In many organizations, workforce management is still perceived as a simple administrative tool, designed to collect hours worked and produce the variables needed for payroll.
This view is now largely outdated.
The reality is simple: in many companies, workforce management remains one of the major blind spots in performance management.
Workforce management now sits at the intersection of several major challenges for companies: payroll reliability, work organization, operational cost control, and performance management.
Every hour worked, every absence, every schedule directly impacts the company’s ability to produce, organize its resources, and manage its operations.
In certain sectors, it directly determines up to 50% of operational costs.
When these systems are poorly structured or poorly utilized, the consequences are immediate: payroll errors, organizational cost overruns, lack of visibility for managers, or difficulty anticipating resource needs.
In other words, poorly managed workforce management translates very concretely into productivity losses and cost overruns that are difficult to control.
Long considered a technical function, workforce management is gradually becoming a strategic lever for HR, Finance, and Operations departments.
Florian Dugrenil, HR Transformation Engagement Manager and leader of the Time & Activities Management offering at Althéa, discusses the ongoing transformations and explains why workforce management is now emerging as a key organizational transformation topic.
Why has workforce management (WFM) become a strategic issue for companies today?
Workforce management now occupies a central position in how organizations operate.
It directly feeds payroll, structures work organization, and produces a large portion of the workforce data used by HR, Finance, and Operations departments.
In many companies, costs related to working time represent a very significant portion of expenses. The ability to understand, organize, and manage this time therefore becomes a direct lever for cost control and profitability improvement.
Furthermore, regulatory and organizational environments are becoming increasingly complex. Companies must manage multiple rules, collective agreements, multi-site organizations, and sophisticated scheduling systems.
Workforce management is therefore no longer simply an administrative tracking tool. It is becoming a structural system that enables organizations to secure processes, optimize resource utilization, and continuously balance capacity, costs, and economic performance.
What are the main pain points you observe today among CHROs and operational departments regarding workforce management?
The pain points are numerous and often concern several dimensions.
The first concerns the complexity of rules and processes. Companies must integrate regulations, collective agreements, and local practices that sometimes make systems difficult to understand and maintain.
The second concerns the fragmentation of systems and workflows. In many organizations, workforce management still relies on multiple tools or partially manual processes. This generates data inconsistencies and complicates interfaces with payroll or HR systems.
The third pain point concerns managers and operational teams. They often must manage complex or unintuitive tools, even though they play a central role in time validation or scheduling.
Finally, companies often struggle to actually leverage the data produced by their workforce management systems. This data is abundant but remains largely underutilized for managing variances, allocating resources, or improving operational performance.
Why is workforce management now under increasing pressure in organizations?
Several factors explain this pressure.
The first is regulatory complexity. Rules related to working time, overtime, or absences evolve regularly and require robust systems to ensure compliance.
The second is the pursuit of operational performance. In a context of increased margin pressure, companies seek to optimize work organization, better plan their resources, and control their costs.
The third factor is the digitalization of HR environments. Workforce management systems must now integrate into complete HRIS ecosystems and interface with numerous other tools.
Finally, organizations now expect workforce management to produce reliable and actionable data, capable of feeding HR analytics and management decisions.
What is Althéa’s conviction regarding workforce management transformation?
At Althéa, we are convinced that workforce management cannot be approached solely from a technological angle.
WFM projects are above all transformation projects that simultaneously affect processes, work organization, information systems, and data quality.
The success of these projects therefore relies on a comprehensive approach that aligns these different dimensions.
Our conviction is that workforce management must be conceived as an organizational performance lever, not simply as an administrative or regulatory tool. It is a topic that directly impacts the company’s economic performance.
How do you concretely support companies in their WFM transformation projects?
Our approach generally relies on several stages.
We begin with a diagnostic phase to understand the current functioning of workforce management systems, identify pain points, and assess regulatory or operational risks.
Based on this diagnosis, we support companies in defining their Target Operating Model, which clarifies the target organization, processes, and roles of different stakeholders.
We then intervene on the transformation projects themselves: scoping, solution selection support, project management, tool implementation, and change management.
Finally, we help organizations structure the governance of their systems to ensure their long-term stability and fully leverage their data.
Why do you often say that the tool alone is not enough in WFM projects?
This is a reality we observe very frequently.
Many companies believe that a new tool alone will resolve the difficulties related to workforce management. However, these difficulties rarely originate solely from technology.
They are often linked to heterogeneous processes, poorly formalized rules, or organizations that have evolved over time.
If these elements are not clarified upfront, even the best tool will not be able to produce the expected results. A tool poorly aligned with processes and organization only industrializes existing inefficiencies.
Workforce management projects must therefore be based on a comprehensive approach, addressing processes, organization, rules, and systems simultaneously.
What concrete results can organizations expect from transforming their workforce management?
A successful workforce management transformation produces several benefits.
First, it secures processes and regulatory compliance by reducing the risk of errors or incorrect interpretation of rules.
It also improves data reliability, which is essential for payroll but also for HR and financial analytics.
It simplifies the work of managers and operational teams, by reducing time spent on low-value administrative tasks.
Finally, it enables companies to better manage their operations, by leveraging time data to analyze work organization, anticipate variances, and improve performance.
How do you see workforce management evolving in the coming years?
Workforce management will undergo a profound transformation in the coming years.
Historically, it was designed as a collection and compliance system, intended to record working time and produce payroll variables.
Tomorrow, it will gradually become a work and activity management system.
The first evolution concerns data usage. Workforce management systems already produce a considerable amount of information about the actual organization of work: team availability, activity rhythms, absenteeism, workload, and operational efficiency. This data will increasingly be leveraged to improve planning, anticipate resource needs, and optimize organization.
The second transformation concerns the convergence between workforce management, scheduling, and skills management. Ultimately, companies will seek to cross-reference these dimensions to answer a central question: having the right skills, at the right time, to meet operational demands.
The third evolution concerns technological integration. Workforce management systems will no longer function as isolated tools but as central components of broader ecosystems, integrating HRIS, financial systems, and business tools.
Finally, artificial intelligence will gradually transform these systems: automation of controls, anomaly detection, schedule optimization, and decision support for managers.
Ultimately, workforce management could become a true workforce management platform, at the intersection of HR, operational, and financial challenges.
It will no longer simply measure time worked, but continuously optimize work organization.
Artificial intelligence will accelerate this transformation by enabling a shift from a tracking logic to a logic of anticipation and real-time decision-making.
If you had to summarize the ambition of the TIME offering in one sentence?
Transform workforce management into a performance management lever, enabling continuous balancing between work organization, costs, and operational capacity.
Workforce management can no longer be considered a simple administrative tool.
It now constitutes a strategic infrastructure for work organization, at the heart of HR transformation and operational performance management.
Structuring workforce management means securing processes, ensuring workforce data reliability, and giving companies the means to sustainably organize their operations.
Above all, it means regaining control over a major economic performance lever, still largely underutilized in most organizations.
