WFM in the Public Sector: Impact, Use Cases, and Leading Practices

By: RPI Tech Connect   October 8, 2024

The public sector is made up of many distinctly different workforces, all with a unique set of challenges—ranging from handling complex employee schedules and roles to ensuring compliance with labor laws, union agreements, and overtime rules. In this episode of RPI Tech Connect, we’re taking a closer look at how Workforce Management (WFM) solutions can tackle these issues by streamlining scheduling, improving productivity, and enhancing employee engagement.

Join RPI’s Senior WFM Director, Randy Ellsworth, as he offers insight into the critical impact of WFM, share real-world use cases, and discuss best practices for successful implementation. Tune in to learn how effective WFM can transform the public sector’s approach to managing workforce dynamics.

Interested in listening to this episode on another streaming platform? Check out our directories.

Meet Today’s Guest, Randy Ellsworth

Randy Ellsworth is the Senior Director of RPI’s Workforce Management (WFM) practice and brings over 25 years of domestic and international experience in the software industry. He has worked directly with Infor and was most recently employed as Senior Director of Infor’s WFM Practice. Throughout his career, Randy has developed a deep expertise in consulting, implementations, and integrations, as well as risk management and mitigation. He brings extensive experience with SaaS solutions and cloud implementations, including many transformational programs.

In his time at Infor, Randy was responsible for implementing WFM methodology and helped develop and ensure industry-leading practices, while also supporting and collaborating with both global and domestic teams. He is an Infor Deployment Method certified practitioner with immense experience in project and program management, services delivery, and systems integrations.

Meet Your Host, Chris Arey

Chris Arey is an experienced B2B marketing professional with nearly a decade of working in content creation, copywriting, SEO, website architecture, corporate branding, and social media. Beginning his career as an analyst before making a lateral move into marketing, he combines analytical thinking with creative flair—two fundamental principles required in marketing.

With a Bachelor’s degree in English and certifications from the Digital Marketing Institute and HubSpot, Chris has spearheaded impactful content marketing initiatives, participated in corporate re-branding efforts, and collaborated with celebrity influencers. He has also worked with award-winning PR professionals to create unique, compelling campaigns that drove brand recognition and revenue growth for his previous employers.

Chris’ versatility is highlighted by his experience working across different industries, including HR, Tech, SaaS, and Consulting.

About RPI Tech Connect

RPI Tech Connect is the go-to podcast for catching up on the dynamic world of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Join us as we discuss the future of ERPs, covering everything from best practices and organizational change to seamless cloud migration and optimizing applications. Plus, we’ll share predictions and insights of what to expect in the future world of ERPs.

RPI Tech Connect delivers relevant, valuable information in a digestible format. Through candid, genuine conversations and stories from the world of consulting, we aim to provide actionable steps to help you elevate your organization’s ERP. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the ERP scene, our podcast ensures you’re well-equipped for success.

Tune in as we explore tips and tricks in the field of ERP consulting each week and subscribe to RPI Tech Connect below.

Transcript

Chris Arey 
The public sector has diverse workforces, but the challenges in managing them are often similar. In this episode of RPI Tech Connect, we discuss the nuances of public sector workforces and share tactics to boost productivity and enhance employee engagement.

Chris Arey 
This is RPI Tech Connect. Welcome back. In this segment, we’re exploring the public sector and more specifically, the unique teams that make up its workforce. From local government and education to utilities and transit authorities, each organization is distinct, yet managing these diverse workforces shares common challenges. Today, we’ll discuss the unique composition of these agencies and how tools like Infor WFM can help maximize team productivity and improve employee satisfaction. Joining us today, we have RPI Senior WFM Director, Randy Ellsworth, a known leader in the Infor WFM space and the broader ERP community. Randy, welcome to the program, sir.

Randy Ellsworth 
Hey, thanks Chris. Great to be here. Good to see you today.

Chris Arey 
Yeah, you too, man. Thanks for it’s always nice having you in the in Balto office. So appreciate you taking the time to hop on here. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to hear more about your background and maybe you could walk us through your journey. What led you to RPI?

Randy Ellsworth 
Yeah, sure. I have been in the software industry and implementing software for, geez, close to 35 years now. I’m kind of dating myself, but that’s where I am. I spent about 16 years of my career at Infor, the last several managing the workforce management practice there. When I left Infor, spoke to RPI, we certainly recognized the need in the market for additional WFM.

Chris Arey 
Haha.

