This planning is used to forecast the number of people required and then to schedule and manage that person according to the operational goals. The workforce management process includes strategic workforce planning as one of its components.
What are the advantages of having a workforce planning strategy in place?
Effective workforce planning has many advantages, some of which are the following:
- Understanding how many employees are required to handle the workload.
- Ensuring that operational goals such as occupancy, shrinkage, and service levels are met.
- Providing employees with the appropriate training.
- Reducing the rate of employee turnover.
A Strategy for the Long Term
When it comes to planning, one of the first steps in workforce management is to look into the future to determine hiring plans. These plans are based on the growth or decline of the company, its capacity, its use of outsourcers, and the operational metrics used to determine whether or not the company is successful.
Long-term workforce planning allows organisations to simulate any potential company outcomes to ascertain the appropriate number of workers needed to handle the workload. This is a significant competitive advantage. These plans are then reworked into recruiting, and onboarding plans to guarantee sufficient people will be available whenever there is an increase in demand in the contact centre.
Another facet of workforce planning is more immediate, often including a time frame between four and eight weeks into the future. After calculating the exact number of workers needed, those figures are entered into the scheduling solution to provide coverage for each 30-minute period that occurs throughout the day. Examples might be based on the employees’ knowledge of a specific language, product, or other talents.
A workforce planning system that is more advanced will automatically recalculate the needed number of employees after every 30 minutes and compare that number with the number working to highlight any positive or negative discrepancy, which flags overstaffing and understaffing problems.
Accurate Forecasts
The actual value of workforce planning comes from the accuracy of the results. Having a proper plan ensures that you hire and schedule the “appropriate” quantity of personnel for each circumstance. Hiring too many people and having too few can affect customer service quality. Some firms employ highly developed artificial intelligence to achieve the highest possible accuracy in their projections.
Management of the day-to-day schedule and activities
However, planning the workforce is merely the first step in the process. When determining when employees are scheduled to work, the scheduling procedure considers the needed quantity of workers. It is a challenging step since it must comply with the demand while also considering labour regulations, business standards, employee vacations, staff availability, and employee preferences. Additionally, it must avoid scheduling too many people or paying them overtime wages.
A better work-life balance for workers and the ability of the firm to provide the level of service its clients require are both outcomes that may be achieved via careful scheduling.
The very final step of the process is called Intraday Management, and its purpose is to check if the current day’s activities are going according to the plan. It is utilised to check whether or not employees are working following the timetable and to determine whether or not the demand is congruent with the projection. Changes are monitored and controlled in real-time to maintain a high quality of service
The retention rate of existing customers may be improved by using effective workforce management practices since it ensures that existing clients are serviced following established protocols. In addition, the employees themselves are receiving care, which contributes to decreased staff turnover.
