The Workplace Command Center provides an all-in-one dashboard to help assess return-to-work readiness for organizations and monitor working conditions as your business gradually begins to allow workers to return. It is targeted towards arming executives, HR and operations managers, and strategic facilities planners with the right data to make informed and educated decisions in a dynamic environment. This is achieved through several monitoring tools which cover a variety of considerations for returning to work including a global COVID-19 tracker, shift management, employee wellness check-ins, and much more. It also comes with a real-time alert feed, making it easy to stay on top of any issues or trends and address them appropriately.
1. Workplace Status of each of your company's location:
2. Wellness Status shows the overall status of your workforce. This is directly updated by wellness surveys which are regularly scheduled to be filled out by employees:
3. Operations feed shows Open Tasks specific to return to work efforts
4. Shows employees’ Wellness Status by location
5. Global COVID-19 tracker shows the latest snapshot of worldwide cases and other metrics
6. Location filter allows you to narrow the dashboard to a specific location
Leveraging the power of the COVID-19 Tableau Data Hub, the global tracker provides visibility into where positive cases are being confirmed over time. This is obviously one of the most important factors to monitor, and for large organizations with sites spanning across multiple regions this can be an extremely helpful tool in determining immediate next steps with regards to whether anyone should be going to the office in a specific region. Being able to see and understand where cases are on the rise, plateauing, or on the decline will be a huge factor in determining if, when, and how you will re-open your workplace.
As businesses are beginning to re-open their doors and allow staff to operate within the facilities once again, we all need to take every precautionary measure we can to make sure that those who do enter the buildings to do their jobs are doing so safely and following local public health guidelines. This means operating our buildings, offices, warehouses, etc. under limited capacity, with physical distancing being practiced whenever and wherever possible. One of the best ways this can be achieved is through a phased approach for the return to work, which can be orchestrated by intelligent shift management so that only select groups of people are using the facilities at a given time. Shift management makes a lot of sense if you're considering options on how to safely provide the means for workers to re-enter the office, and by setting up rotational schedules in which specific individuals, departments, or other business units are approved to use the facilities you are minimizing the risk of spreading any kind of virus while also creating windows for deep cleaning of the space in between shifts. Complimenting shift work schedules with a pre-screening questionnaire for workers to confirm they meet the necessary criteria to enter the workplace safely is a great way to get started on the path of returning to work.
Work.com's Shift Management app makes the process as convenient as possible for both workers and administrators by coordinating the entire effort on a streamlined, user-friendly mobile platform. Using the app, employees can set their availability for the week and their expected arrival window to the office each day. This information is then used by planners to schedule working shifts in a way that limits traffic in high-density areas of the buildings, such as entranceways and elevators, and allows for an appropriate amount of physical distance between people at workstations.
In practice, this will most likely translate into a divided work-week for people with some working days in the office and others remote, but being be able to offer facilities, workstations, and meeting rooms even on a part-time basis is a powerful capability that can help maintain a strong organizational culture. There is a competitive and human advantage to having people together in the same space, and using the right tools to coordinate this process will help companies get back on track faster without compromising on safety.
As the global pandemic has forced many of us to work remotely from our homes, are experiencing a whole new set of challenges. Adapting our homes to function as an office can sometimes be difficult with families, kids, and others all using the same space, and more often than not the line is blurring between work time and personal time. Coping with social isolation due to the fact that we can't go to our offices for work, and also that many social activities are not necessarily safe to attend is putting more of a mental strain on people. Working remotely also takes away from how connected we feel with our employers and our colleagues, which can lead to a cultural shift in the wrong direction.
The mental health and well-being of employees during this difficult time should be something that every business is considerate of, and wellness check-ins can be a very powerful gesture that help build a stronger relationship between workers and employers. They can also provide crucial information to HR managers on how people are handling the situation and what their employers can do to help.
Work.com includes employee wellness checks as part of the Workplace Command Center package, and these can be used to determine how people are feeling and what they need to ensure they're doing the best job possible, all while trying to maintain a healthy mental state. Wellness surveys provide valuable data on several states of overall employee wellness including physical well-being, stress management, work life balance, employee engagement, and community involvement. The workplace command center then aggregates this data and presents it to managers in a format that allows them to clearly understand the various levels of wellness across their organization, which can lead to process improvements and the development of new initiatives to improve on any deficiencies or lacking areas.
As much as we would like to focus on all of the preventative measures that can be established to enable a safe and comfortable return to work, we must also consider the possibility of an exposure at the workplace and how to respond quickly and appropriately to stop the spread of an infection. While public health entities around the world are implementing automated contact tracing enabled through internet-connected devices, manual contact tracing at an organizational level is still an extremely important process that can help protect employees and their communities from preventable spread of COVID-19.
Manual contact tracing is a process that is best-facilitated through a combination of human data collection and technology-enabled solutions that make it easy to connect the dots, managing the various relationships and connections that have been made, and ultimately being able to build out a visual map representing all of the contact points a person has made over a period of time. This information can be critical to protecting employees by painting a much clearer picture of who else may be at risk in the event of a confirmed infection, which will assist decision makers in communicating with those who have potentially been exposed. There is a business continuity aspect to this process as well - while contact tracing has really come into the spotlight due to the necessity of combatting the COVID-19 global pandemic it is something that, once implemented, can help businesses protect themselves, their employees, their families and communities from the spread of any harmful virus in the future.
Work.com's Contact Tracing process provides users with all of the necessary tools to tackle the challenge of manual contact tracing in a rapid environment. It guides tracers through the entire process from initial intake, to building the relationships and connections between people, places, and events, and finally to the point of coordinating communications to individuals including daily check-in calls to follow up on the severity of employee symptoms (as well as their general wellness and mindset) as they are in quarantine. Key features of the contact tracing process through work.com include:
Transforming the contact tracing process through the application of digital tools will help companies further solidify their return to work plan, and ensure all of the means are in place to protect what matters most from the spread of infection. Work.com's contact tracing tools use shield encryption to protect the data and maintain the privacy of individuals, which is important in establishing trust with your employees. You can read more about contact tracing through work.com here.
