How MBAs help in workforce management
Workforce management is the integrated set of processes that an organization will use to optimize the productivity of its employees on individual, department, and company-wide levels. In any organization, workforce management will mean matching employee skills with specific tasks, quantifying the amount and types of labor that are needed to complete the tasks on a daily or hourly basis.
Issues such as understaffing, overstaffing, or a sub-optimal allocation of resources can significantly affect an organization’s profitability, reduce their productivity, frustrate employees, and potentially cause them to lose clients or customers.
Workforce management practices
According to TechTarget, a comprehensive workforce management program can include any or all of the following practices:
- Time and attendance tracking
- Employee scheduling
- Demand prediction
- Payroll and benefits administration
- Talent management
- Training programs and assignments
- Performance monitoring and evaluation
- Vacation and leave planning
- Career planning
- Crisis preparedness
How MBAs help in workforce management
Judith Edge, corporate VP for human resources at FedEx spoke with Workforce to discuss workforce planning and how she leverages her MBA in her role.
To keep her HR team focused on business objectives, Edge oversees different task forces on specific issues within the HR department to pull in the operating companies and make sure that HR objectives are consistent across the organization. She also manages leadership development for the top 400 positions in the company, ensuring that succession pipelines are always full — for example, preparing high-performing managers for director roles. An independent external firm is brought in to assess the skills of those in the pipeline, both before and after the program, and more than 90% of the company’s managerial and executive positions are filled from within.
Edge credits her MBA degree with her success in the role and adds that she would see an MBA as a “huge plus” when looking for a successor for her own role. Maryville University offers MBA degrees with no GMAT or GRE required in your choice of ten concentrations, including human resources management. Students can prepare for their Senior Professional in Human Resources designation, with courses including human resources management, workforce management, and compensation and benefits.
Sources
Questia, “Leveraging the MBA”