Migrating From UKG Workforce Central to UKG Dimensions?

UKG Dimensions (formerly Kronos Workforce Dimensions) has drawn increasing interest over the past year as many Workforce Central users are finally considering to make this leap. No doubt, new challenges brought on by the COVID-19 response these last several months have created a pressure test for businesses across all sectors. Leaders of these businesses are drawn to the idea of implementing adaptable, mobile-friendly workplace solutions for their new working realities. Dimensions fit that bill.

We recommend keeping a few crucial points in mind when considering a migration from Workforce Central to Dimensions.

Data Transfer Is Largely Optimized

That has got to be a huge relief to hear! Even at launch, Dimensions offered impressive compatibility for transferring data directly from Workforce Central. Often, just the thought of transferring the entirety of an enterprise’s data between solutions is a massive inhibitor to making this big leap! UKG has put in the groundwork to minimize manual data migration efforts between Workforce Central and Dimensions. One less reason to be hesitant.

Still Plan for an Adjustment Period

As with any migration between solutions, you and your employees will need some time to understand your new digital environment. Dimensions is designed to be intuitive by drawing on mobile-first best practices, and this should help lend some initial familiarity to features and functions. Still, the change between interfaces, replacement of specific modules, and beefed-up capabilities of others—often made possible by newer automation, machine learning, and AI integrations—will require some getting used to.

Proper preparation before migration and ample training and support post-migration can all help expedite your team’s successful adoption—and keep your adjustment period minimal. This is a large part of what we do to help our partners successfully complete their migrations by working with teams upfront to set important expectations and then bringing them all onboard through platform training once their implementation is complete.

Now Is a Great Time to Adopt Dimensions

As we near the end of 2020, so to draws the end of the Adobe Flash plugin. Dimensions offers a distinct advantage by being engineered from the start without Flash integration, simplifying some of IT’s struggles in trying to phase out these soon-to-be-obsolete features across their entire enterprise—at least as far as their workforce management solution is concerned.

Not only has Dimensions made significant strides since its launch in 2017, but UKG has a roadmap planned for the platform’s future. UKG will share insights into this roadmap next month at the first UKG Works conference (previously KronosWorks). This year’s fully digital format offers free registration for anyone with a UKG solution ID so that you can join the roadmap session, network with solution pros, and more, all from the safety and comfort of your office or home.

Eager for a 1-on-1 conversation about what migrating Dimensions would look like for you? Schedule a consultation with one of The Workforce Consulting Group’s implementation specialists today!

PredictiveHR Announces Partnership with Workforce Fusion

Human Capital Management System Consulting Company one of the few companies accredited by Ultimate Software and Kronos

Boston, MA (October 15, 2020): PredictiveHR, a leading provider of customized human resource outsourcing and consulting services, announced today a partnership with Workforce Fusion, which provides Kronos consulting services and solutions across multiple industries. The partnership makes PredictiveHR one of the few companies to offer both Ultimate Software and Kronos product implementation capabilities.

The PredictiveHR and Workforce Fusion partnership follows the merger earlier this year between Ultimate Software and Kronos, now officially known as UKG, which created one of the world’s largest HCM and Workforce Management companies.

Workforce Fusion is accredited in these Kronos products:

  • Workforce Force Dimensions (Q4 2020)
  • Workforce Central (All versions up to 8.1.7)
    • Timekeeper
    • Absence Management
      • Accruals
      • Leave
      • Attendance
    • Advanced Scheduler
    • Workforce Integration Manager

In adding Kronos capabilities and products, including Workforce Dimensions Suite to its UltiPro-certified personnel, PredictiveHR is now a one-stop shop, noted PredictiveHR CEO James Troiano.

Predictive HR has UltiPro-certified personnel in the following areas:

  • Launch System Consultants (Core HR/Payroll)
  • Project Management
  • Talent Acquisition
  • Talent Management
  • Benefits Prime
  • HR Service Delivery
  • UltiPro Learning
  • Perception
  • Business Intelligence
  • Data Conversion

“Workforce Fusion is very excited to become a value-added partner to the UKG team. We are excited to collaborate with PredictiveHR to provide our combined subject matter expertise in both Kronos and Ultimate products.” Peter Sperlongano CEO and Founder Workforce Fusion

About PredictiveHR PredictiveHR is a Boston-based company with a combination of more than 100 years of Human Resource practitioner experience. PredictiveHR’s consultants take a customer-focused approach to support companies in understanding Human Capital Management. Are you working towards a new HCM system implementation? Maybe you need better utilization of an existing system? Let PredictiveHR be your trusted guide through the process.