Randy Ellsworth 
Partners in for WFM product is on fire. So as I met the leaders of RPI spoke with a number of the consultants, it’s pretty clear, right? We were aligned on a common goal to help customers be successful and really just focusing on long standing relationships and successful outcomes. So something that’s near and dear to my heart.

Chris Arey
Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that with us. I know that RPI is thrilled to have you on the team. So yeah, today though, I wanna understand what’s happening in the public sector, the dynamics that make it such an interesting space to work. These workforces are unique and layered and I’m curious to hear from your perspective, why is that? What makes them so special?

Randy Ellsworth
Yeah, sure. So when you talk public sector, there’s a lot of different entities, Whether that’s, you know, city, county, state government, and within their various agencies and departments that are very diverse, right? You may have a school system, you may have parks and rec, you may have, you know, police and fire, right? All with their unique challenges and complexities. So, you know, within a school system.

You have folks with various roles, more than one job, right? A school teacher may be a coach or a bus driver and they’re paid on a different scale, different ways to pay people. all ideally is in one system to be able to capture that and automate that time. So you’re addressing whatever the challenge is within that department, right?

If you look at maybe a mental health facility within, you know, public sector, you know, it’s essentially a hospital, right? So you have all of the uniqueness’s of, you know, nursing, say, you know, scheduling within that skills and credentials that are required for those particular jobs. And of course, overarching, have, you know, constraints within public sector, right? You may need to manage to a budget, certainly do.

You have regulatory compliance in terms of how you may schedule, know, fair labor scheduling act. You know, you have various ways that are mandated that you have to pay. And then you get into, you know, if you don’t, you know, you’re dealing with labor relations, right? So a lot of times there’s union contracts or pay contracts that govern this type of stuff. So it’s very nuanced within those departments. you know, in for WFM is flexible enough to handle those different scenarios across many different entities.

Chris Arey 
Yeah. So thanks for providing the context there. And you kind of alluded to my next question here, which is that, you know, with all these layers and complexities and nuances to the workforces that make up the public sector, how exactly do organizations go about managing those employees, the ones who wear multiple hats? Like, what does that process look like?

Randy Ellsworth 
Yeah, right, right. So oftentimes it’s manual, right? If you don’t have a system, it is the various managers managing the schedule and the people and the requirements of that job. It’s HR and payroll that are looking at those various time cards, if you will, and sorting out how they get paid, looking back.

Sometimes it’s documented sometimes it’s not but clearly it’s challenging and very labor intensive every you know every pay cycle right whether that’s every two weeks or whatever they are in there having to sort out what was coded and how those folks get paid and if they don’t get it right they’re opening themselves up to you know to litigation right it’s challenge.

Chris Arey 
You pay is a serious thing too, right? You don’t wanna be making mistakes there. In fact, just hearing that it’s a manual process to begin with is like, man, that just sounds like an invitation for trouble, right?

Randy Ellsworth
No, for sure.

Yeah, yeah. also, you know, also they, you know, they may have various disparate systems, right, that they’re using multiple scheduling systems, multiple time systems, sometimes, you know, say in a corrections facility, right, you can’t have a phone to, you know, to log your time and you need time clocks or whatever. So the various inputs, if you will, and the various ways that people capture their time.

Ultimately, ideally lead into a single system, right? That captures all of that stuff. Get rid of the disparate systems, integration with your HR systems and other various systems, proper tracking and recording, and alerts, right? So as you move into a modern WFM, you’re taking out that margin of error, right? When you’re doing manual entries and really putting it all in the system for it to calculate to alert you if there’s a problem and for reporting and compliance after.

Chris Arey
Cool. Yeah, so what it sounds like I’m hearing then is that there is a very desirable need for a tool like WFM in the public sector, because without it, you’re kind of relying on these different systems and a lot of manual work and cross referencing and things like that. Is that right? Okay. So, so then to that end, maybe we could talk a little bit now about how and why in for WFM is such a good solution for kind of solving these needs. Could you, could you share some of the know, capabilities and functionality of that software.

Randy Ellsworth
Absolutely. It’s a big challenge for sure. Yeah, sure. So the Info WFM product is very mature, very robust. It’s highly configurable. It’s extendable if you need to. Extensions meaning something that’s outside the standard product. I’ll steer away from the word customization because extensions are allowed in the multi -tenant framework.

They are made to be resilient and you don’t have to worry about them during upgrades where customization kind of puts you on a path of no return, right? So just want to be clear there. Extendibility is something that’s very configurable and that works within the multi-tenant environment, right?

