UKG has been at the forefront of providing cutting edge workforce management solutions to manufacturers globally. In an interview with Manufacturing Today, Sumeet Doshi, Sr. Director and Country Manager – India at UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group) tells how businesses can better manage their most valuable asset – their workforce – by using technology to achieve a competitive advantage.
Here are the excerpts:
How has the nature of the workforce changed in the manufacturing Industry? What are some major trends that you are seeing?
One of the major workforce trends we are seeing in the manufacturing sector is the increasing diversity and complexity of the workforce. Manufacturers always had white collared, blue collared and contract workforces to manage their operations. Over the last few years this complexity has only been increasing by the addition of categories like gig, etc. All this complexity adds to greater challenges in managing the workforce like contract workforce compliance, etc.
The pandemic has also added an additional dimension to workforce categorisation. Today manufacturers also need to look at workforce in categories such as hybrid workforce, work from home workforce or work from factory. All these changes cause significantly increased complexity in how manufacturers manage their workforce.
Despite all this complexity manufacturers need to drive better employee engagement. Research continues to show that a well-substantiated relationship exists between employee engagement and business results. However, one size doesn’t fit all. This is where workforce management technology can help manufacturing organisations increase employee engagement across categories as it helps absorb the complexity of work policies, compliances etc across categories of employees and drive better outcomes.
Agility is key to responding to change. How can organisations ensure they have the right level of agility when it comes to their workforce?
Agility is key to responding to change and driving better productivity, increased profitability. The ability to respond and react in real-time to, say, changes in a shift is key to better outcomes. However, when it comes to agility around the workforce manufacturers tend to have the least amount of visibility. For example, many manufacturers suffer significant first hour shift start productivity loss as they do not have real-time visibility on the availability status of their employees. And end up taking 30-45 minutes to fully man the shift. Similarly there are many other situations where manufacturers are not able to respond with agility as they lack the tools and technology to provide them real-time visibility – like Overtime Management. This is where workforce management technology comes in. With its ability to provide real-time visibility on aspects like plan vs schedule, availability, absence, Overtime etc it provides manufacturers with the missing tools to be highly agile with their workforce.
Workforce management tools can provide managers and employees with easy-to-use decision support tools that evaluate multiple variables and make intelligent recommendations, such as who is best qualified to replace a no-call, no show, or alerting employees when an extra shift is up for grabs driving operational agility.
With the pandemic, what changes should be made within manufacturing organisations to ensure employee safety and wellbeing?
A Workforce Management Reset Survey in 2020 commissioned by Kronos (UKG) and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) highlighted that surveyed employers cited Employee Health & Safety (63%), Workplace sanitation & hygiene (54%), and implementing social distancing measures (62%) as three key challenges to be addressed as they resumed work at the office. With the pandemic employees needed to know that their employers are taking all necessary precautions to safeguard their interests so they can continue to put in their best with very minimal anxiety. Manufacturing employees did not have the luxury to work from home. To deliver better comfort to employees, manufacturers have focussed a lot on trying to make the work spaces as safe as possible – both through the usage of technology as well as re-defined processes.
What kind of role do you see technology playing here? How a company such as yours can help organisations de‐risk their workforce.
Employee safety and wellbeing has become more critical than ever. At UKG, we are helping organisations track the complete experience, right from when the employee leaves his home, through his time at work, till he reaches back home, as these are critical elements of the employee journey. We call it home-to-home. We offer a seamless experience through our scheduling solutions combined with AI and analytics.
From an employee safety and wellbeing perspective, organisations are investing in workforce technologies and tools to create a contactless and safe environment for their employees. A mobile-first and contactless workplace needs to leverage the benefits of the cloud to not only empower their employees and make them feel more in control of their schedule and safety but also help employers better manage their onsite workforce. For example, manufacturers have invested in facial recognition for attendance capture or deployed tools that can do contact tracing. Vaccine management is another area where they are investing. Staggered scheduling based on skills and availability is another way where they are trying to ensure employee wellbeing.
A highly engaged workforce is key to getting the best out of your people. What are your views around improving workforce engagement especially when we look at categories like blue-collared workers, contract workers etc.
You are spot on. A highly engaged workforce delivers better results. But more often than not all the organisational interventions around employee engagement are driven around the white collared workforce. Categories of employees like blue-collared workers, contract workers have traditionally been ignored. This is changing today with the adoption of workforce management technologies that help drive better last mile employee engagement. WFM Technology can help you to empower your frontline employees.
By embracing a people-centric workforce management technology approach organisations will actively improve the blue-collar and contract employee experience. It’s proven that organisations that actively engage their team members experience better business results.
How can technology play a role in leveraging the workforce as a competitive advantage?
Organisations need to move up the maturity curve from considering blue-collared and contract employees as a cost to considering them a competitive advantage. And this is where workforce management technology can really help.