Learn more by visiting https://www.predictivehr.com.

About Workforce Fusion

Workforce Fusion Founder and CEO Peter Sperlongano is a seasoned Kronos product suite subject matter expert with over 30 years of extensive experience in project management, configuration, implementation, and product optimization coaching. Workforce Fusion has over 11 years of experience implementing, upgrading and optimizing Kronos solutions across all industries to provide the best value and most efficient workforce management processes to Kronos customers.

So, Kronos and Ultimate Software Have Become UKG — Now What?

Now that Kronos and Ultimate Software have officially rebranded as Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG),  customers of their separate solutions want to know what this merger means.

If you are a Kronos Workforce Dimensions, Workforce Central, or Ultimate Software UltiPro user, fret not. These trusted offerings are only growing closer as a family of compatible, people-centric business solutions under the banner of UKG.

As long-standing Kronos service partners, we are excited about what UKG UltiPro HCM offers our Kronos Workforce Dimensions and Workforce Central clients. And we are also excited about how Kronos workforce solutions will help UltiPro payroll and HR software customers fortify their workforce management capabilities.

In anticipation of this merger, we knew our Kronos clients would want access to expert guidance on using UltiPro to serve their HCM needs better.

View Case Studies

Tap Into Single-Source UKG Workforce and UltiPro HCM Support

We are primed to help client partners customize and implement their complete set of UKG solutions. Whether you are grandfathered into UKG as an Ultimate Software or Kronos customer or new to these solutions altogether, our seasoned Kronos consultants and UltiPro experts are working together to deliver you the best in combined implementation support.

Our expertise gives us the confidence to ensure we can help businesses squeeze the most out of using UKG HR and workforce management solutions together. As UKG service partners, we deliver the added attention to tailor these solutions to more custom needs — helping users achieve their specific business goals in ways a standard, out-of-the-box implementation otherwise could not.

UKG Support and Implementation Experts

Your search for support ends here, whether you are a Kronos customer seeking to add strong HR, payroll, recruiting, and benefits capabilities with an UltiPro implementation, an UltiPro customer seeking the productivity and workforce management advantages of Workforce Dimensions, or someone newly interested in UKG’s combined offerings. Reach out to speak with one of Predictive HR’s UKG consultants, and we will pull together the best resources available to suit your business’s unique UKG implementation and optimization needs.

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Overlooked Mobile Advantages of UKG Workforce Central That Current Customers Can Rely On Now More Than Ever

Most Workforce Central customers are no doubt familiar with its responsive and user-friendly interface on desktops, but far too few have taken advantage of this solution’s native mobile capabilities.

Workforce Central has a connected app called Kronos Workforce Mobile, available for both iPhone and Android phones, which is specifically designed to simplify and streamline many of the standard processes of the core platform for productivity on-the-go.

With remote work becoming an immediate necessity as part of COVID-19 prevention measures, employers can move quickly enough to work from home with the core desktop solution, but the native mobile extension offers features that can aid both managers and their employees while working apart now that they can continue to benefit from once they all return to the workplace later.

Access Information At Your Fingertips

Both employees and managers can appreciate having the daily information they need as accessible as possible. Items like scheduling, accruals, pay stubs, and more are especially helpful when they are only a few taps away—so employees can get a clearer picture of their personal status at any time. Likewise, managers can gain real-time insight (and alerts) at a glance for everything they need to focus on making sure work presses on by using Workforce Mobile’s dashboards on-the-go.

Manage Employee Requests With A Tap

Not only can employees quickly access their schedules and accruals with Workforce Mobile—the app’s intuitive setup allows them to request shift changes, swaps, and time off right from their phone. Likewise, managers can receive their requests as concise notifications, analyze related employee data, and give an approval on-the-fly, instead of having requests piled high in their inbox. This also gives managers an opportunity to promptly respond directly when concerns arise and expedite matters that are important to keeping employees engaged and happy.

Minimize Downtime With Offline Features

Network connectivity, for both internet and mobile, always finds a way to disappear or flake when you need it most. Kronos Mobile helps mitigate problems with untimely connectivity issues by giving its users access to Smart Views and even timecard punches when offline. These help keep productivity on track and prevent basic necessities from becoming disruptive, technological headaches.

Are You Using Kronos Workforce Mobile To Your Best Ability?

