When it comes to the importance of business leaders and HR departments preparing for the year ahead and beyond, innovation keynote speaker, futurist, and author Robert Tucker hit the nail on the head with this statement in a recent Forbes article:
“As much change as has taken place in the prior decade, I don’t believe we have grasped the extent of the changes ahead in the 2020s. Organizations and their leaders will rise or fall, prosper or be blindsided, based on their ability and willingness to anticipate and creatively respond to rapid change. I encourage my clients to ‘assault assumptions’ and blow up the traditional human resource department’s short-sightedness and instead look, think and act ahead of the curve.”
With this in mind, we’ll look at how you can bring your workload forecasting into the 2020s with a modern approach and the right technology. Although it’s been strongly supported by software solutions for some time, some organizations still find themselves in the rut of using outdated systems to forecast workloads.
If your organization is one of those – perhaps still trying to forecast availability in Excel – it’s time to relook your strategy and bring your data management into the 2020s.
Relying on an outdated workload forecasting model may result in any number of the following drawbacks:
- Having multiple document versions
- Ending up with duplicate jobs
- Causing confusion as to who is already working on a particular project
- Having fluctuations or imbalances in workloads
- Ending up with frustrated employees
- Breaking down team morale
- Wasting time and valuable resources
- Risking increased attrition
Fortunately, there’s no need for your workload forecast to be a laborious task that ultimately has a counterproductive effect on workflow and productivity levels. Thanks to advanced software like viUtilize, you can manage your workload forecasting with a strategic and modern edge, staying up to date with today’s business demands and tech-rich climate.
What exactly is workload forecasting software?
Workload forecasting software helps organizations anticipate upcoming work and employee availability so they can schedule accordingly. When staffing projects and allocating tasks, they can consider who is free, as well as what experience, skills, and competencies they bring to the table. Managers can get an instant view of how busy any number of team members are, which gives them the information they need to strategically schedule work or determine a team’s overall capacity for more projects.
Not only can organizations enure that they’re putting the right people on each project and assignment, they can also monitor individual employee workloads. A workload forecast helps make sure everyone is being given enough work to stay productive, but not so much that they risk burnout or poor performance.
Ultimately, it’s taking the guesswork out of the equation and using actual data to predict the future and make informed decisions. Better navigation of workload and scheduling decisions can also contribute to more effective management of your most important resource: your people.
LEARN MORE: The value of workload forecasting software
What should you look for in workload forecasting software?
As a business leader wanting to ready your organization for the 2020s, you should make sure that your workload forecast requirements can be met by a software solution that is future ready. The model you choose should have the following capabilities:
- Easy-to-use dashboards that provide an instant, accurate view of team information, such as available skills and capacity for more work;
- The ability to allocate work across teams, practice groups, and departments based on actual availability information
- Easy configuration to ensure practice groups and departments can customize the software to track availability according to their required timeframe, whether by day, week, or month
- The ability to add rich data about each team member to allow for improved visibility over certain information, including academic qualifications, native languages, experience, demographics, and more
- An easy and intuitive interface that minimizes the time it takes for professionals to update their availability
Ready your organization for the future with vi
viUtilize is one of our people management software modules and it integrates with your existing software to modernize the way your business manages workload scheduling. It puts you in the driver’s seat of using data to assess your capacity for work and scheduling people for upcoming projects and assignments.
Like all our software, it’s customizable and can be tailored to the needs of each of your departments or practice groups. viUtilize generates color-coded reports that give an instant indication of current workloads and your workload forecast. For professional services firms, this can help track and improve your utilization rate by showing you exactly how much each person is being scheduled.
We put all the information in your hands so you can quickly and strategically schedule your employees. Then you can compare that projected information with performance results to see if your scheduling decisions were effective and how they can be improved.
Our software streamlines the entire process of workload forecasting. It prevents frustration, saves you time, and ultimately gives your organization a competitive edge as it embraces change with an innovative mindset in the 2020s.
LEARN MORE: Increase productivity with our software, viUtilize