The Rise of Modern Workforce Management for Employers with Deskless Workers

We are operating in a time of accelerating change. Customer preferences, market dynamics, labor demographics and demands, regulatory requirements, and supply chain disruptions are redefining how organizations manage and communicate with their global workforce. Modern workforce management solutions and business models have emerged as a significant means for competitive differentiation and digital transformation.

This is especially true for employers with large “deskless worker” populations.  Making up 80% of the workforce, these 2.7 billion employees often operate without the benefit of digital tools to do their best work and maintain their work/life balance.

When workers are enabled with tools in the form of their favorite hand-held app to manage their schedules, self-service shift swap, clock in and out, request time off, receive micro-training, have easy access to important documents, and receive important company communications, they are more likely to be productive and engaged.

WorkForce Software and Oracle have sponsored the new IDC Technology Spotlight: The Imperative and Value of Intelligence Workforce Management, which shows how modern workforce management technology integrated with employee communications is helping organizations remain competitive in the current labor market.

IDC estimates that by 2023, 70% of connected workers in task-based roles will use intelligence embedded in adaptive digital workspaces to engage clients/colleagues and drive enterprise productivity.

Enterprises implementing new workforce management platforms have continuously seen improved results. Consider these other outcomes and how employee experience has been positively impacted:

• Higher Productivity – Workers committed to their roles are more productive and more engaged in their roles.
• Lower Administrative Costs – Automated mundane tasks and digital access to important work and HR data for employees reduces the workload for administrators.
• More Effective Staffing – The ability to easily communicate and swiftly coordinate a team for ideal scheduling (by skill level and availability) means the right workers are in the right places at the right time.
• Improved Talent Retention – Hiring is costly in both time and money. Providing and optimizing current employees with better digital tools to carry out their tasks keeps them engaged, and engaged workers are consistently surveyed to show higher satisfaction with their organizations.

We also collaborated with Oracle on an informative discussion on the technology choices organizations are faced with regarding employee demands for hybrid and remote work. In the webinar “How Technology is Redefining Employee Experience in a Hybrid and Deskless World”, we speculate how these tools and solutions will define how the new modern workplace operates and effects workers, managers, and businesses as a whole. Who should own and be responsible for the employee experience, and what key factors should they consider when implementing hybrid and deskless worker models? It's important to embrace new paradigms, but we must be sure it doesn’t come at the sacrifice of the sense of belonging, collaboration, and camaraderie between co-workers.

Intelligent Workforce Management Solutions are capable of managing all of these turbulent changes to the workplace. When faced with issues of budgets, supply chains, and turnover, the potential to optimize existing labor is a catch-all answer that improves all aspects of an organization’s bottom line. Organizations are also realizing the importance of both employee experience and customer experience and are beginning to merge them, treating each as interconnected critical priorities.

When IDC surveyed IT and line-of-business (LOB) leaders about their top business priorities, over 50% indicated that their organizations were focused on retaining the right people to improve customer acquisition and retention rates.

In times like these, organizations must answer the call of the workforce if they are to remain competitive. That is the ultimate case for intelligent workforce management: it saves time, costs, and effort and keeps your teams working together and performing at their best.

WorkForce Software is Oracle’s workforce management partner for employers with large hourly or shift-based employee teams, with high expertise in the retail and manufacturing industries. The perfect complement to an organization’s Oracle HCM investment, the WorkForce Suite is a best-in-class workforce management solution with pre-built integrations to HR and payroll.