When Scheduling Fails, FI's Pay
Why WFM Is More Than Just ShiftsThe Challenge
Financial Institutions have long treated workforce scheduling as an HR task. But recent wage and hour lawsuits show otherwise: manual scheduling and untracked work have become legal and operational liabilities.
Employees are increasingly filing claims for “off-the-clock” work, like booting up systems, completing opening procedures, or logging out after closing. Those minutes are now turning into multimillion-dollar settlements.
The Root Cause
Employees are either not able to clock in because time clocks are not up and running as soon as they enter their branch, or they complete operational tasks that are required, manual, time-based, and not clearly tied to shifts, despite not being on the clock.
When these activities fall outside scheduling systems, two problems emerge:
- Employees often perform them before or after shifts.
- The bank lacks evidence that compensation should have occurred.
This is what drives litigation.
Where Workforce Management Changes the Risk Equation
Time Capture
Check-in is immediately available, no reboot time necessary.
Assignments are Captured
All employee activities are time and date-stamped.
Overtime Notifications
Overtime notifications are sent before OT even occurs.
- Recurring Tasks / Checklists 20%
- Back-office Paperwork / Documentation 25%
- Building/Managing Schedules 15%
- Audits / Compliance Checks Here 15%
Expected Savings
Legal protection is only half the story. Financial Institutions want relationship-based interactions, advisory conversations, and in-branch problem solving. But employees can’t deliver that when they’re buried in administrative steps.
Total administrative burden:
~45–70% of a typical branch employee’s time can be spent on non-customer-facing administrative work if processes are manual or fragmented.
Modern workforce management is not about posting schedules. It is the mechanism that ensures work is compensated, documented, and automated before legal, compliance, or employee pressure makes change mandatory.
In banking today, WFM isn’t just operations tech. It’s risk protection and customer experience capacity wrapped into one system.