Why choose an internationally-dimensioned Workforce Management solution for time registration and staff rostering? We see at least four advantages. Read on and learn about our view on the advantages and examples from companies who use ProMark as a solution across national boundaries.
Maximising the company’s productivity preoccupies most managers in larger organisations. It is the company’s competitiveness that is at stake.
In this regard, Workforce Management plays a pivotal role.
What characterises an international Workforce Management solution?
An international Workforce Management solution is characterised by a central core system for time and attendance, staff rostering and reporting, which also works locally despite differences in the regulatory framework for the labour market and in internal HR policies.
While the solution can both be used by the employees and administered decentrally, group management also get a uniform and directly comparable overview of productivity trends among the remunerated resources across the company’s locations or markets.
Four advantages worth considering
Time and attendance, staff rostering and productivity reporting do not necessarily need to be a local matter simply because the individual country is subject to local labour market conditions and regulatory framework in relation to working hours, overtime, flexitime, absence, holidays and remuneration.
Quite the contrary! There are at least four advantages in choosing an internationally-dimensioned Workforce Management solution:
#1 Internationally comparable management insights
One of the most important advantages is the ability to make well-informed decisions on optimisation in relation to productivity targets.
On the basis of reliable and directly comparable insights into the organisation’s most efficient work processes and behaviour across national boundaries, management, finance department and HR are able to make changes to the staff rostering and work processes in order to maximise productivity, reduce absence due to illness or reduce the cost of, for example, overtime.
At VikingGenetics, the majority of employees work in cowsheds and laboratories in Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Until recently, time registration and staff rostering was done with the help of a pen and paper in Denmark and locally-based T&A systems in Finland and Sweden.
In the spring of 2016, the company implemented ProMark as a common Workforce Management solution. The ambition behind this was to reduce overtime costs in the three countries.
In the short term, Group Business Controller, Andreas Storm, expects it to provide a better overview across the different countries:
“With the new joint T&A system, we expect to get a far better and uniform overview of our employees’ working patterns and overtime in the different cowsheds and laboratories in the Nordic region. The overview will give us a unique opportunity to improve our staff rostering and achieve higher productivity levels, irrespective of local working time rules and agreements.”
#2 Uniform HR and payroll administration
Another advantage is intended to improve the company’s ability to streamline the execution of its HR policy and the administrative processes in the HR and payroll departments.
With a joint system for the collection and processing of working hours and absence data it will be possible to implement an international HR policy in which rules, for example, for approvals relating to absence due to illness or other reasons, overtime and holidays are standardised in a digitally automated HR and payroll administration process.
#3 Centralised and scalable IT contracts and management
Many major companies centralise their support functions in Shared Services units. This increases the IT purchasers’ expectations in relation to both transparency and simplicity in the international IT infrastructure.
By acquiring an international Workforce Management solution, the purchasers are getting a simpler overview of costs and technical requirements – and the need for management of local contracts is eliminated. Moreover, both IT management and support are centralised and thus simplified.
At the same time, the company’s options for a quick and cost-effective scaling of the Workforce Management system’s expansion from country to country are strengthened.
#4 Synergies through a shared platform and common language
A fourth advantage is the possibility of a more flexible and experience-based implementation of time registration, staff rostering and correct calculation of wages from country to country.
Taking the existing knowledge held by employees and super users in the organisation as a point of departure, an internationally-dimensioned Workforce Management solution can be implemented more quickly in another country by virtue of best practices and the same language being used for solving problems and expected results.
In Sweden, Swedish-owned Lantmännen Unibake, with headquarters in Denmark and a number of factories internationally, has several years’ experience with Workforce Management and time registration.
In Denmark and Germany, the ambition is to implement standardised, automated and locally anchored data collection on time & attendance and absence among the hourly-paid employees. The solution has been rolled out in Denmark, Germany will follow soon.
In this regard, Morten Green Jeppesen, who is the IT Manager for Denmark and Germany, experiences clear advantages associated with internationally scalable Workforce Management solutions:
“We already have the super users and access to the core system so, on the basis of that, we will achieve synergies in relation to quicker implementation and the organisation’s existing knowledge of the processes in the system.”
In general, Morten Green Jeppesen is looking forward to helping management and the organisation produce much better and more accurate data on working hours and absence at the various production sites.
“In Denmark, we are well up to speed with the data collection in our T&A system. In the short term, we must learn from this and produce data of a better quality than the German time registration and reporting processes are able to produce today using pen and paper.”
In the longer term, he expects significant time savings in the processes for handling absence due to illness and payroll administration:
“Once the implementation has been completed, we will have an internationally standardised tool for easier and more precise handling of absence due to illness and export of payroll data to, for example, our payroll systems and to external parties’ systems in Denmark and Germany respectively.”
Those were just four of the advantages. Depending on the company’s productivity targets, HR administrative core processes and general ambitions in relation to its competitiveness, there could be more.
If this sounds interesting to you and you would like to learn more, let us take a look at your options.