If you are a Workforce Central customer who feels you may be under utilizing Kronos Mobile and would like to enact better remote management capabilities for your remote needs now—and for improved processes when we return to “normal” circumstances—let’s talk. Together, we can build a path to better-than-usual administration once office life resumes. Speak with one of our implementation specialists about your path to making Kronos Mobile work harder for you.

UKG Workforce Dimensions or Workforce Central: Which solution is right for my business?

Workforce Dimensions vs. Workforce Central

It’s hard to believe it has already been almost two years since Kronos Inc. (now UKG) revealed its revolutionary Workforce Dimensions platform. Yet, even amid the excitement for this new solution, Kronos has continued to improve and support Workforce Central — a platform which countless businesses already rely on and trust. improve and support Workforce Central — a platform which countless businesses already rely on and trust.

While Kronos has promised further support for Workforce Central in the years to come, many workforce leaders are now asking us which solution is right for them and if/when is the time to migrate solutions.

The answer is not a simple one, as we’ve come to know the many intricacies of each platform, but there are several key factors that inform our expert recommendation for each customer business. These factors balance both the current and future goals any leader has for their business and their employees. Take the following key differences into consideration when weighing these solutions, and reach out to speak to one of our experienced consultants and implementation experts on these factors and more as they relate to your specific industry, challenges and vision.

It’s worth checking out the successes of our clients, including Sequoia Living, who have experienced significant advantages by using UKG products implemented by PHR.

Range of Mobility

How important is it that your employees have flexible access to their productivity solutions, such as timekeeping, scheduling, etc.? For remote and field workers or frequently travelling staff, mobility is a must, but even workers with a regular, centralized workplace could do well with greater ease of access.

There’s no comparing the mobile-first and fully responsive design of Workforce Dimensions, which offers workers and their managers access to important administrative and productivity solutions across smartphones, tablets, laptops alike.

With each update, Workforce Central is becoming more mobile, including the recent elimination of outdated Flash plug-in requirements for certain feature access, but Central, now in its 8th iteration, was not designed from the beginning for fully mobile access.

Administration At-scale vs. Scalability

Do you expect your workforce to expand dramatically or stay relatively the same? Workforce Central is a reliable option for maintaining a strong, consistent and familiar administrative infrastructure.

On the other hand, Workforce Dimensions is primed for scalability, bolstered by its AI-integrated D5 platform. With increasingly advanced automation and machine learning, Dimensions is the right path for businesses looking to maximize the efficiency of their administrative processes and arm themselves with a dynamic suite of tools and further integrations to face the future.

Employee Engagement and Benefits

Speaking of integrations, the value these technologies both hold for employees should also be taken into consideration. Workforce Central’s strengths lie in familiarity and consistency of experience, perfect for businesses that need an effective solution that delivers reliably for workers at every level. Kronos is committed to providing support for this platform for years to come.

Workforce Dimensions, on the other hand, offers a robust technology partner program, delivering new integrations from third party experts that expand features beyond workforce management into employee engagement, development, wellness (health and financial), and more. These all help business leaders strengthen their company’s relationship with their employees, offering greater support in and outside of the workplace.

How to choose?

These are only a few of the many factors we take into consideration in making a recommendation. For those already using Workforce Central, migration to Dimensions has some great advantages with reliable data transfer. For those seeking a new implementation, many more questions await.

Our consultants are here to help you navigate this important decision, geared up to answer your toughest questions and to consider your biggest goals along the way. There’s only so much one blog post can introduce, so let’s dig through the details together. Have a question on your mind?

 

Reach out today to connect with one of our experts!

Creating a Perpetual Talent Pipeline

Last time we saw this kind of battle for talent was in the late 90s with a hot economy put on steroids by Dot Com and Y2K. Our reaction at that time was to build out world-class externally facing Talent Acquisition functions to bring the war to the marketplace. High turnover was the norm and our answer was more external recruiting.

In 2019-20, the situation and opportunity are very different. We now have the technology and access to data that allows us to assess and recruit people from all possible sources of talent both externally and internally, in real-time. In other words, as people’s skills develop and they change jobs, we are able to monitor those developments as they unfold, as opposed to viewing their skills on a resume if we get one.

Smart companies are recognizing that one of the most important competitive elements is speed. External recruiting alone is slow and transactional. It simply takes too long to open a new recruiting requirement, find a candidate, and manage the interview process from beginning to end, which can ultimately take months.

By combining external recruiting with internal recruiting, you have an engine built to perform through every stage in the recruiting process.

This combination creates a Perpetual Pipeline and it is always turned on and ready to deliver candidates. But, how do you build a talent pipeline that delivers continuous results?

