A recent survey conducted by CyberShift regarding priorities in the deployment of employees revealed significant workforce and expense management trends in North America. To gain visibility into both the U.S. and Canadian markets, CyberShift, provider of workforce and expense management software and services, administered the survey at the American Payroll Association's 24th Annual Congress as well as the Canadian Payroll Association's 24th Annual Conference and Trade Show. In both instances, more than 25 percent of survey respondents ranked labor cost reduction as their primary workforce concern, followed by increasing customer satisfaction and improving employee productivity.

When asked what their top workforce management priority is over the next 12 months, time and attendance management received the highest ranking in both markets. U.S. and Canadian respondents also ranked employee and/or manager self-service as the subsequent highest priority and are turning to workforce management systems to increase employee productivity.

Similarities between the markets diverged from there, with Canadian respondents citing workforce scheduling optimization as their most pressing challenge followed by scheduling by union and pay rules and scheduling to manage costs receiving the next highest rankings respectively. The U.S. survey responses revealed that scheduling to manage costs is the top workforce scheduling challenge, followed closely by optimizing workforce schedules.

In addition to polling respondents on their workforce optimization challenges, the CyberShift survey examined expense management trends. While it's not surprising that the larger the company, the more expense reports are filed monthly, the survey did uncover that more than half of the respondent organizations are processing expense reports manually. Notably, 40 percent of the respondents in organizations with more than 5,000 employees indicated that they are processing expense reports manually, a situation that can ultimately be very costly. Not only are these organizations missing out on opportunities to reduce costs through better insight into spending, but they are also creating vulnerabilities that can arise from noncompliance issues as well as internal and external fraud.

Robert Farina, CyberShift's CEO, stated, "Automation is one of the essential keys to fully maximizing workforce deployment and gaining control of employee expenses. When relying on manual processes, organizations cannot make real-time business critical connections, such as diverting labor resources to meet fluctuating client needs, which can have a profound impact on the bottom line. CyberShift's enterprise workforce and expense management solutions were designed to address these issues, allowing organizations of all sizes to seize control where it matters most - in their two biggest spend areas: labor and expense."

A wide variety of organizations participated in the CyberShift survey, with employee populations ranging from less than 500 employees to more than 5,000 employees. Job titles of respondents include Chief Financial Officer, Director of Compliance, Director of Payroll and Benefits, HR Manager, IT Manager, Payroll Manager and Senior Payroll Specialist.