Workforce Management Blog

You’ve adapted and evolved your business on multiple levels as technology changes and opportunities have presented themselves to increase workforce productivity, but your employees are still punching in on time cards. It’s time to realize that time cards are a thing of the past. Sure, they worked well for tracking time and attendance before, but while they prove to manage time, they require unnecessary resources and produce avoidable errors costing your organization time and money on a daily basis. Upgrading your payroll system to an automated time and attendance software can eliminate these problems, while saving you 2-5% of your payroll costs annually.

Punch Cards Cost Money

Punch cards require multiple steps. Employees take time to punch in, punch out, the HR department then have to calculate the hours each employee has worked and equate the other factors such as vacation pay, into the process to determine the accurate amount due to the employee.

As well, buddy punching is very common. Buddy punching is when an employee punches the time clock on behalf of another employee, who is leaving early, arriving late, absent from work or not scheduled for work that day. This is a time and attendance issue that allows employees to get paid for time in which they are not on the job, and is the basis for payroll fraud or time theft. Studies show that buddy punching can account for up to 5% of total payroll costs, which can costs companies thousands or even millions of lost dollars per year.
Time and Attendance Software Systems Save Money

An automated time and attendance systems reduces human errors and tracks employees’ attendance by using advanced methods such as biometrics. Upgrading to an automated time and attendance system can not only save you money, but increase your productivity through a variety of workforce management solutions such as activity costing, labour forecasting and absentee management.

There are multiple benefits and uses associated with a time and attendance software system. To learn more about how these can benefit your organization, click here.

Go Green, Increase Productivity – Workforce Management Software
With Earth Day just passing, many people are asking themselves what they can do to help preserve the environment for future generations. This isn’t just a personal matter however, more and more organizations are asking themselves the same question.

Adopting an effective employee management system will enable your company to cut labour costs and increase productivity, but it is also a greener alternative to a manual HR process. In particular, organizations within the healthcare industry readily realize the multiple streams of benefits of utilizing a time and attendance system.

Recruitment has always been a challenge for those in healthcare. In order to keep the highest of standards for providing superior healthcare services, the industry needs to find skilled professionals quickly due to shortages, but then have to endure long training periods. These challenges require a lot of time and money in order to achieve superior performance levels in your workforce. Healthcare industries should not just provide services that improve the lives of its patients, but it should also utilize solutions that align with all other aspects of the organization.

As well, traditional methods of workforce management, such as timesheets, have a detrimental effect on the environment, contributing a high level of paper waste annually. Green technologies do exist that can replace these old methods.

Workforce management solutions include time and attendance software that uses automated data collection methods that do not include paper nor plastic disposables- biometrics, the internet, voice recognition, mobile phones, all of which are extremely accurate methods in tracking employee behavior.

Not only do these technologies have a more positive effect on the environment, but also they are more accurate, efficient and effective in meeting organizational goals.  It is a win-win solution for all.

There are multiple benefits of adopting a WCM solution for your organization. To learn more about what WCM can do for you, visit our website.

The beginning of the global economic recovery raised the renewed need for efficient and high-quality recruiting services. Mergers and acquisitions forced organizations to look inward and examine the gaps between what they have and what they want: what expertise should be retained, what skills and competencies are in the surplus, and what skills are missing. The world of employment has changed so much that organizations now experience a shortage in some skills and competencies essential for their growth. Among others, this is the result of an entire generation leaving the workforce (the baby boomers), changes in technological processes and Generation Y joining the workforce. To address these challenges and develop the future leadership of the organization, organizations must focus on recruiting the right talent into the organization.

In a study by IDC in 2010, executives were asked to rank the most important initiatives in the field of talent management carried out in their organization that had the strongest impact on their business objectives in the area of human resources. It is not surprising that the top ranking issues were: alignment in accordance with business objectives, recruitment, and performance management.

When an organization decides to change its corporate strategy, the HR department must respond almost immediately: it must identify the set of skills required to carry out the current strategy, and it must plan and execute a structured recruitment process to bring on board the missing skills. The nature of the recruitment manager’s job changes accordingly. He or she can no longer be satisfied with receiving instructions and job requirements as defined by professional managers. He must take into account the full range of strategic plans relating to the employee skills, directions for future growth, internal mobility as part of job promotion, performance management, and more.

