Staffing Level Planning & Job Bidding

January 26, 2012

One of our General Mills customers recently re-bid 96 jobs. This was due to installation of some new equipment. When they’ve had to do this in the past, with a workforce of over 400, this was an administrative nightmare: the workers filling out individual bid sheets, sorting through the bids, ranking them in seniority order, awarding new bids. Then due to bumping, they’d have to do it over again figuring jobs that needed to be re-bid.

Tugboat’s recently launched tools have automated this entire process. A staffing level planning tool enables management to plan the number of needed jobs. It automatically posts the new jobs to a job bidding window which is available to all employees via Tugboat’s self-service portal. This allows employees to do the rest by themselves. The bids stay open for two weeks so they can also cancel and prioritize their bids. The bids are processed automatically when the bidding closes. All this with no paper!

Had they continued doing this by hand, explains the General Mills scheduler, it would have taken over 2 month.  “It made our life a lot better. Tugboat got us through the bidding process more accurately. A planner’s dreams come true”.

Does this situation occur with your workforce? When the workforce is increased or decreased in size? Or for simple open jobs when someone leaves the workforce?