manage employees

What Workforce Management Modernization Means for Your Small Business

Small businesses are always looking for ways to improve efficiency and optimize productivity. Getting the most out of your team means you’re more likely to succeed in the long term. Many businesses find that Workforce Management helps them to run their business better, especially thanks to advancements in workforce management software in recent years.

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What is Workforce Management?

Workforce Management, also known as WFM, is a set of processes companies use to improve their employees’ productivity. Workforce Management involves forecasting work requirements and creating schedules to ensure that tasks and projects are completed daily and hour-to-hour.

The processes of Workforce Management can cover a range of activities in the business world depending on the industry, company, and department’s specific needs, but could include:

  • Forecasting and budgeting
  • Staff scheduling
  • Timesheets
  • Performance management
  • Compliance
  • Payroll
  • Vacation and leave planning

Who’s in Charge of Workforce Management?

Generally, Workforce Management is the responsibility of small business owners and managers to set up and oversee. However, it also requires employee involvement in order to ensure it runs smoothly and effectively.

In the past, lengthy processes might’ve been required to ensure that your team correctly logged their time or performed their tasks efficiently. Thanks to advances in technology, monitoring and measuring, these tasks can be streamlined and managed quickly and easily through modernized business solutions and cloud-based software.

How Business Solutions Have Become Modernized

Technology has developed exponentially in recent years. What may have been seen as an innovative and efficient business process 10 years ago has been vastly outstripped by new business software today. This digital transformation of business processes is thanks to machine learning and artificial intelligence of software programs.

Modern problems require modern solutions, and modern business solutions are essentially technology solutions. What required a full-time staff member or even a whole team in the past, such as accounting, can now be automated and run just as effectively through software. This is great news for small business owners, who might not be in the position to hire additional employees.

To compete in a fast-paced industry, innovative software companies are always developing new technological solutions to streamline, automate and simplify business tasks – including Workforce Management. And for small businesses to stay relevant and competitive in this day and age, they need to take advantage of these technologies to boost business productivity, product development, and improve internal work processes.

Benefits of Workplace Modernization

Updating your internal processes with modernized technology will hold your company in good stead. There are many benefits for organizations when they use workforce management software, including:

Boosts productivity of employees

Modern workforce management boosts your employees’ productivity in several ways. Firstly, it helps you gain an accurate overall picture of the tasks and projects in progress to allocate time and resources to them and prioritize more urgent jobs. Secondly, workforce management software allows you to automate repetitive administrative tasks, freeing up more of your team’s time to focus on their work.

Attracts and retains top talent

If you want the best person for the job to be working for your company, innovative management software is a great benefit to attract and keep top talent. Providing your team with the right tools is an essential part of management, and your employees will thank you for it as it makes their lives easier and their work levels higher.

With a multitude of automation features, management software ensures their time is spent working hard for your company, and not wasted on administrative duties or micromanaging.

Overall, the use of software tools and improved IT systems can result in higher job satisfaction too, as your employees have the resources needed to make their jobs more manageable.

Lowers costs overall

Although business management software will undoubtedly have an upfront cost, the savings you’ll make as a company are likely to vastly outstrip the initial investment. With improved efficiency, your whole team will get more done in the same amount of time, meaning more profit for your company at the end of the year!

Keeps accurate records with IT modernization

Gone are the days of paper filing. With workforce management software and IT modernization, you’ll have accurate records of staff hours worked. Time spent on tasks and projects, payroll, and much more automatically uploaded and saved with cloud computing.

Another great thing about digitizing your records is that you can access them from anywhere across multiple devices via the cloud. Check resourcing, submit timesheets, and analyze reports on your desktop, laptop, mobile, or tablet whenever your organization needs them.

Reporting functionality

Modern workforce management software can automate reports instead of managers having to input and analyze data manually. Not only does this save time, but it enables managers to view reports at the touch of a button whenever they need them.

With simple data visualizations and easy-to-use functionality, managers can view reports based on projects, clients, months, teams, and employees to really drill down into the data and gain a greater understanding of how the business is functioning. Such information can also improve the organization’s change management, making it easier to pinpoint issues and implement change for better business practices.

Collaboration accessibility

There are plenty of software solutions out there that allow your team to collaborate on projects digitally. With workforce management software, everything you need is stored securely in one place and accessible across devices at the touch of a button.

Employees can also see what their coworkers are scheduled to work on to better understand workflow, which also stops wasting resources on duplicate work. Easy collaboration and accessibility also improves the employee experience overall.

Streamlines processes

Thanks to business modernization, these advanced software tools can streamline processes to help with employee productivity and organizational workflow. With a set process for each task from start to finish, everyone is on the same page and understands how their responsibilities fit into the overall project, meaning there's more accountability. It also helps everyone stay organized and on track.

Integrates multiple functions into one

Small businesses don’t want to have to pay for multiple pieces of software to complete each individual business requirement. It’s much more efficient and cost-effective to choose a technological solution with a multitude of features that can be adapted to fit their business needs. From payroll and time tracking to project planning, invoicing and more, find a software solution that has it all.

It takes less human resources to get more done

Tracking each task and project enables managers to better understand where to allocate resources and optimize each day for each individual. Plus, with automation of time tracking, payroll, and reporting, frees up more time in everyone’s day to allocate to productive work.

Automation also means less human error you’ll have to worry about, which can cost time and money to fix. Software tools also help to fill in the skills gap that some small businesses might have due to the inability to hire more human resources.

Improves the business’s bottom line

With greater visibility of employees’ time, improved tracking across projects, and increased automation of menial tasks, management software can improve your business’s bottom line year-over-year for a healthier and more profitable small business long-term.

Using modernized software also means you can keep a pulse on your business’s overall health at any time, checking finances, employee hours, inventory, and more in one intuitive interface.

Using Time Tracking and Accounting Software

The modernization of technology has done wonders for improving all facets of our lives, especially when it comes to business management. Companies need to take advantage of these developments to stay on the cutting edge of business today.

Using software like QuickBooks Time for time tracking and employee scheduling, and QuickBooks Online for accounting and project tracking can help you improve your business in all of the above ways and more.

Why not try a free trial to experience them for yourself!

Back: Time Management Strategies to Help Take Control of Your Time

Next: How to Forecast Employee Scheduling Needs

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