Workforce management maturity comes in four levels. At level one, the schedule is the only record and gets edited to match the day. At level two, the plan and the actuals are two records kept in different places. At level three, both live in one system. At level four, the system compares the plan with what happened and applies your labor rules before anything reaches payroll, so the hours payroll receives are already the true time.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Labor and compliance rules vary by jurisdiction and by collective bargaining agreement. Confirm your obligations with qualified counsel.
Most operations run more than one level at once, because sites and teams were set up at different times. The useful question is which level last week's hours actually went through, which isn't always the level your software is sold as.
In this post:
- The four levels of workforce management maturity
- The payroll test for each level
- What level four does with a real week
- How WorkAxle handles level four
What are the four levels of workforce management maturity?
I describe them as a progression in how the schedule and the actual day relate to each other.
Level one: the schedule is the only record. You simply have your schedule, and no matter what happens on the day of operations, you just modify the schedule to reflect what actually happened. The schedule ends up accurate, but the plan is gone.
Level two: two records. The schedule shows what was planned, and the actuals are updated with what happened. Now you can compare them, but they usually live apart, so someone brings them together before payroll.
Level three: one system. Planned work flows from the schedule into the actuals without anyone doing anything, and the day's changes are made right there, so your time tracking and your schedules are no longer separate.
Level four: the rules run before payroll. Having both records in one system isn't the end. Level four compares the scheduled hours with the actuals and applies all the labor rules and all the time classifications, so that what appears in the actuals is the true time that makes its way to payroll.
Not sure which level your hours went through last week? The WFM diagnostic takes eight questions, shows your result on screen as soon as you finish, and names the one gap worth closing first.
What's the payroll test for each level?
Each level has a question that gives it away. Ask it about last week, not about the system you'd like to have.
- Level one. Could you put last Tuesday's plan next to what actually happened? If the schedule was edited to match the day, the answer is no, because only one record survives.
- Level two. Before the last payroll, how many files did someone line up side by side? If the answer is two or more, and someone checked them against each other by hand, you have two records kept apart.
- Level three. When a shift changes on the day, does anyone type it in a second time? If the change is made once and shows up in both the schedule and the actuals, you're at level three.
- Level four. Do hours reach payroll already sorted by type, as regular hours, overtime, training and premiums, or does someone sort them after the export? If someone sorts them after the export, you're not at level four yet.
The fourth question is the one that matters most to a payroll team, because that sorting is where manual transformation happens: the re-keying, the second checks and the double entries, which is where manual mistakes and additional errors come from.
What does level four do with a real week?
The example I use is an ordinary week. Someone is scheduled for 40 hours on their usual roster. They work four extra hours on Monday and three extra on Tuesday. On Thursday they do training hours instead of regular hours, and on Friday they work a shorter day than planned.
Every one of those changes means something different on the pay stub, depending on your agreement and the law where they work. At level three, the hours sit in one system, but someone still decides which of them count as overtime, which are training, and what the short Friday does to the week. At level four, the system makes that comparison and applies the classifications itself, so there's no manual transformation left for anyone to do.
A quick way to use this: take one real week from one real person on your team, and write down who decided how each changed day would be paid, and when. The number of names on that list tells you more than any feature sheet.
How does WorkAxle handle level four?
In WorkAxle, schedules and time and attendance live in the same platform, so a change made on the day is made once. Rules are built from drag-and-drop templates. While a schedule is being built, the engine flags a shift that crosses a rule, names the rule and the limit, and logs the override when a manager goes ahead. After the shifts are worked, time classification applies your rules to the completed shifts and produces the hours by time type, which are then ready for your payroll system. Payroll itself stays in the system you already use.
Classification only calculates where the rules have been built, so the first step in any deployment is putting your agreements and policies into the engine.
Want to see where your own operation sits before you talk to anyone? Eight questions, and your result shows on screen.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Labor and compliance rules vary by jurisdiction and by collective bargaining agreement. Confirm your obligations with qualified counsel.
Transcript of the video
What are the four levels of WFM maturity?
Four levels of WFM maturity. Level one. Level one is when you don't even have different data sets. You simply have your schedule, and then no matter what happens on the day of operations, you're just modifying the schedule to reflect what actually happened. The problem here is you don't have two different data sets. You only have the schedule. Level two: you now have two different data sets. You have your scheduled time, and then you have your actuals. Your schedule shows what was planned for the day. Your actuals will be updated with what actually happened. Level three. Level three is when your data flows from the schedule to the actuals, and then you don't have to do anything. It's all in the same system. So in your schedule, you have all the planned work that flows into the actuals, and the modifications could be made directly there. So level three is different from level two because you have everything in a single system. Your time tracking and your schedules are not separate. Level four. Level four is not only having two different data sets and having them in the same system. It's about then being able to do certain compliance calculations, apply certain rules to make sure that all your time is fully compliant.
What does level four do with a real week?
Let's take a simple example. Someone who is scheduled to work, let's say, 40 hours in a week on their typical roster. But then what actually happens is they worked an additional four hours on the Monday. They worked an additional three hours on Tuesday. They did training hours instead of regular hours on Thursday. And then on Friday, they actually had a shorter amount of hours worked. Now we have two different data sets, but a level four maturity WFM, meaning the highest level of maturity, would be knowing and comparing the scheduled versus the actuals, applying all the labor rules, all the time classifications, so that what appears in the actuals is the true time that will be making its way over to payroll, so that there's no manual transformation that needs to be happening. There isn't any additional manual checks that humans are making, where there could be manual mistakes, additional errors, double entries. All of that is handled for you. So in short, a level four system handles scheduled, actuals, along with all the transformation, using those data sets comparatively to get you the true value of what you should be paying people, without any human error.