Workforce Management: a business practice

The first thing to point is: Workforce Management is a business practice. We’re specifically focusing on the practice for specialty contractors. This is a business practice that can be viewed and managed the same way as estimating or accounting or design and BIM models. This practice needs to be consistent, and we need to approach it with discipline. We don’t let our accountants balance the books on spreadsheets anymore. That’s not their sole tool. We have financial tools. The same applies to estimating. We’re not going to commit to these giant jobs and tell our estimators, “Yep, I don’t want you to use the latest and greatest. I want you to go back and use paper drawings and highlighters.” Technology usage has evolved in those areas, and we have the ability and the opportunity to do the same thing with Workforce Management now.

The second thing to consider is: Workforce Management spans the business. We have stakeholders Workforce Management in accounting, finance, HR and our actual operational leaders. We also have contributors to Workforce Management like project teams, field and office labor managers and coordinators. When you’re dealing with 50% of your expenses, your labor, potentially your highest risk factor, and you don’t think of labor management as a priority across your company, it’s pretty ridiculous. Workforce Management spans across and affects everyone within the company, in every department. And until now, the construction industry didn’t have a software tool fit to the task that would bring it all together in the right way. Until recently, Workforce Management was not a typical tech category in construction.