Planning for the future of your business and setting goals is intimidating. But it doesn’t have to be. With the right software and workforce management systems in place, prediction and preparation are made easier than ever. Before we get into all of that, let’s discuss what workforce management forecasting actually is and how it can actively benefit your business.
What is Workforce Management Forecasting?
Essentially a tool for strategy and prediction, workforce management forecasting helps you manage your company’s workload as you work to ensure you’re prepared for the future. This is done to ensure that you have enough staff employed to handle the workload, be it on a day-to-day scheduled operations basis or for out-of-the-ordinary situations.
Metrics to Balance for Successful Workforce Management Forecasting
There are many elements that make for the successful management of your workforce. And when it comes to forecasting, you can choose to consider them all or simply take a handful into account. Regardless of the metrics you choose, experience has taught us that the following four are essential to measure for improved workforce management.
1. Retention
The frequency of staff turnover can become costly to your organisation and not only in a monetary sense. Productivity and morale are influenced by your employee retention and attrition rates. While tracking your turnover rate is important, you should also make a note to look at who is leaving — your high-performance staff or those who slack off and you could actually do without?
2. Total Workforce Cost
Essentially a sum of every cost relating to your workforce. This includes compensation, benefits, full-time and part-time worker expenses. These sorts of metrics help to create a reliable picture of your workforce spend which can direct and inform strategy and decision-making.
3. Productivity
Tracking tools and time scheduling software are the easiest ways to monitor your team’s productivity. For the more mathematical folk, check out this simple formula by the Houston Strategy Forum. Another way of measuring productivity is by requesting that employees keep timesheets and lists of everything they’ve worked on over the course of a week. This approach, however, tends to be the most time consuming although it does, like the others, encourage accountability.
4. Effectiveness Ratio
Effectiveness is subjective, right? Well not quite. There are a few formulas you can use to calculate the overall effectiveness of your team(s). The one we have found to be the most reliable and therefore would recommend is to calculate how much gross profit your company gets for every rand spent on salary for all full-time and part-time employees.
Types of Workforce Management Forecasting
As with everything, there are many ways to go about planning for and managing your workforce. The two approaches we’ve found to be most common are as follows:
Operational Forecasting
Planning from an operational perspective focuses on work units and issues that may arise within teams. When you take an operational approach, you focus on how to sustain the working ability of your team in executing business strategies. This may involve both carrying your organisation’s strategic workforce and responding to external factors that impact your team.
Strategic Forecasting
Planning from an operational perspective sets your HR department up to identify potential gaps in your team and the talent that you should acquire in filling them. This approach helps set up the goals you’re aiming to achieve and establish the strategy that will lead you there. Strategic forecasting helps maintain the balance of talent, technologies and employment models within your company.
How does Workforce Management Forecasting help Businesses? And What is the Role of Workforce Management Software?
Foresight is and will always be essential to successful business management. And forecasting is a big part of that. For companies in the security sector, forecasting can assist with preparation for busy seasons and peak hours, ensuring that teams are well-trained and will be effective.
Workforce management forecasting and the related software will help specifically with the following areas within your security company:
- Streamlining scheduling and shift communication
- Helping identify problems before they take effective
- Increasing staff job satisfaction
- Resource prediction, preparation, and allocation
With a software system like EasyRoster by your side, you can forecast and manage your workforce confidently and without headaches or hassle. By harnessing the data gained via your workforce management software, will gain insight into your teams and decision-making as well as planning for the future is made easier.
Want to learn more about how EasyRoster can help with workforce management software? Book a customised demo of our software to see how it can help with your unique business requirements.
As a Senior Product Manager at Adapt IT, I lead the division responsible for one of our flagship products, EasyRoster. Our primary focus is to empower organisations with top-tier Workforce Management Software, enabling them to optimise operational efficiency and streamline processes.
With over 12 years of experience in the industry, I have collaborated with clients across 25+ countries, delivering training sessions and offering labor efficiency consultations to diverse groups of professionals.
In my capacity as Senior Product Manager, I oversee a multidisciplinary team that together, strive to create innovative solutions and maintain our commitment to excellence in the realm of workforce management.