“The people make the organization” is no longer an empty expression. More and more organizations have realized that to obtain better business results they must invest in employees or rather in the talent pool. In recent years we have seen increasing investment by organizations in technological systems for performance management and in learning management systems in order to deepen and enhance capabilities and skills within the organization.

Strategic recruitment must be based on analysis and planning of human resources: What kinds of employees/skills are required? When and where? What gaps currently exist in the critical positions in the organization, and in what direction does the business unit advance? What technologies are going to be used, and what new processes will be adopted?

Talent management will not succeed in earnest unless companies view the process as requiring integration of data, processes, and tools. When companies invest in this process, the result is greater revenue and profitability, more engaged employees and a much more effective organization.

Synerion Recruitment enables job management, capture of applicant resumes from various channels (e-mail, scan, fax, and social networks), creation of an applicant pool, and bi-directional matching between applicant and job requirements to identify candidates most suitable for the organization’s needs.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of recruitment software, click here.

Before looking at how E-recruiting helps organization save it is important to understand what E-recruiting is. E-recruitment (Employee recruitment) is the process of staffing an open position through the hiring of a new employee. An e-recruitment workforce management solution enables job management, capture of applicant resumes from various channels, creation of an applicant pool and bi-directional matching between applicants and job requirements to identify candidates more suitable for the organization’s needs.

So how does E-recruiting help companies save?

Saving on the cost of advertising:

Traditionally when companies were looking to hire someone for a position they would advertise in magazines or newspapers or have booths in job fairs. This method reached a limited number of individuals and the costs could add up quickly. However now organizations can reach millions of potential candidates by listing positions online free of charge. Recruitment software also allows companies to tap into social media websites such as LinkedIn to post jobs or connect with potential candidates at no cost.

Saving time on assessing candidates:

An organization which advertises a position sometimes receives an overwhelming number of responses from potential applicants. Unfortunately the majority of these applicants may not have the necessary qualifications and/or experience that the company desires. E-Recruitment software allows organizations to pre-define required qualifications and experience levels and filter resumes based on those qualifications and levels of experience. That way only the resumes which require serious considerations are the ones being read which streamlines the entire recruitment process.

Saving time on hiring the right candidate:

Many types of E-Recruiting software allow individual’s resumes and information to be kept on file. This is important since often organizations will have to wait for suitable candidates to apply for a position. However with the ability to keep resumes and other information on file organizations can quickly browse through a list of qualified candidates who they previously did not have positions for. Also as mentioned previously recruitment software can leverage social media so just in case an ideal candidate does not apply for a position the company can actually recruit the qualified candidates on their own. In either case E-recruiting software ensures organizations do not have to wait for applicants to apply and allows organizations to quickly fill the vacancy needed to help continue their company’s success.

Click here to learn more about the benefits of an e-recruitment solution.

In recent years, enhanced by the economic crisis, we have seen a growing awareness of the need to better manage labor costs, and in service oriented industries improve customer service, as a mean to expand organizational profitability. Time and Attendance solutions represent one way of addressing the concerns of the organization about the productivity and efficiency of their workforce. Automating workforce management represents the leap that organizations are required to make to gain more control over their labor costs.

Benefits of an automated solution:

Reduce payroll error rate and processing time

Automated data collection and processes, interfacing to other software packages such as ERP and Pay systems, reduces the need to establish and maintain employee information within different organizational systems. As a result the amount of human error that can increase payroll costs is eliminated. With the elimination of manual intervention, organizations can move towards more an administrator-rule environment to create consistency between union agreements, as well as federal, provincial/state, and local regulations and different types of payment for employee work categories. Data automated transfer between employees, managers and payroll administrators increase accuracy, reduces re-work and reduces payroll overpayments.

Reduced overtime
Minimizing overtime is crucial to controlling work costs, which must be taken into consideration when allocating work or shift time to an employee. With reporting capabilities of automated time and attendance, solution managers are able to assign work more cost-effectively, based on who is least likely to incur overtime rates. A rules-based solution governing work agreements and regulations assures that payments will be made according to employee schedules, preventing unnecessary payments of overtime due to unauthorized early arrivals and late departures.

Eliminate costs of time sheet and time cards:

Savings are gained in any organization based on paper elimination by reducing storing, archiving and restoring of time sheets and time cards. Significant savings occur in organizations with more than once-a-month pay periods.  Gartner offers a calculation of $0.03 savings per time sheet, multiplied by the number of employees and pay periods. There is also less of an opportunity for these records to be lost, damaged or destroyed.

For more information on workforce management please visit our website