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The Future of Workforce Management

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PCQ Bureau
New Update


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The economic downturn has affected just about every industry, and 2012 will be a year where more and more organizations will look at reducing labour costs and improving productivity. This need brings workforce management —the concept of using technology to effectively manage a workforce -to the forefront, with the promise of providing a powerful new tool to aid in decision-making.Workforce management offers organizations the tools they need to help them control labour costs, improve workforce productivity and minimize compliance risk.Going forward workforce management solutions will need to reach and cater to every kind of employee and will need to provide organizations real-time visibility into their workforce. We predict following trends that will dominate the workforce management in 2012.

1. Real-time workforce management

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The need for a real-time integrated workforce management solution is greater than ever. Capturing employee time, overtime and absences for month-end payroll is not enough. Providing operations a real-time view of their workforce availability and utilization will provide organization a competitiveadvantage.

2. Next gen of data capturing/employee engagement devices

With the need for measuring employee productivity arises the need to be able to capture employee output. Devices that seamlessly integrate with the overall workforce suite will be highly sought. In the modern era of touch-panels, the data capture terminal transforms from the small black box capturing punches to a device that interacts with employees for their leaves and accruals as well, and is built for the cloud: able to be monitored and controlled centrally.

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3. Catering to a mobile workforce

An important trend in workforce management is moving the solution to the mobile world. Today's workforce enthusiastically embraces cellular phones, smart phones, and tablets for everyday activities. Mobile applications will improve productivity by making it easier for managers and employees to complete a wide range of workforce related tasks on the go.

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4. Intuitive and guided decision making

Facebook and iPhone revolutionized ease-of-use. The user interfaces require zero training, and arer intuitive and self-guiding. The next generation of workforce management solutions will deliver an intuitive, exciting experience that people will be drawn to use.

5. Cloudy weather

While buying the right product is one aspect, setting up the infrastructure and deploying the product changes the ball-game. We are slowly entering an age of reduced TCO and paying for the services received. This is where the cloud model reigns supreme.

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