Workforce advisory & management: Just-in-time workforces

While operational efficiency is key to any organisation's success, many companies are starting to review the management of their most valued and precious asset - their people - with the changing economic climate influencing this dramatic facelift of the workforce frontier.

Leading companies over the past 18 months have focused on gaining control over product and service delivery. Today they are revolutionising the way they manage their workforce. These companies will confidently compete in the new world of business through implementing just-in-time workforces (JIT). JIT workforces embody a proactive mentality where customer demand drives the workforce planning process, resulting in an agile, more optimal workforce poised to deliver bottom-line results.

The ultimate goal of JIT workforces is to maximise revenue, quality and productivity while keeping costs under control, relative to productivity and demand. Using this concept, a company can better meet customer promises and satisfy employees by anticipating and preparing for fluctuations in business volume. Quality and timeliness - both imperative for customer loyalty - can become differentiators for a business, as the organisation optimises staffing levels and worker qualifications, given market demand, changing work requirements, or simply customer need. The JIT workforce helps companies minimise problems with overstaffing, payroll errors, unneeded overtime and contingent staffing, as well as compliance with complex union rules. It can even dramatically reduce absenteeism and employee turnover.

The greatest impact that JIT workforce management has on an organisation is that it helps align the workforce with changing demand in order to optimise cost, quality and timeliness of delivering products or service to the marketplace.A challenge for employers, however, is the need to identify the skills mix they need to effectively compete and maintain operational cost efficiencies over the short and long term. Undertaking organisation-wide skills mapping against the company's strategy and key projects will facilitate an understanding of what JIT workforce structural changes can be implemented to accommodate the ever fluctuating market demands.

With growth comes competition, and with so many organisations playing on the same field, the demand for talent and competitive advantage has never been stronger. As organisations navigate the new commercial, talent retention and attraction environments, sourcing staff who have the technical, cultural and flexible approach to work to suit the new world is critical to the long-term future of companies.

The shift in employee sentiment around the probability of seeking and sourcing a full-time role with all the benefits of yesterday is supportive of JIT workforces, with 88% of job seekers (63% of whom are currently employed and actively seeking a career change) indicating in CMG's Post GFC Candidate Study Report that the current economic environment has forced them to be more flexible and less selective in the roles they are applying for; 29% are looking to shift from full-time employment to contract roles in response to the changing environment.

The benefits of JIT workforces being experienced by a number of large multinational US companies exceed pure operational cost savings. Revenue is also enhanced through greater customer satisfaction. A JIT workforce is better able to deliver products and services when customers need them at the quality they demand, as opposed to overtime or contingent workforce, where quality can suffer simply because the workers don't have the required skills or time to pay attention to quality.

As employers become more attuned to the shifting workforce frontier, candidates are starting to set their thinking towards a change in work lifestyle, setting the stage for employers to revolutionise the way they approach their workforce structures.

About the author

Craig McCallum is general manager marketing: specialist recruitment & consulting services at Chandler Macleod Group. For information tel: 02 9269 8879 or email craig.mccallum@chandlermacleod.com

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