Businesses can have workloads that change constantly, and that’s especially true for companies like contact centers.

For instance, the number of calls, types of callers, and reasons for calling are different depending on the time of year, on a day-by-day or even hour-by-hour basis. This can create problems for call center managers: How do you prevent under- or over-staffing if the nature and volume of tasks don’t stay the same over the course of, say, a week or a month?

That’s why workforce management solutions are essential. They help you forecast workloads, create data-driven schedules, and let you react to issues in real-time. This reduces operational costs for your business, boosts customer experiences, and ensures you always have the right people working at the right time.

Interested? Read on to learn more:

What is the concept of workforce management?

How does WFM work in a contact center?

5 reasons for using an all-in-one workforce management solution

Key features of workforce management software

Best practices for using WFM software

Workforce management (WFM) refers to an array of systems businesses use to track and monitor employee productivity, inform workforce planning decisions, and streamline management processes.

Here’s an example of a WFM activity: a call center collects and measures data to determine when the teams can expect high and low call volumes from customers. This information is then used to determine optimal staff scheduling at any given time.

What are the principles of workforce management?

To better understand workforce management so you can most effectively implement it in your own organization, it’s best that you understand its core principles.

Briefly, these are:

1. Standardization
2. Convenient communications
3. Process streamlining and simplification
4. Data integration
5. Automation

Let’s look at these in more detail.

Standardization

Arguably the most important of these principles, this puts focus on transparency and consistency of the workforce management processes you want to implement.

It’s not hard to see why this would be fundamental to WFM—after all, you need to make sure everyone knows and understands how to perform specific tasks like tracking and changing shifts, calculating payroll, and so on. If there are no standard processes or if employees don’t understand the rules of, say, requesting time off, then the organization can face serious staffing complications at critical times.

Convenient communications

A related, but slightly different principle, this focuses on ensuring that management and team members can communicate with each other as easily and effectively as possible.

In order to make this work, the company needs to ensure that communications channels are not just standardized, but flexible. This entails having virtual spaces where teams can find all the information and tools they need to perform particular tasks as well as discussion hubs they could access through not just desktop computers, but mobile devices too.

Beyond using this as a means for clarifying and disclosing standard protocols, this can also serve as a way to share feedback that could lead to further improvements to the WFM systems.

Process streamlining and simplification

This also related to standardization but it puts the spotlight on another aspect of employing workforce management. This principle speaks to ease of implementation on a human level.

Chances are, you’d discover some overlaps in processes across the organization. Taking the time to bring those activities together and simplifying them makes it much easier for everyone involved to comply.

Data integration

This workforce management principle emphasizes holistic thinking for the benefit of the whole organization

While it’s tempting to limit workforce management data to time off, shift scheduling, and compensation earned, this really shouldn’t be the case. Taking other information into consideration—typically the sort tracked by the human resources department—can reveal substantial insights.

When you integrate different data sources, you can contextualize your observations more effectively. This leads to better strategies for optimizing performance, budgeting, and more.

Automation

Related to both the principles of simplification and data integration, this principle speaks to removing basic, repeatable tasks from a person’s scope of work so they can focus on higher-level activities.

Traditionally, managing employees meant using manual methods like logging activity in spreadsheets. But for the modern workforce, this means using an app/software that automates data compilation and organization as well as number crunching.

You can find a quick summary of their differences in the table below:

Ultimately, the automation you get from workforce management tools translates to the sort of efficiency a company strives towards when they manage employees and resources in the first place.

While WFM works in almost any business, it’s most often employed by contact centers and call centers to improve their human resource management.

More specifically, they’ve come to rely on WFM software to find insights that can help them improve contact center operations and performance. Through automation and reports/analytics of processes, organizations can get actionable solutions for:

• Forecasting and budgeting
• Staff scheduling
• Timekeeping and attendance
• Compliance
• Talent acquisition
• Payroll
• Administrative tasks
• Vacation planning

But more broadly speaking, there are three things WFM disciplines and tools can help a call center with.

Predicting agent workload

By collecting data for looking at metrics like inbound calls, speech analytics, or handling time, you can identify trends and determine not just the volume of your agents’ workloads at any given time, but the expertise necessary for the work..

This process can involve using algorithms, historical analysis, and anticipating future trends (such as an upcoming product launch) to understand how workloads can rise and fall over time.

Building schedules based on customer demand

In a call center or contact center, you have to meet customer demand. Once you’ve forecasted when you can expect your teams to be busy, WFM tools can build employee schedules around customer needs. That way, you’re sure you have the right staff with the right skills, at the right time.

Responding to issues in real-time

Unplanned outages and other issues can lead to an unexpected spike in the volume of customers reaching out to an organization. With real-time data collection and analysis, you can respond to issues as they occur. This reduces lag, while still ensuring you reach your goals at the appropriate levels of service.

Managing a workforce through several different apps is time-consuming, not to mention likely to yield inaccurate or unhelpful results from incompatible systems. All-in-one WFM solutions streamline workflows, increase employee engagement, and boost productivity, allowing for effective workforce optimization.

Here are some of the more specific benefits of using a single software for supporting your workforce management efforts.

1. Helps human resources with human capital management

Effective WFM solutions allow your HR department(s) to identify missing skills and recruit team members to fill gaps, meet requirements, and reach goals. This can also be used to develop current employees' skills by creating training plans, improving employee performances and wellbeing, and meeting company objectives. All in all, they do wonders for human resource management.

Additionally, with self-service WFM processes, onboarding becomes easier. This ensures employees hit the ground running. Team members can quickly understand expectations, manage their working time effortlessly, and report any issues or absences easily.

