Today's labour force is shifting dramatically. Changes are occurring that are challenging existing corporate structures, redefining how we work together, and introducing complex compliance concerns.
Organizations across industries and geographies will need to acclimate to new workforce realities or face the prospect of losing top employees and potentially market share to the competition.
Efficiently managing a dispersed workforce and effectively tracking time are critical aspects to achieving a competitive advantage in today's economic climate. From time tracking to labour compliance regulations, these predictions serve as a roadmap to anticipate what 2014 holds for the workforce market.
The economy will continue to improve
As companies hire to support this growth, they must make sure that their time tracking processes can scale as well. As a global workforce becomes the new norm, being able to orchestrate projects and resources over diverse geographies will become of prime importance.
Small- to medium-sized businesses will change the way they employ workers
In the U.S., the Affordable Care Act mandates that companies with over 50 full-time employees must provide health care. As a result, some companies will choose to use more part-time employees to save money. Understanding, managing, and tracking the productivity levels of a non-homogenous workforce requires additional analytics and control mechanisms
The importance of tracking time and costs of major IT projects will continue to be significant
We expect that companies that do not properly manage their resources will continue to face grave business impacts. For example, they will over-run budgets, under-deliver on milestones and value expectations, and miss cost estimates and project delivery dates.
Companies will adopt tools that reduce or eliminate labour regulation compliance risk
Cloud-based, user friendly timesheets will ensure extremely high levels of adoption, decrease time and payroll errors, and support good record keeping for a strong audit trail. All of this will help to avoid costly penalties, litigation, and/or revenue leakage.
The old employee timesheet will become obsolete
Manual or paper-based timesheets and spreadsheets will no longer be able to handle the demands of the modern, mobile workforce. Putting timesheets on the cloud for anywhere, anytime access via the web and mobile devices will become the only way to accurately and precisely track time.
- Raj Narayanaswamy is co-founder and co-CEO of Replicon, the leading provider of cloud-based time-tracking software. Mr. Narayanaswamy is responsible for executing the company's strategic goals and leading corporate initiatives.
With more than 25 years of software development and senior management experience, Mr. Narayanaswamy is widely recognized for his visionary approach in developing innovative software applications that meet the needs of leading enterprise organizations.