Top 15 workforce management tools for smarter scheduling in 2025
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If you’re looking for workforce management software (WFM), the good news is there are many options to choose from.
The bad news is there might be too many options to choose from, and the alternatives don’t always differentiate between themselves clearly. There are WFM solutions and contact center and call center solutions with some built-in WFM features.
How can you determine which of these solutions is the best fit for your contact center agents, customers, and business model?
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What is workforce management software?
Workforce management (WFM) software is a type of technology or application that helps teams—often contact center teams—manage their schedules, forecasts, and performance. This includes creating schedules for shifts and daily activities, automating global scheduling, automating ticket and staffing forecasts, tracking performance and time-on-task, and more.
Top workforce management software comparison chart
Before we get into the details of each piece of workforce management software, here’s a quick comparison of 15 of the best WFM options on the market, with more information about each one’s pricing, features, and free trial or demo options.
Key functions of workforce management
Workforce management typically comprises a few key functions that all contribute to ensuring smooth operations:
Budgeting
One of the biggest priorities when scheduling a workforce is budget—you need the coverage, but you don’t want to overstaff because it creates inefficiencies that will end up costing the business. Being able to balance the budget while still keeping customers happy is key to good workforce management.
Forecasting and scheduling
Even though some solutions, such as Dialpad WFM, can automate your forecasting and scheduling with Ai, that’s only one part of the puzzle. Managers still have to put in the work to plan for multiple time zones and rotating shifts, which can quickly complicate workforce scheduling. To help lighten the burden on your team, use a good WFM solution with built-in forecasting and scheduling automation.
Ensuring legal compliance
This is one of the most important parts of the job, especially for contact centers in highly regulated industries like banking and healthcare. To address compliance, a good workforce management plan should take into account the unique labor laws in all regions where you have employees, pay structure, holidays and PTO, and more.
Human resources
While WFM isn’t technically a part of the HR department, managing your employees effectively often involves HR skills and, sometimes, collaboration with the HR team when disputes or issues come up. Ideally, your contact center leaders who manage direct reports will have some knowledge of HR processes and policies.
The 15 best workforce management software options for 2025
Now, let’s take a deep dive into each of the workforce management software options for contact center teams:
Dialpad
Zendesk (via Tymeshift)
Assembled
Deputy
When I Work
Verint
Nice CXone
Calabrio
Genesys Cloud
Five9
Talkdesk
ADP
Paycom
GoCo
TriNet
How much does workforce management software cost?
Because contact center team sizes are so variable, it’s often not possible to get a “set price” for WFM software. Typically, pricing will depend on the specific features you need and the number of agents and supervisors who will need licenses, which is why many of the top WFM solutions ask you to speak to their Sales team to get a quote.
Generally though, prices tend to range from $100 to $200 per user per month.
1. Dialpad
Dialpad Support has a robust built-in WFM solution that simplifies the process of scheduling and managing shifts for your customer-facing teams.
It integrates with a large range of business tools, including HRIS (human resource information systems), payroll & billing, CRM (like Zendesk, Intercom, and Dixa), time off systems, and more.
If you’re looking for a central hub of communication and information for your contact center teams, with workforce forecasting, auto-scheduling, analytics, and more, Dialpad WFM can enable your contact center leaders to make more data-driven decisions in real-time.
With Dialpad WFM, you can:
Easily send shift reminders and notifications to managers and agents via the built-in messaging feature whenever schedule changes occur.
Build custom forecasts. Simple but powerful filtering lets you group your tickets to reflect your customer channels or team structure:
Customize your agents’ activities. Automatically schedule service and non-service tasks to ensure your team has adequate time for admin tasks, training, and development.
Build ultra-flexible shift patterns. Create unique shift patterns and plans for all your team’s needs, including rotations and round robins. Build shift patterns based on your needs—a shift plan for a specific campaign, one for sales, another for Black Friday, and so on.
Features:
Intuitive shift planning. Build shift plans and patterns from scratch based on your agents’ skills and needs, and automatically assign shifts weeks in advance without clicking a button.
Forecasting and staffing based on historical data. Use your historical ticket data to predict call and messaging volumes and understand how many agents you need 12 weeks into the future.
