Deskless Workforce Management

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this lesson, you’ll know:

• What Deskless Workforce Management (DWM) is all about
• The key differences between scheduling, rostering and timekeeping
• Why effective DWM is crucial for managing mobile workers

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What is Deskless Workforce Management (DWM)?

Deskless Workforce Management (DWM) ensures that the right workers are assigned to the right jobs at the right time, maximizing efficiency, productivity, and job satisfaction. Unlike traditional office-based workforce management, Deskless Workforce Management needs to account for workers who are constantly on the move, working at different locations, often with changing schedules.

Key areas of Deskless Workforce Management include:

• Workforce Planning: Creating a long-term plan for who will work when and where over a specific period. Workforce planning is also known as Rostering.
• Scheduling: Assigning workers to jobs and tasks on a daily basis.
• Timekeeping: Tracking work hours, shifts, and ensuring compliance with labor regulations.
• Geo-Tracking: The ability to see in realtime where your workers are for effective routing.
• Job dispatching: Dynamically assigning tasks to mobile workers in real-time based on availability, location, and skill set.

First and foremost Skedulo is a scheduling solution. I mean, the name kind of gives it away. Yes, while we are a scheduling solution, this doesn’t mean we don’t include aspects of other workforce management methodologies. Our solution is super flexible and be customised to meet a range of different use cases, so it’s not uncommon for the terminology of rostering or time and attendance to be thrown around.

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Scheduling vs Rostering

Let’s take a moment to clear up a common question: what’s the difference between scheduling and rostering? Both terms might seem interchangeable at first, but in the context of workforce management—and particularly in Skedulo—there are some key differences. So let’s break it down and clear the air:

Scheduling:

Scheduling is all about assigning a specific job to a worker at a designated time. When you schedule a worker, you’re focused on matching them to a task, making sure they have the skills and availability to get the job done. It’s a dynamic process that happens regularly and might change day-to-day based on demand.

Think of it like this: You’re a plumbing company and a client calls up with an urgent request to come fix a broken water pipe. An urgent maintenance job is quickly created in Skedulo, allocated to a resource nearby and dispatched.

Key Aspects

• Task-Oriented: Scheduling primarily deals with assigning tasks, jobs, or activities to resources (which can be machines, equipment, or people) over a specific period.
• Objective Optimization: It aims to optimize certain objectives such as minimizing completion time, maximizing resource utilization, or meeting deadlines.
• Broad Application: Scheduling is used in various contexts like field service (assigning people and equipment to a job), project management (planning tasks), and logistics (vehicle routing).

In Skedulo, you’ll be using suggest or optimisation to make sure the right worker is at the right place at the right time, handling the exact job that needs to be completed.

Rostering:

Rostering is about managing recurring work and the overall workforce availability over a longer period. Instead of focusing on the specific tasks, you’re looking at who is available to work and when. This is more about coverage and ensuring you have the right number of employees available during different periods, whether it’s over a week or a month.

Picture this: You’re planning coverage for a service centre, 2 weeks from now. You need to ensure there are enough available employees with the right skillsets for the site to operate properly.

Key Aspects

• People-Oriented: Rostering specifically involves assigning staff or employees to shifts, duties, or time slots over a scheduling horizon (like a week or a month).
• Constraint Consideration: It might consider factors such as labor laws, employee availability, skills, preferences, rest periods, and fair distribution of workload.
• Workforce Management: Rostering is a subset of scheduling focused on human resources and is essential in industries like healthcare, hospitality, and retail.

In Skedulo, you’ll be using analytics, optimisation and our communication tools to make sure everything can go ahead as planned with minimal disruptions, while still meeting the needs of your customers.

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Why is Deskless Workforce Management Important?

Without an effective DWM strategy, businesses can face significant challenges:

• Operational inefficiency: Imagine a technician driving across town for a job when there was a closer one they could have tackled first. DWM helps optimize resource allocation by matching workers to jobs more effectively.
• Overstaffing or understaffing: With poor planning, businesses risk scheduling too many workers (leading to unnecessary costs) or too few (resulting in missed deadlines and unhappy customers).
• Employee dissatisfaction: Constantly adjusting schedules or failing to properly plan can lead to burnout and dissatisfaction among employees, which can hurt productivity and increase turnover.

Skedulo’s dynamic scheduling and job dispatching tools ensure that jobs are assigned efficiently, taking into account worker location, skills, and real-time availability. This helps businesses cut down on wasted time and resources, while also improving employee satisfaction by offering predictability and transparency.

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A 360° View of Deskless Workforce Management

Managing a deskless workforce requires more than just tracking who’s on the clock. Here’s a full view of what DWM involves, especially with Skedulo in the mix:

1. Real-Time Scheduling: With deskless workers, things can change quickly. Skedulo’s dynamic scheduling allows for real-time updates and reassignments, ensuring that workers are dispatched efficiently.
2. Visibility of Mobile Workforce: Knowing where your workers are and what they’re doing is crucial. Skedulo provides real-time visibility, helping schedulers make data-driven decisions quickly.
3. Resource Optimization: DWM is about assigning the right people to the right tasks. Skedulo ensures that jobs are matched with workers based on location, skills, and availability—eliminating guesswork.
4. Communication & Collaboration: Mobile workers need to stay in touch with managers and dispatchers. Skedulo’s in-app messaging and job status updates ensure smooth, real-time communication, reducing the risk of delays or confusion.
5. Reporting & Analytics: Over time, Skedulo collects valuable data that can be analyzed to improve efficiency, identify bottlenecks, and fine-tune workforce operations. Businesses can use these insights to continuously improve their DWM strategy.

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Key Takeaways

• Deskless Workforce Management (DWM) is the strategy of ensuring that mobile workers are scheduled efficiently, resources are optimized, and the workforce remains productive.
• Scheduling, rostering ad timekeeping, are all different elements within DWM. Skedulo’s powerful tools focus primarily on scheduling and job dispatching, but can also be configured to handle a range of different workforce management methodologies.
• Effective DWM with tools like Skedulo reduces inefficiencies, optimizes resource allocation, and improves both worker satisfaction and customer outcomes.