I recently attended WorkForce Software’s VISION 2017. The WFM vendor held its annual user conference in New Orleans from March 13 to 16, 2017. WorkForce Software went to great lengths to showcase its latest product functionality in sessions and at demo stations. Here are the five things that caught my attention as being innovative or unique:
1. Graphical Entitlement Balances
Employees often struggle to understand how their entitlement balances are calculated. The number of vacation or sick days reported in a pay stub or in a self-service screen represents a snapshot. It does not reflect how leave is going to be accrued or how a balance is affected by planned time off. WorkForce Software’s product WorkForce Time & Attendance addresses this problem. It provides employees with a visual display of their vacation, sick and other balances overtime. A timeline shows balances increasing as leave is accrued and decreasing when time off is taken or planned.
2. Period Balancing
Scheduling employees with contracted hours – common with certain white-collar hourly workers in the US and prevalent with a broader segment of employees in Europe or Australia – can be particularly difficult since most WFM systems tend to think about schedules on a weekly basis. WorkForce Software’s WorkForce Forecasting & Scheduling now includes functionality that helps to spread hours contracted over a period of weeks or months based on business demand. This ensures that employers maximize contracted hours while ensuring employees work when they are most needed.
3. Absence Compliance Tracker
Most employers struggle to manage long-term leave. Employers face a plethora of complex federal and state leave regulations. On top of that, employers need to document details about absences to ensure compliance and prevent abuse. WorkForce Absence Compliance Tracker provides a TurboTax-like interface to make sense of these complex laws and track all the decisions and documentation required for employers to comply.
4. Compliance Support
WorkForce Software takes compliance seriously because their customers and prospects take it seriously. For a while, WorkForce Software offered a compliance guarantee, promising to keep its customer compliant with applicable labor laws. However, that offering became impractical because employers interpret wage and hour laws differently. Still, the company invests heavily to provide users with the information needed to comply with applicable labor laws. Not only does this include in-application alerts that tell users when an employee may be violating a law but also includes a compliance portal that provides up to date information about labor laws and upcoming changes to those laws.
5. Vacation and Job Bidding
Collective bargaining agreements often require employees bid on the jobs or shifts they work and vacations they take. Implementing job and vacation bidding is challenging with most WFM systems which offer limited functionality or require extensive customization to support specific rules. WorkForce Software offers a bidding module that makes it easy to create and manage bid packages. It supports a combination of seniority-based and preferential bidding methods. It allows users to easily override settings to allow for exceptions that often make a simple bidding process complex.
In conclusion, WorkForce Software is working hard to deliver innovative workforce management solutions. The company is hiring more than 80 developers and has established a transparent three-year product roadmap. For more information about WorkForce Software’s strategy, check out my VISION 2017 show report.