Activity scheduling and delegation. Give Dialpad your scheduling rules and priorities and it’ll automate your scheduling across days, weeks, and months.
Coverage bar for each activity. With Dialpad’s coverage bars, plan the right level of coverage for each activity. Also, control how you staff for 30-minute increments to cover the activities.
Global planning. Quickly view the schedule in any time zone you need to and easily schedule channels in multiple languages based on agents’ skills.
Multi-time zone management. Set up different global shifts in a few clicks, tell Dialpad where your team is based, and let it do the rest.
Draft and publish views. Draft and edit shifts according to your team’s needs. Collaborate with your team leads in a secure space to create the perfect schedule before sharing it with your team members.
Pricing:
Free trial:
N/A
2. Zendesk Workforce Management
After acquiring Tymeshift, Zendesk now has a workforce management software—Zendesk Workforce Management—that integrates into its ticketing platform, with scheduling, forecasting, and reporting functionalities.
Features:
Ai-powered forecasting
Tracking employee time and attendance
Automatic agent scheduling
Pricing:
Available as an add-on to any Zendesk Suite plan, which starts at $55 per agent per month, billed annually. The add-on itself is an extra $25 per agent per month, billed annually.1
Free trial:
N/A
3. Assembled
Assembled is a workforce management software that lets you create and control employee schedules. The platform also enables you to forecast your staffing needs and plan team management accordingly.
Features:
Labor forecasting
Shift scheduling
KPI dashboard
Admin access to customizing rules, objects, and fields.
Pricing:
Reach out to their sales team for a custom quote
Free trial:
N/A
4. Deputy
Deputy is a workforce management software that offers staff scheduling, labor cost control, and timesheet simplification solutions. The platform provides features such as team scheduling, demand planning, and compliance tools.
Features:
Scheduling
Labor forecasting and compliance
Team management
Pricing:
Scheduling: $4.50 per user per month2
Time & Attendance: $4.50 per user per month
Premium: $6 per user per month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Free trial:
Yes
5. When I Work
When I Work is a workforce management software that helps businesses schedule and monitor employee time, performance, and attendance. It also allows users to track time-offs and manage shift swaps.
Features:
Time tracking
Team communication
Automated reminders
Pricing:
Essentials: $1.50 per user per month3
Pro: $3 per user per month
Premium: $5 per user per month
Free trial:
Yes
6. Verint
Verint workforce management is a cloud-based application with employee scheduling and forecasting features. The platform uses automation to meet the scheduling needs of typically mid-sized businesses.
Features:
Shift scheduling
Workforce analytics
Time and attendance tracking
Absence and leave management
Pricing:
Reach out to their sales team for a custom quote
Free trial:
N/A
7. Nice CXone
Nice CXone is a contact center solution that has workforce management features that let you create schedules, track employee time and attendance, and plan shifts based on your team’s needs.
Features:
Ai forecasting and scheduling
Adherence and time utilization insights
Agent KPIs, metrics, and trends
Pricing:
It appears that WFM features are included starting at the Core suite, which starts at $169 per agent per month.4
Free trial:
N/A
8. Calabrio ONE
Calabrio ONE is a workforce optimization suite for contact centers and comes with fundamental workforce management features such as data-driven coaching and 360-degree visibility across all support channels.
Features:
Real-time adherence
Intraday scheduling
Predictive forecasting
Pricing:
Reach out to their sales team for a custom quote
Free trial:
N/A
9. Genesys Cloud CX
Like Nice CXone and some other workforce management software solutions on this list, Genesys Cloud CX is primarily known as a contact center platform. Like those alternatives, it also has WFM features such as forecasting and adherence.
Features:
Ai-powered forecasting
Agent scheduling
Resource management
Pricing:
From their website, it seems that WFM features such as Ai-powered forecasting and scheduling are available at only the most expensive plan: Genesys Cloud CX 3, which starts at $155 per user per month.5
Free trial:
N/A
10. Five9
Five9 calls itself an “intelligence CX” platform, but essentially, it is a contact center solution that lets businesses interact with customers across voice and digital channels. It does have a pretty robust feature set and a large variety of clearly delineated pricing plans (though how much each one costs isn’t clear from the website).
