Workforce management is one of the most important aspects of any organisation. It not only ensures that your employees are working at peak efficiency but also ensures that you are spending your resources effectively. To succeed and thrive in the future, organisations must ensure they have effective workforce management processes in place to remain relevant as technologies, business models, and markets change.
There are, of course, many different aspects to workforce management, covering everything from digital toolsets to more strategic elements like recruitment, training and development programs, but this article intends to focus on how human-centric approaches can help organisations manage their labour forces more successfully by focusing on employee experience.
The Rise of the Machines: The workforce of 2023 is a diverse group of people who work across a range of industries. They are skilled, talented and eager to learn new things. As a result, industry experts widely predict that over the next five years, there will be more workplace automation than ever before. Some call this “the rise of the machines”, but RMS have a more positive view: we believe that technology frees us up from tedious tasks so that we can focus more on what matters most. However, this shift will require us to adapt our behaviours and expectations as employees if we want to remain relevant as managers within our organisations and industries.
The Workforce of the Future: As a workforce manager, your employees remain one of your company’s most important assets and one of the country’s most valuable commodities. That’s because employees can be trained and reskilled to do new tasks as needed, unlike other resources such as stock, materials and machinery. However, for this training and reskilling process to work efficiently and successfully, employers have to engage their workers and ensure they have positive experiences at work every day. Workforce management is much more than simply hiring people and scheduling shifts — it’s about connecting, motivating, and acknowledging those who do good work so that they remain engaged with the company for years to come. With the cost of recruiting and training new employees now averaging £4,000, each new employee starts day one with an awful lot of beans, pairs of socks or pints of beer to sell to offset the cost of just recruiting them into the organisation.
Employee Experience: Employee experience is the sum of all interactions between employees and their employer that create a positive (or negative) perception of the workplace. Employee experience is a crucial driver of employee engagement, directly contributing to staff retention rates and lower costs associated with hiring and training new employees. Employees’ perceptions about their working environment, job functions, career opportunities and more drive their overall satisfaction with employment. In addition, these factors can also impact how successfully an organisation retains its employees during periods of change or growth, particularly when staffing needs increase.
Effective Leadership: Leaders create or deliver the vision for the company – they build teams and motivate them to achieve it. The type of leader that you want to be depends on your organisation’s culture and goals. For example, suppose you want to be an inspirational leader who motivates by example and creates a sense of urgency for the team. In that case, you need to show them how important their role is in achieving success for the organisation and have effective tools in place in order to reach and lead them. However, effective leaders also know that leadership isn’t just about them; it’s also about creating an environment where people can be successful too. Effective leaders focus on creating an environment where employees feel valued and encouraged to contribute ideas or suggestions that will help improve processes and increase productivity. The ability of every employee to have a voice, be heard and let their thoughts and views be known is critical here.
Employee engagement: Employee Engagement measures how much an employee connects with the organisation. It’s an essential indicator of retention, productivity, and performance; employees feel valued and connected to their colleagues and company when they are engaged in their work. That said, there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to employee engagement. To create a sustainable plan for improving your workforce’s engagement levels, you need to understand what motivates each individual on your team. That requires knowing more about them than just what they do for you on a daily basis— which can be tricky when you have hundreds or even thousands of employees across multiple locations around the world! Successful organisations will be the ones that can flex their workforce and reskill employees to adapt to new technologies, business models and customer requirements by taking a more human-centric approach to workforce management, beginning with the employee experience.
So what next? The next few years will undoubtedly continue to bring changes and challenges for businesses across all sectors and verticals. However, organisations that can manage their workforce effectively will be better positioned to meet customer demands, build competitive advantage, and increase value. Organisations need employees who can and are willing to adapt quickly, which means creating an engaging digital workplace where employees can find everything they need to complete their job effectively and feel valued, heard and part of the team. All of this, of course, requires a clear vision for where an organisation is headed, along with effective guidance by leaders who can communicate that vision effectively so everyone understands what needs to be achieved. This means giving the workforce of 2023 the right tools to ensure corporate visions reach everyone from Head Office right down to the frontline worker.
Get in touch to hear how Metro is helping more than 120 leading retail, hospitality, leisure, and healthcare brands manage their digital workforce in 2023 and beyond to bring their visions to life.
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