So the rules engine is very robust for time of attendance, for accruals, balances, that type of thing. And as you mentioned earlier, pay that is near and dear to people’s hearts, automating that within 4WFM, it is very flexible. It will handle anything from schools to police to fire to parks and rec to hospitals within these various entities. Yeah, right. And some of the benefits, from an end user standpoint…

Chris Arey
Just a couple things it does.

Randy Ellsworth
The interface, like the clock interface, pretty simple. People punch in and out, right? You clock in, you clock out. And the rules engine behind the scenes is what really calculates their pay and ensures that that is all accurate. They’re getting all the shift differentials or premiums or pay based on various job codes or whatever it is. The system keeps track of that, right?

It should be easy to use. Infor has spent a lot of time working on the UI, improving the mobile functionality, and really making it user -friendly from a manager perspective, right? Only having to approve exceptions, assuming your organization allows that to happen, a manager can just look at exceptions rather than improving everyone’s timesheet on their team.

Right. So it hones in on that. It gives them alerts, various capabilities to understand, Hey, if I, if I make this swap with this person, am I going to be approaching over time? Is that going to impact my budget if I make this change? Right. So having the tools available for a manager to both visibility and then the warnings to tell you when you’re kind of, you know, out of bounds.

Chris Arey
Yeah, thank you. No, that was a ton of great background there. And you said a lot of things that I’d like to address now. I guess the first is that I appreciate you making the distinction clear between the extendibility and the custom customizable. Is that right? Is that what you said?

Randy Ellsworth
Yeah, customizations historically is a bad word, right? With a software deployment, you don’t want to get into a custom situation where when you take a patch, right? This is multi -tenant, so you’re getting feature releases on a regular basis. If you go down the path of writing custom code, you are kind of stuck and you have to worry about that every time, right? Where the n4wfm framework through scripting, right, with this extensibility, you don’t have to worry about

Chris Arey
Wow.

Randy Ellsworth
The application stays the same. The only thing you really need to be concerned with is the extension itself, and that is very manageable within the system.

Chris Arey
Yeah, thank you. That’s good to hear. for those of you listening in, to understand the difference between those two adjectives for software is key here, I think. So appreciate that. And the other thing you mentioned there that I think is super important to kind of explore further is that they’ve made it easy to use. And it’s intuitive. And I think that’s twofold there.

The first is that when a system is easy to use, I feel it’s going to help with adoption. know, if you’re implementing this new software, it’s going to probably facilitate a better engagement. But the second thing and the more important thing I think here is that this is, this is a background that I’ve heard from a number of guests on the podcast now.

And that is that, you know, Infor has been purposefully and actively, you know, taking the feedback of users to enhance the software, to make it better, make it easier for end users to use. And so I’m curious from your perspective, how have you seen WFM evolve over time? I feel like there’s been a rebrand or something that happened in that space. Coming from Infor, yeah, what’s the story? How did the product get to where it is today and what played a role there?

Randy Ellsworth
Yeah, sure, sure. So as I mentioned earlier, the product is very robust. A lot of the improvements in the application have been around usability. I mentioned the mobile application. There’s a self -service portal that is part of that. So the look and feel, the information on the screen, it adapts to the screen. So regardless of what device you use.

It is the same features functions on a phone, on a tablet, on a laptop. So that is a familiar space for users to come in and do whatever they’re doing, right? Request time off to enter their time, to trade shifts, whatever is happening there. Also, if you know Infor, you know they are going down a path, a very industry -specific functionality, right?

So over the years, as this product has evolved, it’s been through a lot of input from customers, right? And engagement, and this is not, you know, typical, I will say, from other large software companies. You don’t get that same engagement. Infor is very good about connecting with their partners, with their customers, understanding what the needs are. The nuance is very specific.

Chris Arey
Yeah.

Randy Ellsworth
Parts of their business that need that little piece to make it work for them, right? Maybe they’re taking ideas from a best of breed, but that’s what makes that software special to them, right? Infor will take that, understand the requirements, put it in the standard product and release that for the customer and for everyone to use. it’s those incremental improvements and some of them are more than just incremental, they’re significant, but…

Chris Arey
Yeah, yeah.

Randy Ellsworth
Those incremental improvements over time that has really allowed the product to evolve and remain very flexible yet get to those industry specific items that are really needed.

