Across industries, companies are spending less time debating whether to modernize workforce operations and more time deciding which systems will reduce friction fastest. The signal shows up in multiple places: market forecasts for workforce platforms, increased attention to employee well-being and attendance, and a broader push to connect day-to-day work execution with real staffing capacity.
One driver is simply scale. As organizations grow or distribute across locations, manual processes for scheduling, approvals, and time-off visibility stop working. Another is volatility: hybrid work norms, tighter compliance expectations, and frequent changes in priorities make it harder to run operations on static plans.
A bigger market, and more categories inside it
Analysts continue to project steady growth for workforce management software, reflecting ongoing demand for tools that formalize staffing processes and reduce admin work. For example, Research and Markets projects the workforce management software market will grow by several billion dollars over the second half of the decade. Another industry estimate puts the workforce management software market at roughly $9.76B in 2026, reaching about $12.04B by 2031.
At the same time, the HR tech ecosystem itself is expanding in scope. Deloitte’s 2025 view of the HR technology marketplace frames it as a fast-evolving environment shaped by new capabilities and expectations about how work gets done. That expansion matters because “employee management tools” increasingly includes multiple layers: availability planning, attendance tracking, workforce analytics, engagement workflows, and operational coordination.
Absence is becoming an operational variable, not an HR afterthought
One reason companies are looking harder at systems is the rising visibility of absence costs and patterns. In the UK, CIPD research reported average sickness absence at 9.4 days per employee over the previous 12 months, up from 7.8 days in 2023 and 5.8 days pre-pandemic.
Organizations don’t just want to record time away. They want fewer surprises and better coverage decisions. Practical guidance from ACAS emphasizes consistent return-to-work routines and using those conversations to identify trends and underlying causes. This is where absence management stops being “policy documentation” and starts functioning as a planning input: if managers can’t see who is available, project plans become optimistic by default.
Why coordination between capacity and delivery is suddenly a priority
The shift isn’t limited to HR systems. As more work is delivered through cross-functional teams, leaders want capacity constraints to show up earlier in the delivery cycle. That’s why interest is also rising in work project management tools that connect execution (tasks, milestones, dependencies) with the reality of who is actually available.
Market estimates reflect that broader demand. The Business Research Company projects the project management software market rising from about $9.14B in 2025 to $10.51B in 2026, implying continued rapid growth. Even if forecasts vary by methodology, the direction is consistent: companies are investing in systems that reduce coordination overhead in complex, distributed environments.
What buyers are actually trying to solve
In practice, the growth in interest maps to a handful of repeatable operational pain points:
- Visibility gaps: time off approvals and schedule changes happen in email or chat, while project commitments are made elsewhere.
- Late discovery: staffing constraints appear mid-sprint or mid-week, forcing reactive re-planning.
- Inconsistent workflows: different managers apply different rules, creating fairness issues and unreliable data.
- Manual reconciliation: teams spend time “cleaning up” timesheets, leave records, and project updates after the fact.
Tools don’t eliminate these problems automatically, but they can reduce them when used to enforce a single source of truth for availability and approvals, plus a consistent routine for documenting changes.
Another signal: consolidation and investment
Investor appetite for employee-related software remains active, including carve-outs and acquisitions of “workforce adjacent” systems. One recent example is Peak Rock Capital’s agreement to acquire UL Solutions’ employee health and safety software business (to be rebranded as PureEHS), a deal reported at more than $200 million. While that segment isn’t identical to workforce scheduling or leave, it reinforces a broader point: companies and investors still see employee operations software as a durable category—especially where it reduces risk and improves compliance readiness.
The bottom line
Interest in employee management tools is growing because organizations are trying to reclaim capacity without relying on heroic effort. That means fewer disconnected systems, more reliable availability data, and tighter coordination between workforce reality and delivery commitments.
The winners in this space won’t be the tools with the longest feature lists. They’ll be the ones that reduce uncertainty: making absence patterns visible early, standardizing approvals, and helping teams plan work around real capacity instead of assumptions