Return to the Workplace for Government Contractors

In a moment of the COVID-19 global pandemic, it is difficult to think beyond the next hour, the next day, or the next week. This is a very human crisis, and many important decisions have to be taken quickly. For most company leaders, this is therefore a pivotal time. There is enormous pressure on business and government leaders to provide the structure, guidance, and clear communication that people are looking for to get back to their places of work. For this to be possible, access to information is more critical than ever before. Work needs to happen faster and responses scaled more effectively.

As companies across the globe continue to deal with the current effects of COVID-19, they also face the upcoming task of returning their employees safely to the workplace. Once the spread of coronavirus has been contained, government policies and health strategies will need to transition away from stay-at- home orders and move towards bringing businesses back online and gently restoring the economy with social distancing measures potentially extending into the foreseeable future.

In the US, the federal government developed a three-phased approach providing guidance to state and local officials on gating criteria for disease containment before reopening the economy. While states, provinces, and local governments decide on what policies to enact for companies to re-open, companies need guidance on what areas need to be considered as they plan to return employees to work.

Large companies that work with suppliers, resident non-employees, and contractors will need to add guidelines to reduce risk beyond employees as well. Each facility location will need consideration, evaluation, and a plan to safely bring all who attend into a safe working environment.

How do government contractors respond to the variety of challenges faced when approaching the return to the workplace? How can technology assist with giving company leaders the information they need to make data-based decisions and  responsibly bring their employees back to a workplace with the right precautions in place?

Benefits Overview

Many companies across the globe have already deployed Salesforce-based solutions for  early  phase  mitigation  of  COVID-19. For returning to the  workplace,  capabilities  like  Contact Tracing are relevant in addition to new applications for managing shifts, assessing employee health, and evaluating facility readiness.

• Employee support including Assessments, Scheduling and Tracking
• Contact Tracing and Isolation Management from travel or exposure
• Response to employee needs and maintaining business continuity during crisis
• Business Reopening Preparedness, operational impact, and resource mobilization
• Analytics for operational intelligence and internal communications
• Employee Outreach and communications
• Facility management tools such as visitor tracking and shift management

Each of the solution areas presented below can be implemented individually or in any combination to deliver comprehensive capabilities. Salesforce can partner with companies to quickly identify areas of pressing need and rapidly deploy solutions in government accredited cloud environments that meet the specialized compliance needs of the companies that help deliver on the government mission.

Proposed Solution Areas: 

1 Employee Wellness

2 Travel Management & Isolation

3  Employee Self-Service Assessment

4 Contact Tracing

5  Employee & Customer Outreach

6 Visitor Tracking

7 Shift Management

8 Resource Mobilization

9 Workplace Readiness Certification

10 Feedback & Inspections

11 Return to the Workplace Performance Metrics

Employee Wellness

Corporate operating practices have changed. Routines are no longer the same, and we’re figuring out where to focus and how to pivot based on changing data and operational considerations. As companies begin to bring their own staff back to the workplace, they must manage this process with a focus on employee health and safety. Salesforce provides a centralized “command center” to help support known impacted employees (e.g. an employee who is sick or  displaced)  and  also  review the readiness status of locations/services/ operations (e.g. closure of or  damage  to  an  office). Automating with Salesforce workflows ensures timely follow-up with employees with efficient responses to concerns and questions. Office closures, cleaning schedules, and repairs can also be tracked and scheduled from a single integrated application. By quickly deploying a crisis-centric employee portal using Salesforce Community Cloud, agencies can create a central hub for their employees to access the most up to date information on building status and revised capacity plans. Additionally, employees can leverage the portal to update their availability and status, as well as submit requests for assistance 

Shift Management

As guidance emerges at the state/province and local levels allowing business to re-open, companies may need to alter the way employees show up to facility locations. For example, companies may need to stagger which employees are in an office/facility location to an every other business day to reduce the number of employees   in a given space to reduce risk. Providing a plan will help maintain operational efficiency and provide peace of mind to employees so they understand when they can attend an office/facility location.

Salesforce can help visualize and manage shifts by allowing teams to:

• Understand what shifts are covered and which are available for employees
• Categorize shifts into types of work to make sure the right employees will be in attendance
• Add and manage shifts to provide a comprehensive view at a given facility or project.
• Create flexible work shifts for periods that don’t require a rigid structure

Feedback & Inspections

As companies start to re-open their doors to employees, the public must have a way to report concerns of potential violations such as overcrowding or other unsafe conditions. Salesforce Service Cloud can manage the intake of reported feedback regarding physical distancing measures such as capacity limits that may require followup and inspection. This feedback can be received in Salesforce from virtually any channel, including phone, web, email, SMS and social media. Once a feedback case is created and reviewed, Salesforce can also help automate the assignment of inspection staff to a particular business location. Using the native Salesforce Mobile application, inspectors can receive notification of their inspection assignments, plan their routes and capture the necessary information to substantiate or close the inspection case.

Return to the Workplace Performance Metrics

Utilizing data visualizations that highlight employee and facility trends will help an agency  differentiate between decisions that are likely to be safe, timely and effective, and those that aren’t. By operationalizing processes in Salesforce, executive leadership will have a view of the readiness status of all locations and operations (e.g. employee health to closure of, or damage to, an office). Providing the ability to quickly determine how quickly and safely employees, contractors, partners and visitors can return to your facilities. From embedding interactive dashboards on websites or Salesforce Community portals to making data sets available for the employees in the intranet to ask their own questions, transparency drives collaboration and change.

Reducing information silos improves results for everyone.

Tableau makes it easy to quickly create charts, graphs, maps and calculations using both publicly available data and your own data sources. The Tableau COVID-19 Data Hub (https://www.tableau.com/covid-19-coronavirus-data-resources) contains resources to help you visualize and analyze the most recent data on the coronavirus outbreak. On the hub, you’ll find a jumpstart workbook, pre-loaded with COVID-19 case data, available to download and use immediately. Get clear visualizations that turn the most complex data into easily digestible snapshots. Organize the metrics you want to access frequently into simple, customizable dashboards. With Tableau’s Analytic visualizations that are easy to use and understand, you’ll have crucial case trends, business activity and health system readiness insights gleaned from a range of data sources at your fingertips.

Summary

Staying connected and responsive to employees, and your customers is always important, but absolutely vital right now when COVID-19 details are changing by the hour. Reopening your company’s facilities will require the coordination of all business divisions and operational teams. This balance of confronting current conditions today with what lies in the future is more than stressful. Being informed with real-time information can help increase safety and wellness, as well as reduce uncertainty during these uncertain times.

The Salesforce Platform is designed to provide the capabilities needed to quickly address and respond to the various aspects of emergency management while also allowing companies to slowly reopen businesses and reestablish their economies. A single, unified platform can deliver integrated capabilities no matter where your company is in the back to the workplace management lifecycle - before, during, or after.  Through a comprehensive response, you can ensure that leaders have the information and the structure they need to confidently explore all of their options and deliver solutions with transparency, authenticity and optimism.

Immediate Next Steps
Salesforce looks forward to assisting you  with  next  steps  in  your  company’s  response.  Get  in  touch  with Salesforce, call 1-844-807-8829, or contact your Account Executive  to  learn  more  about  these  robust capabilities.


This article was featured in the 2020 PSC Annual Conference Thought Leadership Compendium. See the full PDF version here.