How many employees, both internal and external, do you need to reliably cover your workload in the coming week or month? What qualifications are required, what legal requirements must be met, and how can productivity and costs be balanced?
These questions are at the heart of workforce management (WFM). The aim is to plan and manage work, time, and available resources in such a way that companies remain capable of acting, even in times of fluctuating demand. The entire workforce —both internal and external employees—plays an increasingly important role in this.
Workforce Management: The Basics
Workforce management is not a new concept. Since the 1980s, companies have been working to plan their workforce more efficiently and organize processes better. However, in today's digital working environment, WFM has reached a new dimension.
In addition to permanent employees, external workers are increasingly being brought in, for example through staff leasing, project-based assignments, or specialized staffing provider. This significantly increases the complexity of personnel management.
Modern workforce management must therefore take several dimensions into account simultaneously:
- Capacity and workforce planning across different forms of employment
- Qualifications and availability of internal and external workers
- Legal and collective bargaining requirements, especially for temporary work
- Cost control and productivity
Why temporary work is a key component of WFM
Temporary work enables companies to respond flexibly to fluctuations in orders, seasonal peaks, or short-term absences. At the same time, it places special demands on planning, management, and compliance.
In the context of workforce management, this means:
- Temporary staff, such as temporary workers, must be employed in a legally compliant manner.
- Commitments, terms, and conditions must be transparent and comprehensible.
- HR, purchasing, and specialist departments must work together in a coordinated manner.
Without clear processes and appropriate digital support, temporary work quickly becomes an organizational and administrative risk.
Goals and benefits of integrated workforce management
A holistic WFM approach that includes both internal employees and temporary workers creates measurable benefits:
- Better planning reliability through realistic capacity and demand planning
- Greater efficiency, as resources are used in a more targeted manner
- More flexibility for last-minute changes
- Cost control by avoiding overstaffing or understaffing
- Legal certainty, especially when using external workers
At the same time, employees and external staff also benefit from clearer work schedules and greater transparency.
Digital support in workforce management
Manually managing mixed workforces is time-consuming and prone to errors. Modern digital solutions help companies implement workforce management in a structured and scalable way.
While traditional WFM systems often focus on internal employees, temporary work and contingent workforce require contingent workforce approaches. This is precisely where platforms that create transparency regarding assignments, contracts, costs, and compliance come into play.
For companies, this means:
- less administrative work
- better basis for decision-making
- clear responsibilities
Workforce management from Pactos' perspective
At Pactos, we deal with the question of how companies can manage external workers, especially in the context of temporary work, in a structured, transparent, and compliant manner on a daily basis.
Effective workforce management does not end with planning, but encompasses the entire lifecycle of external workers: from selecting the appropriate contract type to deployment, documentation, and evaluation.
Our aim is to support companies in establishing temporary work as an integral and controlled part of their workforce strategy, not as a stopgap solution, but as a consciously managed tool.
Conclusion
Workforce management today is much more than workforce planning. It is a strategic approach to combining internal and external workers in a meaningful way, remaining flexible, and ensuring control and compliance at the same time.
Temporary work in particular demonstrates how important structured processes and digital support are. Those who take a holistic approach to workforce management lay the foundation for stability, efficiency, and sustainable growth.
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