Features:
Prebuilt CRM integrations with Oracle and ServiceNow
Agent portal for viewing schedules and requesting shift changes
Multiple forecasting algorithms
Pricing:
Enterprise WFM features are available only at the Optimum plan and above, which you’ll have to reach out to get a quote for.
Free trial:
N/A
11. Talkdesk
Talkdesk is a contact center solution that competes in the Genesys / NICE / Five9 space. Though it does market the platform as having WFM features, it’s worth noting that these features are available through its collaboration with Verint. For this reason, Talkdesk is a bit lower on this list.6
Features:
Ai-powered forecasting
Automated scheduling
Adherence monitoring
Pricing:
WFM features are available as an add-on option on Talkdesk’s most expensive plan, CX Cloud Elite, which starts at $145 per user per month.7
Free trial:
N/A
12. ADP Workforce Now®
Now, we’re getting into some workforce management software options that play outside the typical contact center sphere. ADP is a well-known solution that’s often used for HR and payroll, but it does offer time tracking and attendance features if you’re interested in combining payroll and some basic WFM functionality into a single platform.
Features:
Mobile time collection
Employee scheduling
Time off requests and processing
Pricing:
Reach out to their sales team for a custom quote
Free trial:
N/A
13. Paycom
Similar to ADP Workforce Now, Paycom is an HR and payroll solution that automates these features in a single piece of software. They do also incorporate WFM functionality (which they call “Time & Labor Management” features.
Features:
Scheduling and time off requests
Labor allocation features
Automated time tracking
Pricing:
Reach out to their sales team for a custom quote
Free trial:
N/A
14. GoCo
GoCo is an HR, benefits, and payroll solution that’s designed specifically for small and mid-sized businesses. Beyond core HR features such as onboarding and payroll, GoCo also has what they call “Time & Attendance” features that provide some basic WFM functionality for small businesses that don’t need anything too advanced.
Features:
PTO and holiday tracking
Scheduling and attendance analytics
Mobile clock-ins
Pricing:
GoCo offers three packages, but you’ll have to reach out to their sales team for a custom quote
Free trial:
N/A
15. TriNet
TriNet offers a full-service HR solution with payroll, benefits, contractor hiring, and though it focuses mainly on the hiring and wages side of things, it does have some time and attendance features for businesses that don’t require advanced WFM functionality.
Features:
Compliance features for regulated industries
Visual scheduling tool
Rest and meal period policy controls
Pricing:
Reach out to their sales team for a custom quote
Free trial:
N/A
Must-have features of the best workforce management software
Regardless of how advanced or how basic your team’s WFM needs are, there are some core features that almost all businesses will need in their workforce management software.
Performance reporting
You need to hit your KPIs and to do that, you need to be able to track performance—across both your human and Ai support teams. These insights are critical to understanding behavioral trends, productivity, adherence, and more.
Real-time workforce management
Contact center volumes are constantly changing, and having live data is critical to give your supervisors and agents the guidance they need to operate at the highest level possible. Look for features that help you navigate changing call and messaging volumes and monitor real-time shrinkage, adherence, and performance across all teams and time zones.
Forecasting and capacity planning
Having accurate forecasting is critical, and while every platform has its own secret sauce, you should, at the very leas,t be able to connect data from multiple systems. This gives you a holistic overview of patterns and trends, which will help you adapt your strategy on the fly, integrate Ai, and consistently meet your SLAs.
Benefits of workforce management software
Having a good solution that aligns with your business needs and customer expectations comes with a few advantages:
Happier customers
A good WFM software doesn’t just keep your agents and supervisors happy. It also means you’re more likely to have enough agents to cover busy periods (which minimizes wait times), and the agents who are assigned to certain tasks or departments actually have the skills to solve those problems efficiently. The end result? Higher customer satisfaction.
Lower costs
One of the key benefits of using WFM software is that it helps your business operate more efficiently—and a direct positive impact of that increased efficiency is lower costs.
When you’re not overstaffing and/or understaffing, you’re saving money and improving the bottom line—all without even touching your sales or marketing strategy.
