The Case for Workforce Management in Government
Common Challenges and Obstacles
Despite their differences, many government organisations and departments have some or all of the following characteristics and challenges in common:
- Large complex contracts and projects which need to be delivered on time and to budget
- Complex demand and workload which varies over time
- Rigid Service Levels to monitor and assure
- Large numbers of staff to be scheduled and tracked against jobs and functions
- Varied facilities and equipment that need to be scheduled and reserved against these jobs and tasks
- Co-ordination, planning and reporting of these resources across multiple business units
- The need to implement and manage new and more flexible working practices such as annualised hours, or demand led rostering
- The ability to accurately cost projects in advance
- Reporting and control of costs against contracts and projects
- Employee management including absence control
- Ensuring compliance with Working Time Directive
- Meeting Health & Safety obligations by ensuring staff are fully trained and available for work
Benefits of Workforce Management
WorkPlace software and consultancy services can help government organisations and departments overcome the following obstacles :
- High staff cost due to inefficient scheduling (resulting in high overtime or underutilised staff)
- Low utilisation of equipment and facilities due to low visibility
- Disparate planning systems and methodologies which introduces inefficiency and excess support costs
- High administration costs and protracted reaction times associated with manual scheduling and tracking of work
- Reduced visibility and control of cost against projects and budgets
- Risk of project completion delays due to scheduling conflicts/poor scheduling
- Unknown (and high) cost of absence
- Poor employee morale/high turnover due to short-term planning and scheduling resolutions
- Lack of available staff training time due to poor scheduling of resources
- Health & Safety concerns due to poorly trained staff or lack of availability of staff with the correct skills for the job
WorkPlace Systems Benefits
As a result of this, WorkPlace Systems solutions have been seen to deliver the following benefits :
- Productivity improvements - engaging right person with the right skill at the right time
- Utilisation improvements - more effective use of skilled workers
- More efficient utilisation of resources, increases up to 15%
- Labour cost reduction - by up to 20% without reducing Service Levels
- Reduced absence - by up to 75%
- More competitive and timely bid tendering
- Staff Administration time reduced by up to 20%
- Implementation of acceptable and supported new working practices
- Improve customer Service Levels
- Accurate and fair payment of employees
- Automatic and accurate assignation of costs to projects
- Compliance and tracking of Working Time Directive
- Better employee morale and reduced turnover
- Introduction of improved culture to the organisation and workforce
- Improved skills through increased training