As an enterprise-wide strategy, automating workforce scheduling is just beginning to emerge as part of the solution for labor cost control. Rather than merely streamlining the scheduling process, a labor scheduling initiative needs a more strategic goal. It should focus on eliminating labor waste and establishing labor cost control.
With a business focus on labor cost control, Tugboat’s employee scheduling software, SOS, fully automates workforce scheduling and provides needed tools for spotting labor waste.
Often, in the face of rising competitive pressure, enterprise executives decide the only way to achieve labor cost control is to either shutter a plant or close and reopen it without a labor agreement. Optimizing labor assignments with your existing labor pool provides an alternative. It enables you to make the most effective use of every member of your workforce and achieve labor cost control. Workforce schedule optimization exploits the connection between scheduling and labor cost control.
A Resource for Labor Cost Control
Plant schedulers often have difficulty creating an optimized schedule for a large number of jobs on multiple shifts. Tugboat’s workforce scheduling solution reduces labor cost it to its lowest possible level by creating an optimized schedule which enables labor cost control.
When trying to control labor cost, the scheduling process needs to be centralized. If each department manager or shift supervisor is free to override the schedule, or free to cherry-pick their own crew, companies will not meet their labor cost control objective. Schedule optimization only works to control labor cost if it is free to move workers from one job assignment to another.
Three Stage Implementation Plan in Controlling Enterprise Labor Costs
A three-stage implementation plan is needed to establish a new culture based labor cost control.
- Establish control of the existing scheduling process
- Improve employee satisfaction for the typical line worker (Enable employee control over preferred job assignments, and automate requests for time off)
- Target labor waste (Stages 1 and 2 put everything in place to spotlight and eliminate labor waste and control labor cost)
Are you in need of a labor cost control enterprise strategy? Tugboat Software can help. Contact us today!
