new opportunities.
With the right skill development programme, the focus of your company can change from hiring externally to improving your current resources, and eventually save costs. With an efficient workplace management process, you will not only plan for the training needs of the company but those of your resources as well. After all, your resources can also have their own personal training goals.
Certain certifications, like scrum masters, also require renewals from time. The advantage of taking workforce management online is that you’d receive instant alerts pertaining to contract renewal and skill upgrades, which not only keeps project health optimal but also lets you stay cost-effective while leveraging critical skills.
3. Improve employee performance
Feedback is a mandatory step which helps your resources improve their performance and eventually, your productivity. However, you may not have the time to offer individual feedback when you have multiple projects or large projects to handle. Efficient workforce planning processes can help you in this regard.
Regular reviews and approvals can help you strategize skill management and plan better for your team’s future. Certain agile processes, like Scrum, incorporate learnings and feedback into the project cycle. It breaks the projects into 30-day or two-week sprints, at the end of which feedback is provided. This move enables them to work better for the remaining of the project cycle, and improve personally. Additionally, integrating workforce planning in your company can help workers check their own billability and utilisation.
4. Improving the benefit cycle
With efficient workforce planning, you can also reward your best performers easily. By recording your staff’s contributions, the system can link it to performance appraisal. The best performers can be rewarded at regular intervals with some benefits, such as flexible work hours, leaves, or even a payscale raise. Spot awards and best employee awards can not only help boost the morale of your best performers but also that of the other employees in the place.
Another benefit of efficient workforce planning is that your team does not have to physically present in the office to contribute better. Flexible working options, such as working from home, or in shifts can be included in your workplace since you can track your resource’s performance at any time. This would also improve the real-time productivity of different resources. With better employee morale, your project performance improves, too!
5. Minimise risks in compliance
In order to keep your business running, there are a number of compliances that you need to take care of. It can range from risk management to environmental and health standards. Failing to achieve compliance in any respect can result in many business risks. Many risks, however, can be mitigated before time with workforce management.
For one, it comprises of reporting analytics that offer insights into shifting demand, which corresponds to the type of workforce you would need to staff both core work and administrative functions. And for another, it automatically aligns itself with the different corporate policies and legislative requirements at your workplace. It also makes sure that your employees are reimbursed sufficiently whenever they work overtime. Alerts would be sent out in case you allocate resources who are not qualified for a specific project. For other compliances, there would be reminders for renewals, giving you enough time to renew or modify the compliance sets.
Workforce management is a necessity today for an efficient project team. An increasing number of companies are investing in automated systems to improve their efficiency. How has workforce management helped your business? Let us know in the comments below!
