Research Opportunities in Workforce Management

In this paper, we review a subset of the labor scheduling literature and discuss areas where additional research is warranted. The review, while not exhaustive, concludes that there are still rich research opportunities to contribute to an already large field. The areas that are still most attractive are those which provide models that solve more than one phase of the workforce management problem in an integrative fashion as has been called for by many researchers. We also present an example of an integrative model found in the literature. In addition, an application area for workforce management that has received much attention but still provides promising research opportunities is the area of nurse staffing. With continued nursing shortages, managers are faced with a difficult task of providing quality care while still maintaining costs.