The holy grail for hiring managers is to always have deep bench strength at every level in the company plus, an equally deep pipeline of external candidates. Pivotal to that is the ability to grow people from within, through precise skills and competency gap analysis, and proactive training, as opposed to constantly going outside the market to fill those gaps.

What was done in the last war for talent will not work in this one. Unlike the 90s era of hidden away, dog-eared folders of resumes; everyone has access, in some form or another, to all possible candidates to fill a position. We have the opportunity to deploy next-gen technology platforms and processes to get to those candidates quickly and effectively and to stack rank them in real-time as the candidates acquire new skills and experiences. By leveraging technology and analytics we can combine the externally focused talent acquisition and internally focused employee-development functions into unified talent acquisition, development, and management function.

Companies that embrace a Perpetual Talent Pipeline model will create a center of gravity and employment brand that people will want to work for.  This will reduce turnover, improve hiring performance, and reduce cycle time when companies need it the most.

Oh, and by the way, employees will love this.

Why does a great employee have to leave the company to get the promotion they deserve? How does that help the company?

A Perpetual Talent Pipeline model is employee engagement at its most effective. This is what employees want most – upward mobility, the opportunity to work on new and interesting projects, or to be recognized for learning new skills. If the employee knew that an internal talent manager was tracking their progress the same way the Talent Acquisition manager was prospecting in the open market, they would work hard to fill whatever knowledge or experience gaps that are required in order for them to move up. In a perfect world, they might even be able to look at the people they are being compared to.

The hiring manager could have a living, breathing pipeline of talent options, both internal and external, that are unified into one, 360-degree view of their talent. The same hiring manager would be on the pipeline themselves for their own internal mobility.

Conversely, and sorry for the tough love, bad hiring managers would be very quickly revealed. We already know that a bad boss is the #1 reason for turnover, even above the quality of the company. It is time to make managers compete for talent internally in the same fashion as they do externally. That will put the spotlight on management to create an environment that people want to work for.

It’s early, but progressive firms will be looking at this closely as they consider their 2020 HR budgets in the context of an ongoing “War for Talent” and the need for faster business cycles. The result of a well-executed Talent development and mobility strategy and supporting technology platform will include improved employee retention and satisfaction.

Satisfied employees that are growing professionally are less likely to leave the company. That enables a much-needed competitive advantage for the company in an overheated talent market.

It’s time. The technology is ready. The TA function is ready. And the company needs this to compete.

If you’re ready to gain a competitive advantage with intuitive analytics and predictive insights, PredictiveHR is here to help. Schedule a demo with us today.

Labor Shortage

Forget China

We Still Have a Major Labor Shortage.

Since my last blog on this topic, the unemployment rate has gone down and the net job openings have gone up.  This is not a tactical problem.  This is strategic.  The concept of retaining your best employees is not a new one.  But, the new wrinkle of unprecedented levels of full employment puts sellers in control.

Sports remains a decent metaphor and, I believe, a signal of what is to come when there are simply not enough great people to do great work.  We are in a free agency market.  Talent moves unencumbered from one opportunity to the next.  What used to be called “job hoppers” are now just free agent athletes seeking the best return for their talent.

Companies are projects. As long as they remain interesting to the employees, the employees will stay.  In fact, interesting is better than money.  How many times have we all stayed at a job or taken a job because it was more interesting?  Plenty. By the way, money is only a motivator before it is given.

So.  What do we do?

Many of you are doing a lot. Employment branding.  Employee Engagement.  Better Benefits.  Compensation Models.  Etc. Etc.

What we are learning is that the company has to be true to itself.  A terrific “employment brand” is ruined with one bad Glassdoor rating. Everyone understands that Glassdoor is a vehicle for post termination payback.  But, if there is enough data in the sample, then the conclusion matters. Employees want to work for a company that people want to work for.

So, the real lesson learned is that from the CEO on down, the people have to be believable and trustworthy.  The business has to make sense.  If the business makes sense, then the rest is on management.  If management is not good, and even if the business model is good, people will still leave.

Before you embark on an Employment Branding exercise, first reflect on the business itself.  Is it the kind of business that people want to do for a living?  If not, you better think about re-engineering the company.  If it actually is a business people want to work for, and they still are not knocking down your door, then look in the mirror.

Leadership skills will become much more important than ever in this new world order.   I want to work for someone I believe in.  If the idea is also good, then even better.  But, a great idea with a bad leader is doomed. A decent idea with a great leader will flourish.

