Standards Development

Scope

The deployment of workforces encompass a broad range of processes and management activities that address organisational performance, people management, and compliance issues. These processes focus a critical resource – people – because it significantly influences the social climate and performance of an organization. Decisions resulting from these processes directly impact people’s wellbeing, relationships, motivation, and the organization’s overall collective intelligence, capability and output.

This standard applies only to the allocation process. Allocation is the process of analysing, assigning and communicating Work to Workers. Organisations should have a way to assess and determine allocations, and means to direct their Workers using relevant Allocation Information.

Allocation is a planning process that occurs before work commences. This process happens on a recurring basis across the organization. It requires inputs from the Workforce Planning process and/or other sources in order to match Demand (for Work) and Supply (of Workers). Although allocation is typically performed by front-line managers (or their delegates), the allocation process itself is commonly defined and owned by HR.

This standard excludes digital workers (e.g. robots), timekeeping and payroll.

Purpose

The allocation of people to work is a fundamental touch point between an organisation and its people. The purpose of workforce allocation is to balance outcomes for and between people, deliverables, and finances.

Ineffective workforce allocation can cause substandard outcomes relating to services, products, organizational finances, worker well-being, workforce utilization, attendance, retention, safety, etc. For example:

- Proper allocation increased sales by 7% at Gap (Harvard Business Review, 2018-03)

- Better allocation flexibility can cause a 45% reduction in turnover as was the case at University of Minnesota (2011-04)

- 77% of workers mention work-life balance (scheduling) as the determining factor into job satisfaction (Shiftboard 2019 survey)

- > 25% of the reason projects fail is due to poor workforce allocation (Project Management Institute survey 2018)

As stated in the TC260 Strategic Business Plan, “many organizations were seen to lack the infrastructure to make fact-based decisions about workforce allocation” (TC260 Strategic Business Plan, Section 2.1). Because HR has a significant interest in many of these outcomes, HR commonly leads the creation of policies and guidelines in regards to allocation processes.

By applying a standard process, an organization can reliably predict workforce outcomes and proactively change the allocation of work and workers.. In addition, HR will be able to drive governance, monitor outcomes, and guide managers to allocate work correctly.

Process Benefits:

1. Confidence in a consistent process and its transparency across the organization

2. Competitive advantage that shows commitment to respect their workforce

3. Enhanced understanding of the allocation process and its impact on outcomes

4. Better control of allocation process to support risk management  

5. Enables broader adoption of flexible work practices

Potential users of this proposed standard could be:

a) human resource managers

b) trade union/employee representatives and employer groups

c) workforce professionals known as resource managers, workforce managers, workforce schedulers, roster coordinators, allocation coordinators, staffing coordinators, workforce coordinators or workforce analysts

d) managers of organisational operations

e) workforce policy makers

f) project managers and consultants involved in workforce system and process

g) vendors of workforce technology