How AI can help manage your hourly employees

Hourly employees have more choices for when and where they work because of the pandemic. This newfound power is putting employers in a potentially tough spot.

Through the COVID-19 pandemic, hourly and gig employees have discovered they now have more leverage when it comes to their work hours and wages. As companies seek to recruit new talent and tap into this pool, questions loom around the best ways to provide a new workforce experience while managing their previous policies.

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“For hourly workers, there are lots of concerns that employers have, such as ‘If I give them a company e-mail address system, am I incurring additional compensation costs?'” says Sanish Mondkar, founder and CEO of workforce management platform Legion. “Everything has to be measured and paid for on their timesheet and employers are asking, ‘Is that something I have to pay for?’”

Mondkar says managing this new workforce doesn’t mean employers will lose control of their business. In fact, he thinks it can be an opportunity for employers to embrace untapped resources by leaning into the flexibility this group demands.

“Flexibility in schedules for frontline workers should be considered a perk,” he says. “That is something that smart employers can actually incorporate into their operating practices to be a better employer and attract and retain more people.”

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Hourly workers now make up 55.5% of the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mondkar’s platform will help employers maximize efficiency in labor and employee engagement, while also giving employees schedule autonomy and flexibility. The platform taps into AI to provide employers with a customized model best suited to their needs and employees have access to self-service tools via the app.

“We can predict how much demand you’ll have for your labor, then we’ll optimize the labor needed to meet that demand,” Mondkar says. Subsequently, he says employers can be assured they will have the most efficient labor plan tailored to their business.

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While this new ground of employee autonomy has been broken, Mondkar does not believe it is going away anytime soon.

“Now that brick and mortar, labor intensive businesses are hiring over 70 million hourly workers, they’ve got to figure out how they're going to compete, and still be labor efficient and compliant,” Mondkar says. “The bar is higher, but the expectations of the workforce are already out there. There’s no going back.”