Workforce Planning and Scheduling in the New Social Distancing Landscape

As the world is learning how to adjust to the COVID-19 new normal, intelligent scheduling and workforce management is critical from both a safety/health perspective and a labor efficiency/cost perspective. The days of managing how the workforce is scheduled via paper or spreadsheet just isn’t going to cut it. Simply put, technology exists that can ensure that only the needed people are scheduled to be in the office on the clock at the time they are needed. The C Suite has no excuse given the capability to minimize risk exists and the shear cost savings in better labor efficiency is huge.

Through the years, I have witnessed instance after instance of companies believing they can best manually manage the schedules of thousands of employees. It’s April of 2020 and the fact is, the technology around automated schedule management can outthink and out react any spreadsheet or paper schedule out there. As I was thinking about this article, a few great examples of how technology can help came to mind:

• Social Distancing – Through detailed rules configuration, scheduling engines such as Infor’s Workforce Management can ensure that employees aren’t congregating at time clocks needlessly.
• Over Scheduling – So many companies over schedule not knowing if the demand requires they be there. This costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Automated scheduling ensures that you never schedule for more than you need. Systems can even notify employees the night before that they are or aren’t needed the next day.
• Labor Efficiency – Automated scheduling takes every bit of information into account. Skillset, certifications, proper number of resources, proper equipment, raw materials, production/sales volume and asset availability.
• Realtime-Reporting – Workforce Management systems provide access to all of this great information in real-time. Executives, managers and employees can relevant labor information which they can act on.
• Mobility – With the at-home workforce, mobility allows for employees to manage time and schedules from anywhere. Executives can also access and work with teams from their phones or tablets across multiple locations.

The goal of these solutions is to save costs while ensuring every employee knows exactly where to be when in the most efficient way possible. Thousands of hours are spent annually managing schedules in a manual shop. It’s pure cost that can be avoided with the proper deployment of an enterprise workforce management system. Not to mention they ensure you are compliant from a local, state and union perspective. If you start searching right now, you will find countless lawsuits employees have leveraged on their employers for not staying compliant with regard to labor laws and scheduling.

In closing, the small cost of the technology results in hundreds of thousands, if not millions in annual savings and adds a layer of protection for your teams.