Workforce Management Becomes Critical for Public Sector Employees

Workforce management has been an important element of contact center operations for a long time. A good workforce management solution can ensure that the right people are working on the right media at the right time to meet customer demand. More modern versions of workforce management solutions can allow for equitable vacation and time off planning, scheduling swapping, reporting and many other critical functions.

For some organizations, however, workforce management will serve another important function soon: keeping track of a company’s healthcare obligations to that employee based on how many hours that individual works, particularly in the public sector. Companies are required to provide health insurance to some employee based on the organization’s size and the number of hours an employee works. Workforce management is the solution companies will turn to keep track of these important issues, including overtime obligations (or, from a company perspective, help them avoid spending too much money on overtime).

For other public sector organizations, a robust workforce management solution is also necessary to assure that labor is being allocated to different projects correctly. According to workforce management solutions provider Kronos (News - Alert), many government agencies and educational institutions such as state universities are collecting are collecting a great deal of workforce information, but this information is  often trapped in disparate systems and silos, which makes it largely useless. Workforce analytics applications can be deployed to help public sector organizations to avoid expensive mistakes and ensure that labor utilization is reported back to the funding source correctly.

“Like any other year, in 2014 the public sector leadership will be charged with increasing accountability and transparency,” said Christine Carmichael, director of the public sector practice group for Kronos. “But what will be different are the more imminent cost pressures resulting from an uncertain economy and the upcoming healthcare reform. Increasing efficiencies around payroll and other workforce processes can be a game changer for the public sector as the workforce is typically a public sector organization’s largest controllable expense.”

As the workforce becomes more mobile, solutions that can scale across mobile devices and platforms will also become necessary. Together with analytics and cloud-based solutions, mobile workforce management applications boost efficiency, eliminate errors and also improve employee engagement.

As workforce management solutions become more feature-rich and complex, however, some in the industry say it’s critical they remain easy to use. While workforce management solutions may have been traditionally kept by one or two knowledgeable (and trained) employees, as more workers and managers are affected by them, they must remain easy to use. Otherwise, public sector organizations might find themselves with very expensive solutions that no one will use.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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