Chris Arey
Yeah, it’s super cool to hear that they’re actively soliciting, you know, commentary and wants from different members of the community, you know, be it partners or organizations from specific industries like the public sector.

Randy Ellsworth
And it’s not just noise, they are doing it day in and day out. They’re doing it. And it’s really good to see. It’s great collaboration.

Chris Arey
Awesome. So we’ve talked about the evolution of the product and what it’s capable of, but now I kind of want to pivot and talk about how those features and functionality can really benefit public sector organizations. And so maybe we could talk about how it improves efficiency and maybe like productivity. kind of like, maybe this is something you’ve actually seen firsthand with an organization who implemented WFM and as a result saw exponential change in the way that they managed their teams.

Randy Ellsworth
Yeah, yeah, sure. And I think we need to look at it from a couple different perspectives, right? From a time and attendance perspective, you really want and need to pay people very accurately, right? So, I may be stating the obvious there, but it’s harder than it sounds in a manual environment, right? It’s very labor intensive.

So as we see folks moving from maybe, know, paper or disparate systems into a consolidated integrated application, that efficiency comes from time and attendance kind of on the back end in terms of paying accurately and automating everything there. But also as you, you know, take a step back, I mentioned earlier around, you know, regulatory compliance, right, in labor relations.

So it kind of takes that element out. If you configure it properly, it pays properly that, you know, that’s no longer a discussion and it’s auditable. Right. So from a compliance standpoint, you can look back, see what was done, you know, prove that they, you know, the person got a meal break or, know, whatever the, you know, whatever the law is, you know, you can prove that. Right.

There’s, there’s various reporting, both real-time reporting in terms of managers being able to understand where their staff is, who’s early, who’s late, who showed up, who didn’t. And then the visibility to changes that are happening throughout the day in the workforce. If you expand out a little bit from there, it’s analytics, right? It’s trending and seeing which departments are under or over budget and at a higher level, maybe looking at the entire team and what that looks like. So from real -time reporting to analytics, there’s a lot of deep functionality in there. And then from a scheduling perspective, that’s very nuanced and it depends on the organization, it depends on the people, it depends on the work and the requirements.

So having a system that gives you the visibility, what your demand is, which, you know, how much of that demand you filled and then where do I get my people? How do I, you know, how do I find these other people? Right? Is it a, is it a call list? Is it a, you know, is it scratched out on a piece of paper or do you have a system that you can pull up and say, Hey, this is the job I have. This is the shift that’s open. And these are the folks that are not currently working that have the credentials, the skills, whatever that is to fit that job.

Randy Ellsworth
And then the ease to ping them, right? To get a notification on the application that there is a shift available. We need your help there. The user just goes in, accepts that thing, and then the manager has the ability to approve it or not, right? just that ease to be able to understand your staff and use the system to help identify them and get them in the right place.

Chris Arey
You’re gonna think that’s saving so much back and forth time to like having to send out an email and say, you know, we need to fill this shift on X date at this time and having to wait for someone to reply. It’s like, no, I can just see right off the bat who who’s available. And like you said, who’s credentialed and and who also isn’t going to into overtime or something and just make that happen behind almost behind the scenes. Whereas that that used to be someone’s like full time job is probably like making sure things are covered and

Randy Ellsworth
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Arey
and there’s no gaps in the schedule.

Randy Ellsworth
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Arey
So that’s cool. So something I want to explore there is that, you know, Infor WFM sounds like a bag of magic tricks. can do all these different things and it’s super cool. But the key there is this is configuration and setup. like the software is only as good as it’s configured to be. Is that right?

Randy Ellsworth
Yeah, absolutely. When you get into this, it’s important to have the proper knowledge to get the system implemented. And that is a combination of products and how that product is to be configured or used, what the capabilities are, but also understand the industries, obviously.

As you go in there, as a consulting organization, we’re looking at the people, we’re looking at process, we’re looking at the technology and melding them into something that is going to produce the right outcome. Successful outcome is a lot of things, but at the end of the day, it’s efficiency, it’s paying people accurately, and it’s giving the end users, the managers and executives the tools and the visibility they need to really do their jobs and do it well, efficiently.

Chris Arey
Yeah. And so best practices for setting up the software. Do you have any? Where do you is it? Go ahead.

Randy Ellsworth
We have a lot of that. Well, it’s a process, right? So I would say the approach, we have a methodology within RPI and the approach to understanding the requirements, current state, future state, and how that maps to the application.