Most business are decent. They solve a problem.  They can be made into a destination employment environment with some tweaks.  It starts with good data.

Good decisions come from good data so maybe we should start there.  What’s your employee data telling you?

US Labor Shortages Will Affect Businesses for Decades

Entire industries are in crisis mode already and it is going to get worse.

David Pollard – CEO, PredictiveHR

We tend to deal with Labor Shortages on a very tactical level.  We look at weekly unemployment applications, monthly employment rates, current job opening and workers to fill them and so on.  That view has bred a certain myopia to what will be a very long term business challenge that is only going to get more extreme and impactful.

Part of the reason for the short-term view is our own history.  Every time we think we are in The War for Talent, as in the late 90s, we have experienced a course correction in the form of a recession.   Recession has led to massive disruption in the workforce and relief on the labor shortage side for employers.  This cycle, it may be assumed, will happen again and again and keep us from accepting and dealing with the new reality that labor shortages have only begun to be really felt.

The data analysis tells me that will not happen this time.

Today we are SOLD OUT.   Let’s start there.

5-6% unemployment is considered “Full Employment”.  We are at 3.9%.

According to the Bureau of Labor Stats, we have nearly 7 million open jobs and a maximum total of 6 million available workers (I believe this is high).  We have more jobs than people.  By a lot and growing.

Some industries are already feeling the heat.  Just to name a few:

  • Oil fields are not being fully exploited in petroleum rich sites due to a lack of workers to do the extraction.
  • According to the National Association of Homebuilders, 82% of all construction companies are experiencing labor shortages, up from 13% in 2011.  Houses aren’t getting built.
  • Trucking Industry is already 51,000 drivers short and that will climb to 150,000 by 2026

And it only gets worse.

Now, add in the unavoidable looming macro employment and population changes that are upon us.

  • The Manufacturing Institute reports that its sector will lose 25% of its current workforce by 2026, due to retirement.  The Baby Boomers are done and there is no workforce to replace them.
  • Worker productivity has flattened since the 1990s, when we realized a huge boost that has really not been sustained.  We are working as hard as we can and have maxed out the current technology designed to improve productivity.   We already carry our iPhone everywhere we go, 7 days a week.
  • Declining birth rates are not replacing workers fast enough.  The US peaked in 1960 with a 3.6% birth rate and we are now settling into 1.8%, a reduction of 50% since the peak.

We have a problem.  A business problem.  And it is going to get worse.

Smart businesses are at least recognizing that this labor shortage may actually last a while and is so severe as to hamper the flow of goods and services to market.  The entire economy hangs in the balance.  At least the fate of the company does.

Progressive organizations are doing a much deeper dive into this problem, leveraging new technologies and Big Data Analytics as one part of the solution.

One of our smartest clients is diagnosing the causal relationship between numerous business factors and higher than acceptable employee turnover.  They have actually quantified the business impact of each % point of turnover in terms of Revenue and Earnings.  That has gotten the CEO’s attention and serious remedy actions are being taken and then measured through Predictive Analytics to gauge the result as measured by turnover.   That, in turn, is allowing for better predictive view of the overall financial health and future earnings of the company.

Over the next 10 years, many companies and industries will do the same.  This has gone from an HR challenge to a business problem.  It is on the CEO radar right now.

There will be many approaches to handling the looming labor shortage crisis but the common thread will be Data Analysis.  We now have the historical data that can inform future remedy.  We just need to go mine it effectively and then deliver it to the CEO’s desktop so that they may take appropriate action in concert with HR.

 

It is time for HR Leadership to flex your muscles, fully leverage the data you have collected, and drive real business value that may actually be the difference between success or failure of your company.

What’s Time to Hire, and Why Does it Matter?

The Competitive Job Market

It’s no longer news that today’s job market is very tight. Finding good candidates for almost every role is harder than ever. Job boards, staffing agencies, company websites, social media, and referral programs are all flooded with open positions.

Importance of Timely Hiring Decisions

What this means is that job candidates have their choice of roles and are able to consider multiple new positions simultaneously. It’s not enough to attract candidates and get them in the door, you’ve got to make a decision and make the offer before your competitors do. The alternatives are open positions or compromising on new hires’ qualifications and experience.

To be clear, it’s not just about being the first to hire. After all, candidates will find ways to stall and pause in order to have multiple offers to weigh. However, it’s important that the hiring process not send a message to new hires that your businesses is disorganized and/or incapable of making timely decisions.

The hiring process is the first real interaction your potential hire has with your organization. You want the experience to send an accurate message about your company culture and to comfort new hires that they’ll enjoy being part of the team.

