With expanding businesses, companies now have employees spread across various offices, cities, and even nations. The work-from-home culture-funded technology age has even encouraged companies to adopt multi-location workforce management. Maintaining HR processes and systems for a single location is no longer enough. Companies must reboot themselves so that they can properly take care of geographically dispersed employees.
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Management of such a workforce in an efficient way is of prime importance in order to attain productivity, employee satisfaction, and business effectiveness. In this article, best practices, the correct tools, and how technology can turn multi-location workforce management into a piece of cake will guide you through it.
What Is Multi-Location Workforce Management?
Multi-location workforce management is the system and process employed when workers work from more than one location. These are physical sites in over one region as well as off-site personnel who work part- or full-time.
This work environment has to be controlled in-house, communicate in real time, and have well-lubricated HR processes so the same consistency, transparency, and compliance are delivered at all locations. It is not a question of spying on the employees—it is a question of working with teams while working in an open book style from one console.
Key Challenges of Multi-Location Workforce Management
- Some locations provide market exposure and growth but at differing challenges:
- Inadequate Visibility: Because of inadequate visibility, monitoring the contribution, performance, and attendance of the remote staff will be challenging.
- Disparate Policies: The lack of uniform policies means that branches will have different procedures, hence causing a lack of consistency and efficiency.
- Compliance Risks: Law and regulation are also state-dependent. It is too simple to ignore any one of them, thereby making non-compliance more probable.
- Communication Gaps: Communication is getting harder with remote teams. It generates late responses and miscommunication, impacting productivity.
- Managing the Remote Workers: Addressing remote workers’ needs and expectations against the needs and expectations of employees at physical locations is another level of complexity.
Strategies to Manage Multi-Location Workforce
In addressing these complexities, companies need to implement some strategies for structuring operations in all locations:
Create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs):
Well-documented SOPs confirm the same processes are executed by employees in all locations. It may cover onboarding processes, routine processes, communication processes, and offboarding processes.
Centralize HR operations:
Rather than using fragmented HR systems, a centralized HR software platform enables the collection, processing, and analysis of employees’ data from geographically distributed locations. It provides transparency, consistency, and simple reporting.
Assign local HR representatives
While centralization is inevitable, the availability of HR representatives across localities can help contain region-level employee issues, cultural variances, and quick resolution to disputes.
Enable homogeneity of workplace culture:
Sustainable corporate culture is not at the cost of distance. Mark milestones between locations, conduct company-wide all-hands meetings, and use the chance for cross-site dialogue through company-wide challenges and learning sessions.
Centralized HR Operations Through Technology
Challenges arise from managing personnel remotely. Centralized HR software, on the other hand, makes it easier for HR teams to move forward with streamlined operations by enabling personnel management processes in multiple locations. When technology is utilized in this way, organizations can provide cohesion, reduce mistakes, and promise employees a consistent experience regardless of if they are located elsewhere.
So, here are the benefits of centralized HR solutions.
Employee self-service portals:
These are portals that allow employees to handle their own data, such as pay slips, attendance management, leave requests, and personal data.
Centralized employee data:
With the capability to retain records for every employee in a single program, HR teams can quickly access meaningful data with the full capability to manage and represent consistency.
Custom workflows:
Often, enterprise HR systems allow organizations to automate workflows (for example, leave applications, travel approval, and expense claims), enabling the organization to cater these workflows based on location, ensuring approvals fall within the right hierarchy, and ensuring that dashboards reflect the latest information in real-time.
Real-time dashboards:
As an HR manager, you have access to real-time data insights on employee attendance, employee engagement, and employee turnover across locations.
Payroll and compliance integration:
Payroll can be difficult when factoring in tax and compliance for multiple locations. The built-in functionality of integrated HR and payroll systems makes payroll easy since the software automatically takes care of regional tax laws and requirements, so you don’t have to worry about compliance.
Smart attendance solutions for location-based teams
When teams operate in multiple different locations, tracking attendance becomes more complicated. Typically, employees clocking in and out with paper and/or manual logs/data entry can lead to errors, loss, and inefficiencies. Today’s smart attendance systems capitalize on new technologies that automate and streamline the attendance process.
Capabilities of Smart Attendance Solutions:
Biometric & facial recognition:
Tracking attendance with biometric and facial recognition systems protects an organization from buddy-punching and unauthorized clock-ins.
Mobile apps with GPS tracking:
Employees who work remotely or at client sites can have mobile apps that track attendance/clock-in through GPS. These GPS-tracking mobile apps ensure proper attendance tracking of field employees and help HR teams maintain attendance visibility where employees are working.
Real-time visibility:
Managers can have a presence in attendance in real time, whether an employee is working on leave or working overtime. This visibility allows HR teams to nip attendance issues in the bud before they become major problems.
Automatically maintained attendance records:
Advanced systems also track how many hours employees have worked, how many breaks they’ve taken, and how much overtime they’ve done.
Integrating remote workforce into core workflows
As more companies incorporate remote work policies into their operational models, and as remote employees become an integral part of these businesses, it is important to include remote employees in the wider workflow so that they remain connected, productive, and collaborative. Ensuring remote employees feel as connected and valued as in-person employees is important.
Key techniques for connecting remote teams:
Collaboration tools:
Collaboration tools such as Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams offer communication and teamwork in real time. These tools take your remote workers and address the disconnect between remote employees and in-office colleagues.
Regular check-ins:
Scheduling regular video calls or virtual stand-ups is an effective method for keeping remote participants connected to their working “group,” team, or department. While these may be optional video calls, set times for check-ins, invite any groups to present updates or feedback, and screen for any blockers.
Equal availability of resources:
Remote workers should have the equivalent tools, systems, and information available to them as office-based employees.
Clearly defined expectations and goals:
Goal setting allows remote workers to focus, while an agreed-upon timeline creates accountability.
Building strong communication across locations
For any organization, communication is important. But, for teams that are dispersed across multiple locations or working remotely, communicating clearly and consistently is mission critical to ensure the entire team is aligned and moving in the same direction with follow-up work and projects — no matter where they are located.
Best practices for communicating across locations and remotely:
Use the right communication tools:
Different types of communication require different approaches. For formal communication, use email; for an announcement, use an all-hands video call; for quick updates, use instant messaging; and for collaborative conversations, use video conferencing.
Team check-ins:
It is important to schedule regular team meetings to hold everyone accountable for getting updates related to the actual project, priority, or deliverable.
Clarity in communication:
While communicating across different time zones and cultures can lead to confusion, it is important to be clear and concise in your own messaging. Sketchy or misleading information may lead teams down the wrong path and result in wasted time at best.
Centralized Information:
Having a central repository for documents, resources, and protocols ensures employees working in all states and locations are able to easily locate the information they need.
Encourage feedback:
Communication should be top-down and bottom-up. As much as you want to remind your stakeholders, it is just as important to let employees express their thoughts, concerns, and feedback.
Let’s Sum It Up.
Multi-site worker management is no longer cost of doing business—it’s a business benefit if executed properly. Leveraging cloud-based HR software, smart attendance systems, and an increasing culture of compliance and cooperation, organizations can efficiently manage geographically spread-out workers.
With increasing hybrid and remote trends, companies must refocus their practices and systems such that they can handle location diversity. With the appropriate tools and mindset, organizations are not only able to cope with but can flourish with a multi-location workforce.
Tired of having to contend with the complexity of HR in so many disparate locations? Watch how our workforce management software helps organizations centralize, streamline, and automate their workforce processes—no matter if they’re around the corner or around the world.