Manpower is more important than machinery. Keeping aside the fact that machinery can replace a significant percentage of manpower cost, workforce still remains to be the most valuable, expensive and strategic asset to a company. Thus managing it through automation is of vital importance today. The concept of workforce automation is still new in India and many organisations?big or small still depend on account managers and manual handling of employee transactions. But recent times have seen interest across sectors like healthcare, transportation and manufacturing in the use of technology to manage transactions.

Take the case of a hospital, for which it is critical to ensure that the right set of people are available at the right place and at the right time?and Naresh Trehan-promoted Medanta Medicity, a 2,900 employee strong healthcare provider understood it. ?In healthcare environment, we do not have the luxury of managing departments or wards without replacing an absentee with another employee with similar skills. Hence the need to accurately schedule employees and track them in real time is of paramount importance to quality care. Workforce automation was able to offer us this facility through intelligent scheduling. We have also avoided the pitfalls of managing a large workforce like payroll leakages, lack of visibility, inefficient scheduling, ? says Arun Datta, head, human resources, Medanta.

In the larger picture, expenditure in the area of workforce automation tools looks set to continue growing and total global IT spending is anticipated by analyst Gartner to climb by 3.9% to $3.350 trillion during 2010, with hardware purchases expected to account for $365 billion and software $229 billion. Proper workforce scheduling can lead to a minimum of 5% savings on the payroll. The software addresses needs which can be further fine-tuned to individual requirements. On an average, 36% of the payroll is linked to employee absence.

Kronos, a provider of workforce automation which counts Genpact, Aircel, Bharat Forge, Cummins, Jubilant, Schenieder Electric and Sterlite Industries as its customers in India is also thinking of expanding in the country due to high demand of automation tools. James Thomas, country manager, Kronos Systems India comments, ?Our product offerings are aimed at controlling labour costs, minimising compliance risks, and improving workforce productivity. The key elements of Kronos solutions include data collection, time and attendance, absence management, forecasting and scheduling, and analytics.?

Datta from Medanta explains as to why the hospital opted for automating its workforce from day one: Management knew that with the start of the hospital, the employee size would exponentially grow and then it would be critical keeping track of employees?everyone from physicians to nurses and other support staff. Also managing the payroll of all categories of employees with varying pay rules, leave rules and schedules would be a huge challenge and a task for HR. Adding to this, Dhananjay Bansod, chief people officer, Deloitte in India explains that automation can centralise the payroll system in an organisation which is apt for an organisation in which employees are tranferred from one state to another very often.

Birendra Prasad, general manager, human resource, Delhi International Airport (DIAL) gives a perspective that for an organisation like DIAL, scheduling workforce is very important. ?We deal with a number of people at various points. A lot of things go behind managing workforce at airport. Thus, to have customised solution as per our need is important. Workforce automation brings in the agility and robustness to DIAL for managing a large and mission critical workforce.?

Similarly, Viraj, a leading player in the stainless steel industry which is headquartered in Tarapur, Mumbai has 17 plants in India with more than 7,000 employees. The company feels that automation helped them eliminate system abuse by employees.

Self service increases employee satisfaction

Interestingly, through self service kiosks deployed in production bays, Viraj employees not assigned to a PC were provided with instant access to their personal information regarding schedules, attendance, leave requests, and other critical personal details.

Information that was available only through the Viraj time office was now immediately available to employees via an easy to use kiosk with an interface that worked much like an ATM.

Employees responded very positively to new kiosks, feeling more empowered and self sufficient than ever. Nitan Chhatwal, MD, Viraj says, ?Automation has given us exactly the tools we needed to address all our workforce management objectives.?

Coming back to the example of Medanta, it has also utilised the capabilities of workforce automation to provide simple ATM like kiosk based self service to nursing and paramedical staff. It has brought in transparency into the system. Employees can view their punch details, view leave balance, apply for leave and do more.

Thus, as the potential of technology to replace human input expands, the range of products is likely to grow, although ultimately live operators will be required to oversee such systems.