Benefits of Workforce Management Powered By AI

The benefits of workforce management are too great to miss out on for any organization looking to maximize labor efficiency and employee engagement. At Legion, this is our area of expertise. Let’s discuss the benefits of a workforce management (WFM) strategy that enables intelligent automation.

From streamlining employee scheduling to improving productivity and reducing costs, an effective workforce management system can significantly impact your company’s bottom line. Intelligent automation transforms your labor operations and empowers your operations and HR teams to improve decision-making and execution while improving the employee experience.

By using AI-native workforce management software that enables intelligent automation, you’ll be able to provide a better experience for your hourly employees through gig-like schedule flexibility and control, modern communication tools, and instant access to earned wages, all while optimizing labor costs.

And, using these tools can even increase customer satisfaction. How? When your employees experience the benefits of workforce management built with modern technology, their jobs become easier, making them happier and your customers happier too.

 

 

Benefits of Workforce Management that Enables Intelligent Automation

Implementing a strong workforce management strategy is crucial for maximizing labor efficiency and employee engagement simultaneously. This is especially true for retailers. Today’s WFM software must be intelligent, automated, and employee-centric. Here are some key features that it should provide.

Improved Demand Forecasting and Labor Optimization

AI-powered demand forecasting has been proven by Forrester Consulting to improve forecast accuracy by up to 8% resulting in more than $6M in savings for a company with 10k employees moving from a legacy WFM system. Companies can automatically and precisely predict demand by location, item, and channel — in 15-minute increments.

Legion’s award-winning demand forecasting engine continuously synthesizes thousands of data points, including operational data and future events like weather and local events, to automatically create the optimal labor plan without human intervention. And the system continuously gets smarter. It learns and adapts to changing business conditions so forecasts remain highly accurate.

Automated Scheduling

Workforce management systems make it possible to create the optimal schedule in a single click. When powered by AI, this software can instantly generate optimal schedules that match business needs based on demand forecasts, business rules, budget constraints, and compliance factors with employees’ skills and preferences.

Efficient Time and Attendance

With intelligent automation powered by AI-native WFM, punch exceptions and cumbersome time and attendance processes can become a thing of the past. Timesheet approvals, corrections, and premium calculations can all be done automatically. Managers can focus on the exceptions versus spending time on the routine. And managers can be more responsive to employee requests while spending less time on the tasks themselves, thanks to the automation of business rules.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Data-driven WFM solutions can synthesize massive volumes of data to deliver actionable insights for labor efficiency and employee engagement improvements. Companies can get valuable insight into compliance trends and performance assessments against objectives.

Better Employee Engagement

With intelligent automation powered by modern WFM, employees get gig-like schedule flexibility and control, modern communication tools, and instant access to earned wages which can improve the engagement of your hourly employees. Self-service tools for employees enable them to swap shifts and claim open shifts without cumbersome processes or approvals. Managers can instantly approve shift swaps and shift claims.

Reduce Costs with AI-Native Workforce Management Systems

A good workforce management approach can reduce labor expenses considerably. With workforce management software like Legion WFM, managers can spend more time on revenue-generating activities such as interacting with customers and training their teams and less time on admin tasks.

• Accurate forecasting: Workforce management tools use machine learning algorithms to analyze historical data and predict future demand accurately. This helps you have the right amount of staff on the job – no more, no less. A 1% improvement in demand forecast accuracy can lead to a .5% decrease in labor costs.
• Overtime reduction: An automated employee scheduling system helps prevent excessive labor costs associated with unplanned overtime hours. Legion WFM uses machine learning algorithms to schedule the right number of employees at the right time. You’ll monitor employee hours in real-time, identify potential overtime situations before they occur, and proactively manage schedules to reduce overtime expenses.
• Labor law compliance: A robust workforce management system will automatically enforce company policies and local labor laws within the scheduling process, reducing the risk of compliance issues.
• Better Time Management: Automate HR processes such as attendance tracking and payroll processing will free up valuable time for your HR team to focus on more strategic tasks.

For more examples, read our use case on optimizing labor costs.

Investing in a comprehensive workforce management solution can lead to long-term financial benefits. By using WFM tools to improve the productivity levels of your employees, you’ll also boost customer satisfaction rates.

An effective workforce management strategy streamlines communication between employees even as they work remotely, ultimately leading to better productivity overall. Implementing an effective workforce management strategy also efficiency within your organization overall.

Gain Insights Into Your Organization’s Performance

You should know how your organization measures up in today’s highly competitive corporate landscape. Workforce management tools allow you to analyze labor costs in real-time, helping you make informed decisions on staffing levels and identify areas for cost savings.

