How to Manage a Complex and Dynamic Workforce Effectively

As Australian businesses continue to evolve, employers are managing increasingly complex and dynamic workforces.

When managing a workforce of this nature, it's common to face challenges of compliance, onboarding, scheduling, and award interpretation - all things crucial to the success of your business. Below we dig into the challenges, as well as the best tool you can use to manage your workforce more effectively, no matter the industry or business size.

Onboarding new hires at speed

Whether you're a single-site business with a small team of staff, or a national operation with venues right across Australia, onboarding new staff is often one of the most time-consuming activities for businesses.

Preparing and sending through the necessary paperwork, outlining roles and responsibilities, making sure employees know the company's ins and outs, providing training courses and policies to ensure staff are ready to go from day one - all are important aspects of onboarding that can quickly become time-consuming and overwhelming.

By implementing a workforce management platform that streamlines the onboarding process, you can save time on admin and get employees working faster to accelerate the success of your business. For example, the foundU onboarding module enables your employees to enter all their required details directly into the employee app, creating a seamless onboarding experience. You can also customise your onboarding journeys to request the right documents and information - ensuring your staff are ready to go for their first shift. 

Nobody knows the power of effective onboarding software like Mandeep Singh from National Protective Services. Thanks to the foundU platform, National Protective Services has scaled up its workforce to take on even bigger security contracts while saving thousands of hours on onboarding new staff.

Smart employee scheduling

After onboarding new employees, scheduling staff can be one of the biggest challenges for businesses with complex workforces. 

We know that getting schedules just right is no picnic, but it's crucial to the success of your business. Schedules are often based on various factors like labour costs and worker qualifications, but once you start adding in multiple venues, leave management, visa and RSA compliance, staff communication, shift swaps, and more, it can easily become complicated.

A smart employee scheduling system can simplify this process for most businesses. foundU’s single-screen scheduling tool shows employee availability and status at scheduling, making it a cinch to create and publish schedules in minutes. You can set budgets by day or week, then see and control your wage costs in real-time. You can see staff positions and availability across venues, and even offer shifts to employees when you need them filled.

Keeping on top of compliance

Managing a complex and dynamic workforce often includes juggling a range of compliance requirements. These can include anything from working visas right through to the responsible service of alcohol, white cards or medical qualifications.

Capturing and recording all of this information can be challenging without the right system, and that's before ensuring everything stays up-to-date. Even having one employee work with expired qualifications can become a costly issue for businesses. 

Keeping on top of compliance can be easy with a workforce management platform. With foundU, employee qualifications and documentation can be stored against a single employee profile, ready to be reviewed at any time. It also allows you to report on expired qualifications, automate reminders sent to employees close to expiry dates, complete automated VEVO checks, store vaccination status against employee profiles, and more - everything you need to run a compliant operation.

Ensuring correct award interpretation

Australia's fast-changing legislative environment has unique workplace laws that can complicate payroll. Part of this legislation includes modern awards.

Modern awards detail the minimum wage and working conditions for millions of Australians working across a range of industries. These awards are reviewed and updated each financial year by a panel of experts convened by the Fair Work Commission. Their goal is to ensure that wages are aligned with national living standards. 

The challenge for businesses, particularly those with a range of employee roles, is correctly interpreting these awards. There are more than 100 modern awards, each with its own pay rules. In addition, while the annual increases are mostly standardised, it can be difficult to blindly apply blanket percentages, as some rates are rounded down and others rounded up.

Implementing workforce management software is a great way to ensure correct award interpretation. foundU's native payroll calculator can correctly interpret any modern awards, enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs), and pay rules a business requires. The most agile in the industry, it gives businesses certainty that staff are getting paid the right penalty rates, overtime, and allowances.

The foundU rate rise tool also makes it easy to apply minimum wage increases and adjust charge-out rates - you can do it individually or in bulk with just a few clicks!

The bottom line...

When managing a complex and dynamic workforce, you can face many challenges. Implementing an all-in-one workforce management platform can help iron out any issues, streamline your business and enhance your success.

The foundU platform is Australia's only true, all-in-one workforce management software. It helps over 500 Australian businesses keep on top of compliance, onboard staff at speed, generate accurate schedules, and ensure correct award interpretation for an always-accurate payroll. 

Want to know more? Book a Demo.