Although most Chinese companies have not been overly concerned about the high cost of labor in the past, there are more and more signs that the high cost of labor will become an unavoidable topic for many companies in the coming period.

Over the past few years, the average wage in China's manufacturing sector increased from $7.27 per hour in 2006 to $12.79 per hour in 2010, an increase of 76%. From the point of view of manufacturing unit hourly labor productivity, it was increased from 88.72 yuan per hour in 2006 to 149.24 yuan per hour in 2010, an increase of 68%. The two almost keep synchronized growth rate.

And after 2008, this balance began to break. China's manufacturing labor productivity growth slowed down significantly, while wages continued to rise rapidly. 2008 to 2010, China's manufacturing labor productivity increased by only 13.7%, while wages per capita rose by 24%.

Last year, a survey by Standard Chartered Bank showed that 9% of companies in the industrially developed Pearl River Delta region of southern China were planning to leave the country altogether, compared with less than 4.5% in 2012.

In the view of Kronos, the world's largest provider of workforce management solutions, while many companies are lean in their production line layouts and management processes, they are far from lean in terms of the employees themselves. According to research firm NucleusResearch, the adoption of workforce management by companies in developed countries can result in 3% to 5% labor cost savings and 5% to 10% labor productivity gains.

In the view of Miao Qing, general manager of Kronos Greater China, how to do the right people in the right time period arranged in the right position, to achieve the optimal allocation of resources, is the core of lean workforce management.

On-demand labor

? Arrange this employee in this position is appropriate to arrange this time period so many people can meet the demand? Most supervisors probably rely on experience to answer: ? I think so.

How do you get the right person in the right job at the right time? The days of relying on human experience are over. In Kronos' view, through massive data analysis, connecting front-end front-line staffing arrangements and back-end data, and achieving internal information symmetry, intelligent scheduling can be realized to minimize foam working hours.

Take the retail industry as an example, traditionally, many technology solutions in the retail industry are fragmented, POS systems, sales systems, back-office management systems, financial systems, workforce management and other systems are independent, in a fragmented state.

Robert Amor, senior director of international operations at Kronos, believes that these fragmented systems must be integrated into a unified, complete solution. To make labor planning and deployment, sales forecasting is required, which may come from the front-end POS system. A unified, flexible management process allows retailers to respond quickly to changes in the marketplace.

As an example, New Spice Road, a famous company in the restaurant industry, has improved its work efficiency by more than 50% since implementing its workforce refinement management, while labor costs have dropped by 20%, and the proportion of labor costs has dropped from 22% to 18%.

Based on historical data and special events such as holidays, rain and snow, promotions, new product launches, etc., New Spice Road refines store labor demand for different skills at different times of the day. Based on the demand, we use working hours instead of headcount to manage the labor force and ensure that there are enough people when the business is at its peak. When business is slow, unnecessary wastage of man-hours can be avoided.

Its employees do not have fixed jobs, but are assigned on a need-to-know basis based on their multi-skills. Each employee has at least two skills that can be flexibly dispatched between different workstations as needed; all employees are not on a fixed shift, but work according to fluctuations in business requirements.

For example, an employee works 8 hours, the first two hours at the center island workstation, and then transferred to the food delivery 3 hours, the third hour for the break, when the break is over, do cleaning 1 hour, the end of the end is 2 hours of training, the end of the end of the shift. These schedules are not fixed every day and are based entirely on demand.

Also in the manufacturing industry, in order to balance the pressure of rising labor costs, tap the existing labor resources and efficiency, multi-skilled labor is being carried out in some enterprises. The core of lean workforce management in the manufacturing industry is to rationalize the pool of workforce resources according to production demand, schedule multi-skilled workforce scientifically and intelligently, and eliminate wasted work hours to improve overall productivity.

Real-time management

With the development of mobile technology, smart terminals have been widely popularized, and Kronos puts forward?

With the development of mobile technology, smart terminals have become widely available. The concept of "real-time management" was introduced by Kronos.

Traditionally, many organizations use time and attendance machines to manage employees, but supervisors are still unable to accurately grasp the day's arrival situation in a timely manner. This lag can be as small as the impact on payroll performance, and as large as the impact on business performance.

Taking supermarket promoters as an example, the traditional way of management is that promoters sign in manually and record their time at work. Enterprises will send supervisors to conduct spot checks. But the downside is that employees may sign in and not be on duty. Even if someone spot-checks, the number of shopping malls they run each day is limited.

With mobile technology, managers can view, deploy, and plan employee job information through mobile terminals. If an employee is on temporary leave, the system will automatically tell the manager what employees are on standby and can be deployed immediately.

In addition, ?

In addition to the above, the system also provides a new way to manage the workforce. The most useful thing for managers is to analyze large amounts of data to generate trend forecasts.

A well-known domestic FMCG company, for example, has 40,000 employees across the country, of which 5,000 are factory production employees, and the other 30,000 or so are arranged in supermarkets around the world, as shoppers.

Thirty thousand employees, if each person works one hour less per day, that is 30,000 hours, 10 dollars per hour, then the loss of a day is as high as 300,000 dollars. In addition to these foam hours, the resulting loss in sales is incalculable.

And based on mobile technology?

And mobile technology-based real-time management? Based on GPS positioning, the basic location of the employee can be determined.

In addition, this set of technology can also realize intelligent scheduling, based on the background of historical sales data, accurate to every fifteen minutes. Coupled with employee skills, labor costs and other factors, it is possible to calculate the staffing ratio for the corresponding time period. In the shortest possible time to deploy the required personnel.

How managers can implement

Kronos believes that for managers to implement refined workforce management technology, the biggest . The challenge is not the technology, but how to manage the change. Every organization, every industry is different, and at every stage of development, the need to make management changes and transformations is a big challenge.

But the rollout of workforce refinement management techniques depends largely on the determination of management. To make the original opaque, wasteful and inefficient transparent and clear. For managers, it takes a lot of determination. However, if this problem is not solved, it will bring bigger problems.

Secondly, it is important that people at different levels experience the benefits of this concept, this set of management tools, whether it is management, or front-line employees. Especially for frontline employees, how they can help themselves after using these tools. For example, employees can self-service their shifts, leave records, attendance, etc., as well as self-submit requests and even select shifts based on their qualifications and preferences, etc.

In addition, they can use the tools to help them to manage their workload.

In addition, some measures should be taken on management tools and changes. Whether it is the organizational structure, or the performance appraisal mechanism, should be prepared accordingly. At the same time, Kronos international operations vice president and general manager Dick?Cahill believes that enterprises can not be a handful, must be listed on the plan, the task of prioritization.

Based on the experience of serving multinational enterprises, Dick and Robert agreed that the most feasible approach for Chinese enterprises is to pilot first, then expand. Pilot first, expand later? Chinese companies should first choose a location, in a certain period of time, for a number of business units to carry out the transformation of labor management technology, which is called the demonstration enterprise. In a short period of time to achieve rapid results, and successively in the other scope of the promotion. Schneider, for example, started with a pilot program in China and then rolled it out to the Philippines, Malaysia, and other countries. The advantage of this is that you can quickly see the results, have a strong persuasive power, and avoid the risk of a full-scale rollout.