2. Lets you automate reporting and analysis

WFM tools let you generate accurate reports with programmatic algorithms, sometimes bolstered by artificial intelligence (AI) in seconds. This expedites the whole process of workforce and workload analysis.

Additionally, continuous data collection and visual dashboards make it easy to monitor performances and identify issues in real-time.

3. Improves communication

Communication is crucial to improving performance management and employee productivity.

Comprehensive WFM tools streamline and strengthen employee interactions by offering features that help build stronger relationships, boost motivation, and inspire better performances through:

• Establishment and documentation of work objectives and expectations
• Identification of and making connections between personal and business goals
• Provision of regular feedback
• Resolving issues via virtual spaces for collaborative communications

4. Assists contact center workforce managers

WFM tools allows employees of contact centers to leave repetitive, and time-consuming daily tasks to automation. Managers and employees save time, and can focus on more productive projects and tasks.

Automating means self-service processes like booking time off or swapping shifts can be set up so each request doesn't require manual approval from managers.

Furthermore, forecasting and automated scheduling let you manage a global workforce without manual checks of time zones and availability of manpower.

5. Makes developing smarter strategies easier

In helping you measure vital metrics WFM software provides insights into key areas, like employee adherence. It allows contact center managers to see if employees meet KPIs (key productivity indicators). This allows you to make decisions like changing their roles or developing new strategies to keep them on track.

With access to dashboards showing real-time data, agent managers can immediately make adjustments, improve performances, and ensure employees don’t veer from business objectives.

What your WFM software can do for you will have to depend on your specific business needs. There are several key features and functionalities to consider when picking the best solution for your organization.

Scheduling features

It’s vital to understand when employees are working and how many people are available to support the workload. WFM tools offer scheduling features as a standard part of their product, but it should be noted that not all of them are necessarily user-friendly.

We recommend looking for scheduling capabilities that provide an uncluttered calendar view and cloud accessibility. This way, you and your employees can access it from anywhere, at any time.

Time-tracking for free time and attendance features

Time-tracking is another functionality commonly offered as part of workforce management solutions, but they’re not always good at ensuring adherence. For example, employees can forget to clock in or out or do it too early or too late. They could also fail to request some free time (like vacations or minor shift adjustments). This kind of thing poses problems for managers when calculating hours worked, absences, and creating schedules.

Look for WFM call center solutions that:

• Alert employees and managers about forgotten check-ins/outs
• Have APIs for mobile apps/implementations letting employees check-in/out and file time off easily

Time-tracking is especially helpful for mobile workforce management, remote employees, or multiple contact centers.

Forecasting features

Identifying patterns and trends helps you improve workforce planning. It could mean increasing staffing at peak periods, recruiting new team members, or developing the skills of existing employees.

But this requires data collection and the analysis of every customer and employee interaction, which requires an incredible amount of work if you want to get useful insights. Look for WFM tools that can effectively integrate apps, incorporate and analyze data, and accurately predict trends. Beyond automation, AI-powered software can further boost forecasting efforts, allowing you to take business performance to another level.

Real-time management features

While you can certainly use them for making decisions after the fact, WFM tools also let you make decisions as situations develop. With real-time data collection and analysis, you can make adjustments instantly to ensure consistent employee productivity, workforce optimization, and business efficiency.

For instance, if you have multiple call center locations and there’s a spike in calls at one of them, you can immediately reroute calls to other branches or contact staff who are open to providing additional support, managing unexpected issues instantly.

To help you with all of this, consider WFM software with easy-to-understand visual dashboards and real-time reporting.

Communications features

Whether your team communicates in person, through email, or via text messages, it’s important for you to employ strong communications systems. Good workforce management tools enhance your ability to stay in contact with managers and agents, allowing you to interact regularly and build a solid collaborative structure.

Look for platforms with a wide variety of in-built communication options. Alternatively, see if the solution offers APIs for seamless integration with commonly-used communications apps.

Employee performance features

Good WFM software gathers data that helps management assess employee performances. At its most basic, it allows you to see how your staff works individually and as a group. This information can create better evaluations, set personal targets, help develop employee skills, improve employee experiences, and optimize your workforce as a whole.

Payroll/benefits administration features

Payroll is a time-consuming human capital management (HCM) task. Manually calculating benefits like paid time off, healthcare, and overtime can be difficult. WFM software automates a large portion of this, enabling you to quickly and easily compensate staff, and reduce admin overheads and operational costs.

Support features

The right WFM solution for your company streamlines your business workflows, helping you with staffing, budgeting, and formulating strategies for the future. Technical issues with their platform can lead to costly downtime, which can affect your customer experiences and bottom line.

Having solid support options for your workforce management tools is a must if you want to maintain strong operational efficiency for your organization. Look for vendors offering:

• Tutorials/training schemes
• FAQs and a resource center
• Forums
• 24/7 technical support

Having the features you need and want is only part of WFM software implementation. To ensure a successful experience with these solutions, you need to:

• Identify targets - What are your objectives and KPIs? Do you want to decrease operational costs, improve timesheets, or compliance?
• Train employees - You want employees know how to use self-service processes, such as check-in, overtime requests, and vacation planning.
• Integrate with HCM - WFM software often acts as a centralized system for your operations. Bringing together labor costs, payroll, and employee data can make HR management more effective.
• Train workforce managers - Contact center managers and HR must use workforce management systems daily. They need to be familiar with crucial features, like ones focused on budgeting, compliance risk, and absence management.
• Ensure buy-in - WFM software can feel intimidating or overly complicated for your employees. Ensure they understand the benefits they can get out of the solution, guaranteeing adoption and usage.