Better forecasting and more actionable data
Every WFM software touts its forecasting features. However, not every software uses the same algorithms or Ai to power its forecasting features. The ones with robust and accurate technology behind their platforms are considerably more accurate, translating into more reliable and actionable data. When you’re vetting WFM solutions, make sure to understand how their forecasting features work and how accurate they are.
Challenges of workforce management
Even though every business is different, when it comes to workforce management, some common challenges seem to arise no matter what industry you’re in.
Real-time monitoring
Many supervisors oversee large contact center teams, sometimes with tens or hundreds of agents. This can make it difficult to keep an eye on everything, and some teams may try to address this by hiring more team leads to compensate. But that’s not a cost-effective or sustainable solution.
Tools like Dialpad WFM are designed to help with this, for example, by providing a real-time view of agent activity, time on task, and more:
Talent shortages
As Ai becomes increasingly ingrained in contact center operations, the talent shortages that the industry has seen in recent years now have yet another problem: a shortage of talent skilled in using Ai.
According to McKinsey, 21% of leaders use Ai-based tools to train and support their customer care staff. As workforce managers have to schedule and assign tasks to agents in the future, they’ll likely find that employees with unique skills and experience in using Ai tools may be more and more in demand—and harder to find.
Managing global teams
Managing all of these moving pieces effectively can be extremely challenging when you have agents and contact center teams in different time zones, responsible for different tasks, and with varying skill levels. A good WFM solution can help empower supervisors to optimize staffing and coverage.
Trends in workforce management software for 2025
The rise of Ai has shifted WFM in many ways, from hiring to scheduling strategies and more. These trends look to continue in 2025:
Ai will continue to improve, supporting more accurate forecasting. Over time, this should lead to more efficient workforce scheduling, taking into account not only call volumes but also agent skills.
Businesses will take a more strategic approach to workforce planning. According to Gartner, only 15% of companies are engaging in strategic workforce planning, which can make it difficult for HR to align their hiring and talent plans with long-term business goals.
How to choose the best workforce management software for you
There are many WFM platforms to choose from, and choosing the best one for your business often takes quite a bit of leg work. Besides understanding your contact center’s unique needs, budget, and objectives, there are other considerations to keep in mind too.
Consider following these steps as you vet the WFM platforms on your shortlist.
1. Compare your WFM vendors’ features
If you’re working with an external agency or consultant, they can probably handle the bulk of this work. But if not, you should start with a list of essential features that are your non-negotiables. For example, will you need mobile access? Then a good mobile app is critical. Different states and countries also have different legal and labor requirements that will influence your choice of WFM solution.
2. Get product demos and POCs
Once you’ve filtered out the solutions that don’t have the features you need, it’s time to get in the sandbox and try out the features with your team. This is especially important with WFM solutions because almost all of them advertise the same features (automated scheduling, forecasting, and so on)—the key is how easy they are to use, and how effective they actually are.
The only way to find that out is to get the demo.
3. Ask questions
Don’t forget to ask questions as you’re going through these demos. For example:
What’s your product roadmap for the next quarter to a year?
What’s the process like for getting support?
Who powers your Ai? Are you using a third-party Ai partner, or is it your own proprietary tool? How much data is it trained on?
Dialpad WFM: The best workforce management software for your business?
There is no “perfect” WFM software. Every business has specific requirements, and having a tool that’s technologically advanced and relatively robust functionality is often the best starting point you can have.
With industry-leading Ai that’s analyzed over seven billion minutes of business conversations, Dialpad Support comes with not only Ai-powered features like real-time translation, Ai CSAT scores, and Ai QA Scorecards—it also has intuitive, easy-to-use WFM features that support every facet of managing a contact center.
Looking for the best workforce management software?
Book a product tour and get a hands-on look at Dialpad WFM!
Footnotes
1zendesk.com/pricing
2deputy.com/pricing
3wheniwork.com/pricing
4nice.com/websites/pricing
5genesys.com/pricing
6talkdesk.com/cloud-contact-center/wem/workforce-management/verint-workforce-management/
7talkdesk.com/pricing/