Article By Damien Durston, ANZ Head of Workforce Management Solutions at OneAdvanced
Australia’s productivity has been a subject of concern across many industries in recent years. This slowdown is influencing government policy considerations aimed at boosting productivity growth.
The federal government has organised the Economic Reform Roundtable, with the aim of shaping a broad consensus on reform regarding productivity and economic resilience.
Australia’s manufacturing sector is a key concern, as productivity was traditionally driven purely by the speed of machines or the efficiency of production lines. Whereas today, the people who keep the operations running are equally critical, yet many manufacturers still lack clear, real-time visibility into their workforce.
Knowing where their employees are, what they are doing and how effectively they are working is becoming a key differentiator for manufacturers that are under pressure due to labour shortages, rising costs and ongoing supply chain disruptions.
Workforce visibility is about more than time and attendance tracking. It is about gaining actionable intelligence on shift coverage, compliance risks, fatigue management and overtime spend and using that data to make smarter operational decisions. As manufacturers across Australia face mounting challenges, cloud-based workforce management systems are emerging as an essential tool for turning labour data into a competitive advantage.
The shifting productivity challenge
Australian manufacturing companies are navigating a complex operating environment. Demand can be volatile; supply chains remain vulnerable to global shocks and customers expect rapid fulfilment without compromising quality. Meanwhile, skills shortages and rising labour costs are forcing leaders to do more with the resources they have.
In this environment, labour is one of the largest controllable expenses and one of the most significant levers for improving productivity. Yet without accurate, up-to-the-minute insight into workforce deployment, managers are often making decisions in the dark. Overstaffing inflates costs, understaffing risks delays and quality issues and poor rostering contributes to fatigue and safety incidents.
Workforce visibility transforms these decisions from guesswork into informed action. Real-time data on who is on the floor, what tasks they are performing and where people and skills gaps exist enables manufacturers to respond to issues before they escalate, whether that is redeploying staff to cover a bottleneck or proactively addressing compliance risks.
Beyond the factory floor
The modern manufacturing workforce is rarely confined to a single site. Many organisations operate multiple facilities, distribution centres or production lines spread across different locations and time zones. Workforce management complexity increases exponentially with this scale, especially when each site may have different processes, shifts and staffing needs.
Digital workforce management systems allow leaders to view staffing, productivity and compliance data across the entire business from a single platform. This “single source of truth” eliminates the need for manual reconciliation of disparate spreadsheets or site-specific systems. Managers can see immediately whether shifts are fully covered, which teams are incurring the most overtime, and where fatigue risks are emerging, whether they are in Melbourne, Perth, or regional New South Wales.
This visibility does more than prevent operational issues. It enables strategic decision-making by providing a holistic view of workforce performance across sites. Leaders can identify patterns and trends that may not be apparent at an individual site level, such as recurring skill shortages at certain times of year or higher-than-average absenteeism in particular teams.
Managing compliance complexity
In Australia, manufacturers must comply with a complex framework of labour laws, workplace health and safety regulations and industry-specific awards. These rules govern everything from maximum shift lengths and mandated breaks to penalty rates and overtime entitlements.
Failure to comply can result in significant financial penalties, reputational damage and operational disruption. However, keeping track of compliance manually is a major challenge, particularly for organisations managing large, shift-based workforces.
Workforce management systems can automate compliance monitoring by integrating award interpretation and rostering rules directly into scheduling processes. For example, the system can prevent a manager from assigning a shift that would push an employee over the legal maximum weekly hours or fail to provide the required rest period between shifts. This not only reduces the risk of non-compliance but also frees managers from the administrative burden of manually checking each roster against complex regulations.
By embedding compliance into day-to-day workforce planning, businesses can protect themselves while ensuring fairness and transparency for employees, a critical factor in attracting and retaining skilled workers.
Driving efficiency with workforce intelligence
The value of workforce visibility lies not just in collecting data but in turning it into actionable intelligence. A workforce management platform provides analytics and dashboards that make it easy to understand labour costs, productivity levels and operational bottlenecks.
For example, overtime analysis can reveal whether excessive hours are the result of genuine demand peaks, chronic understaffing or inefficient rostering. Fatigue management data can highlight teams at risk of burnout, enabling leaders to intervene before productivity and safety are affected. This intelligence enables manufacturers to optimise productivity without compromising worker wellbeing.
The competitive edge of visibility
In a market where margins are tight and disruptions are the norm, workforce visibility is becoming a competitive necessity. It allows manufacturers to manage labour costs proactively, maintain compliance, and protect employee well-being while meeting customer expectations for quality and timeliness.
Cloud-based workforce management systems deliver this visibility in a scalable, accessible format, enabling leaders to see beyond the factory floor and into the heart of their operations. By connecting data from multiple sites and functions, they provide the intelligence needed to optimise workforce deployment, improve decision-making and lift productivity across the business.
