Why Your Business Should Transition to a Global Time and Labor Management System
This article was updated on Aug. 22, 2018.
Lacking a single, integrated system for global time and labor management (TLM) can hamstring your enterprise in many ways, leading to direct and indirect problems with cost control, employee engagement, reporting, compliance and decision-making.
For HR leaders in global firms, communicating the costs of HR-related data silos and the many benefits of a globally integrated TLM system will be the first step toward convincing the C-suite that change is needed.
Here's some insight to help you build your business case.
An Array of Potential Benefits
Knowing what's happening within your entire organization through a single TLM system, and being able to use real-time analytics and automatic alerts to restrict certain employee actions, can offer you massive benefits including:
- A 7 percent reduction in planned overtime
- A 19 percent reduction in payroll
- A 24 percent higher employee engagement rate
- An average of 40 minutes per week saved by managers, boosting productivity
- Easy and enterprise-wide access to key employee-related data to make timely, data-driven decisions about allocating human resources
- A 50 percent improvement in compliance.
3 Suggestions for Leaders Looking to Communicate the TLM Business Case to the C-Suite
1. You're a geographically-dispersed organization, so seek the support of a provider of TLM systems that has global and local reach and the know-how you'll require, including language support across regions and platforms. You also want a provider who'll work hard to understand and meet your particular needs, and who's flexible enough to evolve along with you. You want scalability and flexibility.
2. Analyze the cost of doing nothing, of maintaining a multitude of different time and labor management systems and vendors. How much time are you spending in the laborious process of building connections between divergent systems, aggregating and consolidating data and fixing the resulting errors via manual operations? Can you afford to do nothing, especially in a dynamic, global business climate where properly allocating talent and technology is the single biggest priority?
3. The duration, cost and specifications of any particular TLM implementation process will, of course, depend upon your needs and budget. You should communicate with stakeholders consistently, from your C-suite to your local business units to your chosen partner, in order to develop a solid framework for implementing change. A global implementation is incredibly difficult because asking regional leaders to give up their existing systems can be challenging. They need to be convinced that they will maintain the same operability they had previously, just at a lower cost and with greater efficiency. Therefore, offering implementation support that's in their region, in their time zone and speaks their language(s) will be crucial for success.
The Flexibility and Visibility You Need
By adopting one consolidated TLM system that is integrated with your payroll, has the flexibility needed to handle diverse rules and regulations and offers services that cater to the local needs of end users, your organization can significantly upgrade your time tracking, compliance and data collection capabilities across multiple jurisdictions. This will give your organization the flexibility to accurately gauge and oversee employee hours and the visibility to ensure that governance and compliance requirements are fulfilled, no matter where your offices are physically located.