Understanding “Time to Hire”

Taking a step back, “time to hire” is the time elapsed between engaging a candidate and their acceptance of an offer. There are three major factors impacting your efficiency here:

  1. How long does it take you to spot the right candidate from your pool of applicants?
  2. How fast do you get started once you find the right person?
  3. Where are there potential bottlenecks in your hiring process that make the process take longer?

Note that this is not about sourcing. What channels work for attracting candidates is important, but it’s only part of the picture. There are any number of external factors that impact your organization’s ability to attract candidates.

Role and Department-Specific Time to Hire

Likewise, there are any number of factors that might impact the time between a candidate accepts an offer and the time they actually begin working. Things like personal commitments or obligations to a current employer may lead to a delay in starting work.

But Time to Hire is all about the efficiency of your internal process, which means it impacts your ability to compete. Understanding and improving your time to hire lets you directly impact the overall performance of your business.

Taking Action and Continuous Improvement

Of course, you’ll need internal benchmarks to begin your improvement process. You can find industry averages to get a ballpark figure on your organization is doing relative to those averages.

There are likely to be variances between your organization due to the peculiarities of your location or the types of roles you’ve been filling. However, if your performance is completely out of touch with those averages, you should quickly look at three areas of your process to get a jump start on improvement.

Break down your hiring pipeline by stage. Generate reports that tell you how long each stage takes. If candidates are being sourced well but get hung up during the screening process, you might need to consider adding resources to that stage or evaluating priorities.

Break down the time to hire by role or department. If there’s a lag for a particular function or within a specific department, have a chat with the hiring manager to find out what’s going on. Make sure they understand the importance of making quick decisions in the hiring process.

Finally, take a look at the length of your interview process. How long does the process take? How many people are involved? What challenges exist around scheduling interviews?

Once you know your time to hire metrics, you can quickly take action to make rapid changes and then focus on continuous improvements to your process. Injecting efficiencies into your hiring process will send the right message to job candidates, and to your peers on the management team.

Don’t Let Sloppy HR Budgeting Kill Business Growth

For most businesses budgets aren’t suggestions or wish lists, they are real guidelines with an absolute upper limit on how much can be spent. On the other hand, even though nobody wants to go over budget, they also don’t want to be too far under budget. Being under budget by too much usually means that opportunities for growth or improvement have been missed. Missing such opportunities can make CEOs and lines of business execs crazy.

Human resources budgets are notoriously inaccurate, through no fault of the HR team. HR budgets typically include annual headcount, however companies don’t accurately predict exactly when hiring will take place. Too many factors inside and outside of the organization impact hiring timing. Things take longer than planned, and in today’s tight labor market, the problem of underdelivering on hiring is only likely to get worse.

This is often exacerbated when companies underestimate the amount of employee attrition that will take place over the course of a year. Often, budgets are assigned to staff who don’t remain with the organization for the entire year.

Another issue injecting uncertainty into HR budgeting occurs when companies lose track of employees that are transferred from one business unit to another. When these different BU’s have different accounting systems, it takes way too long for budgets to keep up and resolve on the organizational level.

For these reasons, it’s common to pad HR budgets to ensure that workforce needs aren’t in jeopardy of being underfunded. Between the padding and poor timing, the likelihood of being close to reality diminishes.

All of this is made even worse by the fact that companies don’t have an accurate way to understand exactly what impact headcount has on cash and profits. Companies typically use averages based on backward-looking data (lagging indicators) to determine average commissions, average bonuses, average pay increases, average costs of benefits, etc. But since we do know that the past doesn’t necessarily match the future, HR managers add budget variances based on even less precise criteria.

Of course, healthy and conservative budgeting is not a bad thing. Every dollar saved does go straight to the bottom line. But companies don’t save their way to growth. For companies with a top line growth goal, knowing funds were available for new initiatives or accelerated marketing but were tied up as padding in the HR budget can make executives question the business savvy of their HR peers.

So what can HR executives do to gain credibility and trust with their peers, particularly those in the finance department who typically look after budgeting? Using advanced workforce planning tools, such as the PredictiveHR platform, will enable HR to gather critical HR data from across business units and use that data to develop predictive models. These models can be tested against past actual data, which will prove its accuracy to executives in finance, operations, and sales – increasing those executives’ trust in their HR colleagues.

With better numbers and more accurate timing, HR can fine tune their budgets – budgets that often represent the largest share of expenses for most organizations – freeing up capital for other mission critical initiatives inside the organization.