Surviving turbulent economic times

“Demand-driven workforce management (DDWM) is an ongoing process that allows you to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver products and services through superior utilisation of your labour resources”

Imagine going to work every day knowing that you and your colleagues will be effectively contributing to your organisation. That you always understand the demand your customers are going to put upon you. And there will always be the right people with the right skills, in the right place at the right time. A fantasy?

Demand-driven workforce management (DDWM) is an ongoing process that allows you to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver products and services through superior utilisation of your labour resources. The process enables you to increase your profits whilst improving service levels and employee satisfaction. It allows you to plan your labour requirements, allocate the appropriate resources, execute against that plan and analyse the results. Reality – not Fantasy. In this article we'll explain how the process works.

Plan
When planning, you need to anticipate the work required throughout the organisation and align staffing levels and skills to that workload, thereby avoiding last-minute staffing changes and operational disruptions, and remove both over and under staffing.

Buffeted by competition, economic climate and influenced by seasonality, customer taste, and traffic patterns, retail and hospitality organisations have to be "right-staffed".

Your workforce is very dynamic, with variable shift lengths, high turnover, and a wide range of work experience and skill levels. In addition to factoring in labour hours and costs, the budgeting process has to consider any union and employee agreements as well as legislation. In an industry where demand changes from hour to hour, and organisations must react quickly to competitors' tactics, the plan has to accommodate long-range, weekly and even daily targets.

In healthcare, the workforce must be properly aligned with patient numbers and acuity in the short-term, and staffing levels and certification programs aligned with long-term service planning and offerings. Therefore, it's critical to have a real-time forecast of patient numbers and acuity. The difficulties of executing through these challenges are amplified by widespread shortages of skilled workers. You must use labour strategically while minimising dependence on costly agency staff. With visibility into the volume and type of work and workforce needed, managers can plan staffing levels and schedules that maintain compliance with regulations and enable the institution to continue to provide quality patient care.

Allocate
The planning phase drives workforce design and availability; when allocating people, you must assign employees to specific jobs, ensuring deployment of the appropriate skills and certifications. Whenever possible, you should schedule according to qualifications, minimising overtime and temporary workforce. You should also evaluate all alternatives in the context of legislation, union agreements, employee preferences, and labour standards.

To effectively allocate employees, you must have a work plan informed by demand metrics. Otherwise, an it could result in under- or overstaffing, leading to lost revenues, poor service and reduced margins.

Allocating or scheduling employees in retail-hospitality settings must take into account total and per-employee hours to ensure that overtime is minimised. The challenge is that the demand curve is very volatile, requiring you to schedule down to 15-minute intervals to meet intraday demand peaks. The key is to provide managers with the tools they need to make advance schedules – and the flexibility to augment them, based on costs and qualifications, in the face of changing demand.

When demand data is compared to schedules, managers can set customer expectations and manage them proactively. This is particularly critical in healthcare, where demand can peak in an instant and nursing shortages and high turnover make it difficult to maintain necessary staffing levels – even under the best conditions. Financially, it's important to optimise both the number of staff onsite and the number of beds and facilities in use. This "heads and beds" approach requires scheduling a specific quantity of qualified employees for each shift. Understaffing can affect patient care and employee morale, while overstaffing is expensive. By providing employees with self-scheduling capabilities, you can empower staff to participate in developing off rotas they will accept.

Execute
Execution is the real-time monitoring of the workforce and the workload, identifying and resolving schedule coverage gaps as they occur. While planning involves projected demand, on a day-today basis you need to capture actual business volume, which drives the real-time adjustments needed to minimise understaffing or overstaffing. Having the right staff levels available is the competitive differentiator that can drive cost, quality, and the ability to deliver higher revenues.

Executing effectively includes the daily scheduling process, exception-based management, tracking actual performance data, and tracking completion of work. It begins when employees arrive at work, and their attendance and hours are tracked and monitored. Gaps are identified quickly, triggering responses from managers who can make informed replacement or redeployment decisions on the fly. Strong execution can result in delighting customers with value and service in retail-hospitality; and delivering quality, highly responsive patient care in healthcare.

Analyse
Analysis relies on the data collected in previous phases, and provides content for future planning activities. You can review performance data to identify trends, set benchmarks, and better monitor productivity and work patterns. This means you can optimise staff usage, control labour related expenses, and improve the quality and timely delivery of products and services. This leads to increased revenues, margins, and customer satisfaction, which is why DDWM is so critical to your organisation.

In retail-hospitality, you can analyse overall sales compared to past performance; if labour costs are eating into margins, a closer look at the data could identify problems such as overstaffing or commission overpayment. Being able to integrate real-time sales data with actual worker productivity ensures that staffing can be addressed while there is still an opportunity to improve performance.

When analysing workforce data in healthcare organisations, performance is aligned to organisation goals; such as maximised bed usage, a high quality of care, procedure and wait times are minimised, and lengths of stay are appropriate. You can compare percentage of hours by type (basic, overtime, and agency) against benchmarks, making adjustments where necessary.

Coming to work every day knowing that your employees are contributing to your organisation and that you always understand the demand your customers; that there will always be the right people with the right skills, in the right place at the right time. A fantasy? With Demand Driven Workforce Management it's not.