Australia’s talent shortage means finding the right people to fill positions has become more challenging for companies in every industry. Several factors have caused the shortage, from a lack of immigration these last two years to people deciding to take a break from work.
The pandemic has become a catalyst for change in the field of workforce management. Unprecedented demand for goods (like panic buying) and troughs in response to restrictions have demonstrated the need for preparedness. Unplanned absences and unpredictable workloads have impacted operations and created scheduling and demand planning problems. Individual availability, low levels of unemployment and talent shortages in some industries have compounded the challenges many businesses face.
To better manage the impacts of talent shortages and coverage across your business, you need intelligent people management solutions for hiring, onboarding and managing talent.
1. Hiring and onboarding
Intelligent workforce management leverages automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and data and analytics to improve your hiring and onboarding processes. It can help organisations attract and retain the best talent by making it easier to identify, connect with, and hire the right candidates.
For example, data and analytics can highlight the skills and experience your company lacks. With this information, you can automatically advertise for a vacant position – across several job sites or platforms. Your data will support the right mix of the soft and hard skills you need for specific roles, the budget available, and the timing.
Your job postings will almost certainly attract a wide range of candidates who do not necessarily meet your hiring criteria. So, your talent management solution should be able to analyse the resumes and accounts of the applicants and filter out people that do not match the needs of the role. Such activity saves your HR team the time-consuming and repetitive task of sorting through and validating each resume.
Your workforce training software can request and collect employee information required to onboard them into your systems. It can also become the platform through which new hires access the information needed to settle into their role and become productive more quickly.
2. Training and talent management
As the Great Reshuffle and widely reported talent shortages could significantly impact your intake of new hires, you need technology solutions to assist you in training, developing and retaining your workforce. Once you have onboarded a new team member, a solid foundation for educating and upskilling individuals can help to deliver an exceptional employee experience and increase their chances of staying or growing with the company.
By providing a central learning management platform for training and educational materials, you ensure everyone can access consistent information when and where they need it. Intelligent workforce management solutions also provide insights into your employees’ performance, identify areas where they may need additional training or support and help you to ensure that your employees are always up to date on the latest information and procedures.
Additionally, your workforce management platform might identify skills gaps and suggest people already in your organisation who are the best candidates for upskilling or promotion to fill these gaps.
3. Self-service tools with intelligent workforce management
Self-service tools are valuable for any business looking to streamline hiring and onboarding. Companies using these tools can save time and money while ensuring that their candidates are well informed and prepared for their new roles. Your self-service platform might provide hires with resources and information in a timely and orderly fashion, improving the experience and reducing turnover by making it easier for new hires to acclimate to roles and the company culture.
Self-service tools can also reduce the time and cost of hiring new employees. An online application system allows you to post job openings to multiple platforms automatically and for candidates to interact directly with your plans to submit the details you need to review and filter applications and reduce time in your onboarding processes.
Another self-service tool often used in employee hiring and onboarding is an online training or learning management system. You can leverage this to provide new employees with the information and training they need to succeed in their roles. Additionally, online training systems allow you to track each employee’s progress as they complete their training and start scheduling them for new tasks or higher duties.
Your workforce management solution should be more than just keeping records and automating tasks. It should be a place that brings together training programs and employee information and becomes a communication hub for HR to engage the wider workforce.
4. Use intelligent workforce management to track costs
The past couple of years has left many industries facing financial hurdles as lockdowns have disrupted normal revenue. Intelligent workforce management solutions can help you to track, plan and manage costs across your workforce, especially regarding the mix of talent and employment types – both now and into the future.
Intelligent workforce management helps you track costs in real-time, which is a huge advantage when managing your budget. By tracking labour costs as they happen, you can adjust your staffing levels and labour mix to help stay on budget, but you can also manage your hiring processes similarly.
An intelligent workforce management solution can help you track costs in a few ways. The best Time and Attendance software provides the information needed for managing costs by showing the hours worked by each employee. You can use this information to calculate the cost of each person, help you track the wages paid to them and how this aligns with your budget. It can also identify areas of a business that require attention and may be understaffed and provide valuable insight into gaps that need filling.
Tambla’s Intelligent Workforce Management solutions
A comprehensive strategic workforce management solution is critical to improving productivity and your bottom line. The right platform can help you with workforce scheduling, forecasting and talent management. So you can optimise growth and plan for success today, tomorrow and in the future.
Visit our Workforce Management and workforce management tools page for more on our capabilities.
