Summary: What makes assignment groups so important to a scalable workforce management strategy? Learn the differences between strong and weak assignment group strategies, challenges you may face during setup and how custom scripting can help from experts Bryan Thumme and Troy Robinson.
By: Evan Mathis
Table of contents:
Assignment groups are a fundamental part of any scalable workforce management strategy. By grouping people according to relevant info such as department or role, assignment groups can make company-wide managerial and admin tasks vastly more efficient for far-reaching benefits.
In a recent webinar, Stronger assignment groups for future-ready workforce management, we covered everything you need to know with the help of two experts: Bryan Thumme, solution consultant at WorkForce Software, an ADP company and Troy Robinson, director of WorkForce Software practice at HRchitect.
This blog article will cover the webinar’s key takeaways: the impact assignment groups have on your organization, the challenges you may face during setup and the key to resolving them for a workforce management environment that can adapt to changing business needs at scale.
The advantages of a strong assignment group foundation for workforce management strategy
Assignment groups are the building blocks of your workforce management strategy. Good assignment groups support functionality at the base of your solution, impacting the quality of processes including approvals, payroll processing, reporting and timesheet access.
Bryan covers how creating strong foundation for those processes translates into benefits including:
- Meeting compliance requirements: Security permissions are also controlled by the roles laid out by assignment groups, meaning getting them right reduces your risk of any unauthorized access.
- Reducing grievances: ADP® WorkForce Suite handles complex calculations and scenarios in real-time. Managers with access to the correct assignment groups can quickly see and correct any errors on their employees’ timesheets.
- Increasing transparency: Data and reporting provide managers and admins with access to assignment groups with the proper visibility they need to monitor and support their teams.
- Faster ROI: Effective assignment groups mean you can spend less time on administrative and managerial overhead tasks for more efficient operations.
The risks of a weak assignment group foundation
Unfortunately, assignment groups are so core to your workforce management strategy that getting them wrong can have an equally negative impact in those same areas:
- Compliance exposure: When assignment groups are wrong, permissions are wrong. This creates the risk of someone with unauthorized access violating compliance guidelines, even accidentally.
- Payroll processing delays and errors: Incorrect prevent payroll administrators from correcting their own team members’ data, requiring additional reviewers and time to resolve issues.
- Frustrated teammates: Without transparency from proper assignment groups, errors and exceptions may get flagged but not acted on, leading to a worse user experience for all involved.
- Lost productivity: Your team can lose countless hours tracking down users with the correct permissions to execute a task.
“One of the worst outcomes in any time and attendance system is a setup where messages or warnings just end up being ignored”
Bryan Thumme, Solution Consultant | WorkForce Software, an ADP company
Strong assignment group strategy vs. weak assignment group strategy
| STRONG ASSIGNMENT GROUP STRATEGY | WEAK ASSIGNMENT GROUP STRATEGY |
| Support compliance through correct permissions | Put you at risk for compliance exposure |
| Reduce grievances with instant access to data | Can lead to payroll delays and errors |
| Provide real-time data and reporting to managers for optimal visibility | Prevent leadership from acting on flagged errors, frustrating the whole team |
| Reduce time and effort spent on admin tasks for a faster ROI | Add friction and extra tasks to workflows, decreasing productivity |
4 common assignment group challenges
Setting up a strong assignment group strategy isn’t difficult, but there can be challenges along the way. Here are four common ones that you may face.
1. Manual assignment group creation
To create assignment groups, you need to understand your system’s data structure and configuration rules. Without that understanding or an expert “super delegator” role, you may run into delays.
2. Limited number of filters
Automatic assignment groups limit you to five filter criteria. While it’s very rare to require more than five, some specific use cases might call for it.
3. Delegation limits
Manual administrative delegations are done one employee at a time. If a user wants to manually create an assignment group for a specific location, they must be familiar with where that data is stored in the database. For this reason, manual assignment group creation is usually done by a few high-level admins. This can make delegating large teams time-consuming and repetitive.
4. Large number of assignment groups required
Reporting, payroll validation, security access and countless more processes rely on assignment groups. You may need dozens or even hundreds to support a scalable workforce management strategy, making manual set-up excessively long.
The solution: Custom scripting
Fortunately, Troy Robinson shared the solution to all four challenges above: custom scripting. Custom scripting can help you build many assignment groups dynamically, assign user access based on any data element from personnel records and automate processes to save time based on your unique needs.
Custom scripting can help you tackle a variety of other assignment group challenges as well, including:
- Region and department groups: An organization may have dozens of departments, each with a director that needs to review the data from each individual team member in their department. Custom scripting can automatically create those assignment groups and automatically delegate the permissions.
- Manager hierarchy: Arranging proper managerial permissions can get complicated with large chains of command. Custom scripting can automatically assign the correct permissions so that every manager gains the correct visibility down through their entire hierarchy.
- Multiple division administrators: When every division has its own administrator, they each need to be able to view and report on every manager in their division. You can use custom scripting to assign those permissions automatically, giving admins the visibility they need to support managers with delegation.
Key takeaways: Assignment groups are key to your scalable workforce management strategy
As Troy wraps up his discussion of custom scripts, Bryan reiterated how vital a solid assignment group foundation can be to a successful and scalable workforce management strategy. By supporting compliance, encouraging transparency and boosting efficiency, assignment groups can help drive increased user experiences and a faster ROI.
Want to get the full story, including the experts’ responses to live audience questions and real-time demonstrations? Access the on-demand webinar Stronger assignment groups for future-ready workforce management today.