By monitoring individual employees’ productivity levels, HR managers can quickly identify top performers and those needing additional support or training. Accurate time tracking prevents unnecessary overtime expenses, as it can identify excessive working hour patterns.

A robust workforce management strategy provides actionable insights based on data-driven analytics, empowering decision-makers to optimize processes, improve customer satisfaction, and drive overall business growth.

Increase Data Transparency with WFM Software

Workforce management tools that provide real-time data on labor costs, employee performance, scheduling efficiency, and more.

• Labor Costs: Track and analyze labor expenses, including overtime costs and shift premiums. Say goodbye to spending more on overstaffing or being caught understaffed and losing revenue opportunities.
• Employee Performance: Monitor individual employees’ productivity levels by evaluating their adherence to schedules and assigned tasks. Refine their training and reward them based on performance objectively, not subjectively.

Increased visibility of this data promotes accountability among team members, resulting in improved operational efficiency and financial performance. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, workforce management software like Legion WFM can effectively optimize these processes that usually consume too many resources.

Improve The Accuracy of Your Demand Forecasts

Legion WFM offers highly accurate and detailed forecasts that continuously improve over time. By analyzing historical and current data on customer buying patterns, our software can effectively account for demand drivers and upcoming events such as weather conditions or holidays.

Our solution is designed to adapt seamlessly to changes in your business operations. As new information becomes available, our Demand Forecasting feature continually enhances its precision, generating updated projections and labor recommendations instantly while still allowing for human input.

Easily Manage Time & Attendance Tasks

Keeping track of attendance in real-time can be a challenging task. Managers who oversee widely dispersed workplaces or large retail stores often require more visibility into their employees’ clock status. Additionally, monitoring trends is a tedious and time-consuming job.

A good retail workforce management software should provide a way of managing time and attendance activities in real time. Legion WFM provides managers with an easy-to-use dashboard that updates every minute and offers immediate insight into scheduled activities, weekly hours worked by employees, clock-in/out status, meal break details, and employees nearing overtime limits. With this information at their fingertips, managers can make necessary schedule adjustments for their locations in real time.

Streamline Scheduling So Everyone Benefits

Let’s dive deeper into automated scheduling. Implementing a modern workforce management system can cut scheduling time in half.

Did you know that one of the main reasons hourly employees quit is because of their schedules? Through the power of retail workforce management software that’s automated, intelligent, and employee-centric, managers can match business needs (based on demand, budgets, compliance, and business rules) with employees’ skills and preferences 96% of the time.

Workforce management tools eliminate errors and save time by automating the creation of schedules based on business needs and employees’ skills and availability. It takes into account the following factors while always allowing for human control:

• Predictive scheduling and labor laws by city and state
• Business policies such as the number of employees who must be present to open or close a location or the particular skills required to properly staff a shift
• Employee schedule preferences and skills

Managers can maintain a positive work environment where everyone feels valued and supported in their roles within the organization.

How Intelligent Automation Enhances Workforce Management Overall

Legion Technologies enables intelligent automation to optimize our workforce management tools and software, increasing employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

• Demand forecasting: Our AI-driven software accurately predicts staffing requirements based on demand drivers such as local weather, events, and more. Usually, this is left up to guesswork, but with intelligent automation, it’s effortless and accurate.
• Labor optimization: Optimizing schedules while minimizing labor costs manually is time-consuming and leaves too much room for human error. One of the benefits of workforce management that leverages AI is that it eliminates this.
• Automated Scheduling: Manual scheduling is time-consuming, frustrating, and often leads to inefficient employee communication. When you use AI-based scheduling software and connect your employees with a mobile app, everything from shift swapping to compliance, to creating equitable and fair schedules becomes easy.
• Time and Attendance: Our time management solution automates attendance tracking processes. This helps managers and their teams stay accountable and ensures accurate payroll calculations while reducing manual errors.
• Employee engagement: Our employee engagement tools are also powered by AI insights from HR data analytics. They help managers create personalized development plans for each team member based on their unique strengths and weaknesses.

By selecting a retail workforce management partner that enables intelligent automation, you will empower your HR team with actionable insights that drive better decision-making across the organization.

Want to Learn More About the Benefits of Workforce Management?

Legion enables intelligent automation to help retail companies with over 500 employees improve their workforce management processes. We empower the C-suite, operations teams, and HR leaders to make informed decisions that positively impact the bottom line while improving employee satisfaction and engagement.

Even better: We take it one step further by leveraging machine learning in our software solutions. By incorporating AI-enhanced systems like demand forecasting, labor optimization, automated scheduling, time and attendance, you’ll reap all the benefits of workforce management and intelligent automation. Schedule a demo with us today to learn how to implement modern WFM practices in your organization.