3 reasons why telecommuting makes digitalization of assignment necessary
October 27, 2020
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3 min
In a time as complex as the current health crisis, companies are forced to make extensive use of teleworking without reducing the number of projects carried out. Unfortunately, as the informal conversations that characterise office work are no longer possible, the transmission of information and the exercise of resource planning become a real headache. Therefore, in this era of home working, it is vital for your company to review its resource allocation process.
By digitizing this process, you cansave time on assignment management, maintain a strong bond with your staff, and carry out as many projects - if not more - than before.
Why do you need to digitize your assignment process, especially when you're working from home?
Whether we are talking about information about your employees, current projects or future projects, the rule is simple: everyone in your organisation must be able to find the information they need.
⏳ Managers assignment need to be able to access the availability and skills of staff quickly to create project teams. Teleworking tends to reduce responsiveness in exchanges and information sharing. However, these exchanges are key when it comes to staffing a team and winning a project. It is therefore necessary to centralise all the information useful for allocating resources on one tool.
📅 Managers should have access to their employees' schedules and should be able to simply indicate to managers assignment that it is up to date.
💪 Employees need to have visibility into their current and upcoming workload in the coming weeks and be notified in real time of changes.
⛰ Managers must quickly obtain consolidated data on their future activity to anticipate assignment and all related subjects (recruitment, training, partial activity ...). An essential anticipation in a context of uncertainties.
Even if you feel that all this information is already available in other tools (HRIS, CRM, ERP...), it needs to be centralized in one dedicated assignment tool to support an optimal resource allocation process.
Acting on choices of assignment via remote meetings of assignment is a complex exercise, particularly as the meetings of assignment are the subject of intense discussions and the real-time manipulation of a large amount of information. Moreover, it is common to observe that the frequency of assignment meetings accelerates in these difficult times because some projects are postponed, frozen, blocked... To gain efficiency during assignment meetings, it is necessary to prepare them well and to take advantage of a solution that updates all the data assignment during the meeting:
💫 the centralization of qualified assignment requests issued by managers will be simplified and will save time for managers assignment. Indeed, they will no longer need to go and ask specifically their needs to each manager before the meetings because the reminders will be automated ;
🙋 managers will be able to directly consult the availability of their employees and make requests for particular profiles for their projects ;
🥇 requests from assignment will be prioritized so that the most urgent requests are handled first during meetings;
✅ when a collaborator's assignment is validated, his availabilities will be automatically updated and he will no longer be proposed for subsequent arbitrations. All the indicators of assignment are also updated;
🔔 all stakeholders are informed of changes via notification sets, even those who could not be present at the meeting.
While meetings at assignment are already complex in a face-to-face setting with less uncertainty, gathering all the information, sharing it with stakeholders and making choices from assignment remotely is impossible. A digital tool that allows everyone to access the necessary information and update it during the meeting saves considerable time and improves the transmission of information.
When the general context is full of uncertainties, it is essential for your company to have excellent visibility on the whole activity to anticipate as well as possible. Beyond anticipation, a digitalized solution will allow :
1. Managers assignment to have visibility on the assignment of other managers and to be aware of the availability of staff from outside their BU/department. This decompartmentalization allows assignment managers to be more reactive in creating project teams by seeking out missing resources in other departments, and to no longer refuse a project due to a lack of resources.
2. Employees are better informed of current and future projects and no longer find out about their assignments at the last minute. The assignment process is perceived as much more transparent and engaging for employees, and allows them to keep a strong link with the rest of their team, and even tobe an actor of their assignment by indicating their aspirations and their interests for particular projects.
3. Access to and visibility of available training courses that can be used by all to improve their skills in specific areas of interest to your company.
4. To partly replace the informal discussions around assignment and to keep the link between the teams.
Digitalising your assignment means centralising important information to anticipate your activity and your needs, being able to effectively pool your resourcesMake your assignment meetings productive and improve visibility on a critical process at all levels of your company.
These are important actions to put in place in view of the current situation of general teleworking, and will enable you to optimize the allocation of your employees to projects, taking into account their availability, skills and aspirations. It's also the first step towards setting up a cross-assignment system, which may prove more than relevant in the current economic climate.
To find out how Napta can support you in digitizing your assignment process, ask to speak to an expert.
Would you like to find out more? We've got plenty of resources to help you go further.
To complement this topic, read our article"Turn intercontract into opportunity with your assignment tool"..
See also our guides, templates and checklists in the Resources tab.
See you soon at Napta!
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