We’ve put a lot of time into developing the methodology and really refining a prescriptive approach to this is the best way to handle time and attendance and how we gather and implement those requirements. And this is how we understand scheduling and the other various aspects around workforce management and how that is best implemented, right?

And they are different, right? Time and attendance, very black and white, scheduling, very gray and nuanced and that is just a fact of life. It’s not the software, right? It is the business and it is how to map that and use that in the software. And when you have a flexible application like Infor WFM, that makes our job a bit easier. There are options and those options are discussed in detail and we get into the nitty gritty and then we, you know.

For scheduling, we come back, we prototype it, we show them, we let folks get hands on with it. We let them shoot holes in it and then we go back and refine it. That’s what it takes. And again, the goal is to automate as much as we can and to make these folks’ life easier. This application, we try to set it up so it’s the least amount of work to use as possible.

Chris Arey
Ha ha ha. It’s great.

Randy Ellsworth
Right? If you think about somebody that their day job is not necessarily scheduling people, that’s a, you know, a necessary evil. Right? So the easier we can make that through our prescriptive approach, you know, the better they’re going to be on the other side. And the less time they have to spend in the application, the more time they can spend, you know, doing the real work and, and working with the people that are doing their jobs.

Chris Arey
So it sounds like then one of the first places to start with this software then is to understand the requirements and the details of the organization’s workforce, how they work, how they operate, and then kind of working backwards from that and using, like developing the software, not developing, but maybe configuring the software to support them.

Randy Ellsworth
Figuring, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we start with current state requirements. Everyone has pain points. It doesn’t matter where they’re coming from, right? They have pain points. You we want to understand the process. We want to understand your pain. And we want to understand your kind of wants and desires, right? You need to keep that in check as you go through a project. There is scope containment that needs to be done. You don’t necessarily want to do it all at once. Maybe you do, but.

Chris Arey
Haha.

Randy Ellsworth
You know, there’s various approaches there. So as we get into, you know, these implementations, you know, we guide the customer on the best approach there, give options, and then make recommendations based on those options, right? Based on the business needs,

Chris Arey
Awesome. Yeah, thank you. So, so I have to say we are getting close to time now. I appreciate you, you hanging out and spending this time with us and exploring WFM this afternoon. But you know, before we, before we wrap up, I’d like to ask my guest this final question. It’s if you could offer today’s audience one piece of advice based on today’s conversation, what would it be?

Randy Ellsworth
Yeah, sure. think I would say it’s kind of a complexity challenge, right? When we’ve gone into scenarios where we’re demoing the application, Infor does the demos of the application, we as a partner would support that. One of the questions that’s asked in prep for those demos is, you know, give me your biggest challenges, give me your most complex scenarios. And I want to show you

how the Infor application will solve those problems, right? So I think that is a great challenge if you have complexities, needs that are not being met, or you think there’s improvements that can be done, I’m sure there are, reach out, talk to us, talk to Infor, and have that conversation of your…

Your most complex needs. I just call it the complexity challenge because they literally ask in those prep calls, give me your toughest stuff and we’re going to show you how we’re going to make

Chris Arey
That’s awesome. That’s the first takeaway there that’s been of that type. Think of your most complicated thing, write it down, think about how you want it to be handled, and bring it to us. Your challenge of raising the stakes here, it’s like, show me your worst and we can solve it.

Randy Ellsworth
Right, right. Right, exactly. I just love it. Because a lot of it is table stakes, right? But when you get into the real meat of it, the devil’s in the details with this space and within this application. So it does take a lot of detailed discussions and conversations to get those nuances out and to make sure that the requirements are nailed.

Infor asking for that and prep for the demo and then turning it around in a week or so, whatever it is, right, when the demo is scheduled to show how we solve that. I just think that’s a great approach. And I love it because this application, I’ll say it can do almost anything, right? And if it can’t, hey, we have the ability to extend and we have a great team at Infor.

Chris Arey
Yeah, I love it. I do too.

Randy Ellsworth
Product management and development team there are very interested in just continuing to improve this product and making it better for the market.

Chris Arey
Perfect. Thanks for that, Randy. For those of you listening in, thanks for hanging out with us today. For more resources on WFM and the public sector, feel free to email us at podcast at rpic .com. With over 50 years of experience delivering successful outcomes for city, county, and state governments, we’re here to help. And we’d be happy to send you some additional content. This is RPI Tech Connect and I’m Chris Airy. We’ll see you next time.

Randy Ellsworth
Chris, thanks for having me today. We have a great team and would love to hear from folks out there that.