Can reopening your workplace help you reimagine your future? Successfully returning to the physical workplace is the priority, but recovery from the COVID-19 crisis is also an opportunity to reframe your organization’s future.
Businesses are now cautiously re-opening their doors as lockdowns begin to lift on different paces and for different groups of workers across the country. Now, it’s anything but business as usual in the Philippines.
An effective physical return needs to balance the external operating environment such as the health status in the region as well as the demand patterns with internal capabilities that put human wellness at the center of the return plans.
Without a vaccine for COVID-19 and with cases continuing to spike in hot spots nationwide, many employees are choosing to keep working remotely when their jobs allow them to do so.
At the same time, employees with jobs that can’t be performed remotely—or who have employers that prefer workers to be physically present—are being asked to return to their worksites, wear masks, and practice social distancing.
As shelter-in-place orders are lifted, your business will enter an uncharted territory. COVID-19 will permanently alter supply chains, workforce planning, service models, and growth strategies. Onsite workers fear health risks, while remote workers feel out of the loop, the question here is, how will you respond?
Managing evolving uncertainty
After months of lockdown and remote working, businesses around the world are gradually resuming on-site operations although some businesses, those considered essential, kept their doors open and operated at full capacity, even at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A post-lockdown return to the workplace isn’t an event, it’s a process. Some essential workers have never left. They have helped sustain the food and medical supply chain, keeping shelves stocked and deliveries made, often putting themselves and their families at risk.
Almost 80% of the global workforce have been affected by COVID-19 forced lockdowns. Their safe return is a mass challenge full of complexities. To return employees to the workplace with confidence demands big-picture planning alongside a focus down to the individual surfaces on each floor of each building.
But beyond individual differences between workplaces, businesses are operating through medically defined phases of need and demand. They must prepare and be on alert for waves of outbreaks and aftershocks, as we have recently seen in various countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Japan.
With no imminent treatment or vaccine for COVID-19, companies are operating within an environment where a significant amount of infection is at most risk.
Switching between two gears
To be successful in this environment means operating in two gears that move seamlessly across each other. Gear 1 manages the trusted transition back to the physical workplace with a focus on mitigating risks for employees and customers. Gear 2 drives transformation based on the lessons learned through the COVID-19 crisis into a reimagining of work for the future.
In the near term, company leaders will need exceptional agility to operate in both gears, shifting back and forth in response to external shifts in the operating environment. Moving within and between each gear requires a delicate management of risks, and fluidity to model, iterate, and pivot.
Begin with conducting scenarios modeling for phased physical return to work based on public health data, workforce and operational capacity, and business continuity in a range of external and internal conditions.
Proceed with making adjustments and optimizing business performance and employee preference according to real-time data, expert insights, and workforce feedback from the operating environment.
Lastly, be prepared for sudden changes in public health conditions and the need to shift strategic direction to accelerate transformation.
These and all, are just some of the many things business leaders should keep in mind as they decide their back to work strategies on 50% operational capacity.
Bringing order to uncertainty
Work environments differ vastly from each other, and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Reopening requires more than a return to normal because the unpredictable and long-lasting period that follows this pandemic will feature fundamental changes to economic activity, fast-changing cultural norms, and societal values and behaviors. To reopen and to outmaneuver uncertainty also requires a program of reinvention.
This presents an opportunity and a need for many companies to build the competences they wish they’d invested in before: to be more digital, data-driven, and in the cloud. To have more variable cost structures, agile operations and automation, and to create stronger capabilities in e-commerce and security. This agility will be core to the long-term capabilities that they are building. Leaders should consider the steps they take to reopen as the first in a long journey of wider transformation.
Salarium understands your needs and they assure you that you will not be alone in your journey to the great reset. Your transition from “flatten” to “fight”, or what we refer to as a “restart” will be easier for you now more than ever.
Time and attendance will never be a problem for you even if only half of your employees are working onsite, and the rest are working from home. Salarium will make it effortless for you to manage and pay your employees by combining timekeeping, payroll, and payout in one software.
A timekeeping system done your way, we offer you various timekeeping options so you can track and manage your employees’ time and attendance records in a way that’s ideal for your business.
Our most popular and secure timekeeping product, or biometrics, are connected to our web software so you can track your employees’ attendance in real-time. They work on a plug-and-play basis and connect to Wi-Fi, local area, and 3G networks.
We also offer a mobile clock-in feature that allows your employees to clock-in and out of work using their mobile phones. It comes with IP restrictions so you can ensure that everyone clocks in and out are at the right place.
FacePass, our new Touchless Time and Attendance Solution detects facemasks and scans the body temperature of your employees before accepting their clock-ins. It’s seamlessly integrated into our timekeeping system to meet all your needs in the new normal and beyond.
These and more, we ensure that your company’s operation is better now more than ever. We assure you that we can help your company together even if you work apart during the quarantine.
For more information regarding our products and services, you may visit our website at https://www.salarium.com/.
SOURCES
- Gjaja, M., Faeste, L., Hansell, G., Hohner, D. (2020, April 16) COVID-19: Win the Fight, Win the Future
- Fealy, L. (21, May 2020) Can reopening your workplace help you reimagine your future?
- Rosen, A., Sayre, M. Navigating Your Future Workplace Post COVID-19: A Roadmap
- Grensing-Pophal, L. (9, July 2020) Managing Both Onsite and Remote Workers Requires Finesse
