Workforce management projects are a lot of work that often brings big changes to an organisation. Every employee is affected and by necessity, a massive amount of effort is given to setting precise configurations for your pay rules. Given the daunting levels of effort necessary for these implementation steps, features like reporting and analytics can, understandably, get put on the back burner.
Additionally, while your workforce management data is incredibly valuable, it can be hard to interpret. Reports and dashboards are ultimately meant to help you make sense of complex data, but if you’re relying on the wrong reporting methods, it becomes difficult to translate incoming data into meaningful changes in workforce management practices. Even still, it’s important to understand the strategic advantages to ensure it’s not something that gets forgotten.
I (Dan Hadley, Director of Solution Consulting at WorkForce Software, an ADP company) hosted our webinar, Harnessing the Power of Your Data: Making Workforce Reporting Work for You and was joined by workforce management technology expert Shawna A Watson, Director of Professional Services at HR Path. Together, we shared how using the right workforce data reporting tools can have measurable and significant impact on workforce management practices that can improve overall performance and productivity.
What is the strategic advantage of choosing the right workforce data reporting tools?
Workforce management data provides a picture of each employee’s workday, defining labour costs and allocations throughout the organisation, planned rosters, absenteeism, compliance issues and much more.
Here are few of the strategic benefits workforce management data reporting can provide:
- Allows for proactive compliance measures, cost controls
- Improves fatigue management and employee experience, supporting reduced attrition and compliance risk
- Helps find areas of excellence to drive best practices
- Correlates data to find areas of concern or opportunities for improvement
- Identifies waste or mismanagement
The right tools and analytics can empower your organisation to be proactive, reduce costs and enhance overall efficiency. For instance, workforce analytics have been shown to generate 2.8 times more revenue per Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) and predictive analytics similarly boosts productivity.
Addressing Common Workforce Management Challenges
Effective workforce data reporting can help your business be more proactive, especially on time sensitive workforce concerns. These are some of the more frequent questions that people managers might see when reviewing workforce data:
- Monitoring hours: “This employee is about to exceed allowed hours; maybe I can adjust our shift planning now before it becomes an issue.”
- Attendance analysis: “Why does this one location seem to have such a better attendance record?” –
- Safety regulations: “There appears to be a lot of workplace accidents when overtime hours are high—can we address this proactively?”
These questions illustrate the potential of using data correlations to gain insights that inform better managerial decisions.
Selecting the Right Workforce Data Reporting Method
To maximise the value of workforce data, consider implementing the following options:
- Proactive Notifications: Many times, clients might have a report requirement when the same information might be better served with a proactive notification. Instead of periodically running a report manually, push alerts can find potential issues before they escalate. This encourages proactive, preventive management and prompt interventions.
- Embedded Reports & Analytics: This method provides real time access to data, using standard and custom reports that can easily analyse employee hours, costs and labour allocations. The right workforce management software can also review performance individually or compare across departments. These reports are easily accessible directly from within the application and provide solutions for the “low hanging fruit”.
- Data Integration with External Business Intelligence (BI) Tools: This method allows your data to be fed to external data warehouses and analysed with the BI tools of your choice. Used effectively, this can enhance decision-making by aligning workforce data with other crucial source data like HR and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
Closing Thoughts
Utilising your workforce management data effectively can yield significant benefits and opportunities for strategic improvement. As we embrace the power of the right reporting tools, organisations can enhance productivity, reduce costs and thrive in an ever-evolving workplace landscape. Utilising a workforce management software solution like the ADP WorkForce Suite offers diverse and flexible reporting options tailored to help you make the most of your data.
The key is adding data analysis and effective reporting methods to your implementation roadmap and to allow sufficient time to find the data reporting method that will have the most meaningful impact on your workforce management practices. Don’t allow these valuable insights to go unnoticed—take the time to harness them and drive meaningful change that brings value to your workforce.
Watch the full on-demand webinar Harnessing the Power of Your Data: Making Workforce Reporting Work for You to learn more about how effective reporting can solve common workforce management challenges.
