Glassdoor surveyed 2,000 UK employees and found that only 44% of UK employees currently working from home due to COVID-19 are eager to return to the office. 69% want to return to normality, 63% want to socialise with colleagues, 38% are tired of working from home, and 36% believe that there are fewer distractions in the office.
Some employees want a return to the workplace, and depending on the job role, your business may be willing to welcome them back. However, per the psychological and emotional employee health, your organisation must leverage flexible HR systems to plan for a return to pre-pandemic productivity.
There’s every need to support employee transition through the ‘new normal’ introduced by COVID-19. Of course, your business needs a return to not just re-socialising workers but meeting new standards to improve productivity. So, what is/are the plans for employees? Below are tips for using HR systems to help employees returning back to the office:
Communicate Policy Changes
Maybe your employees can return to continue with the old methods, but don’t you think the right time to update the policy is now? Okay, if you’re updating the policy, then as an HR manager, your team must ensure updated HRIS to reflect revised policies following COVID-19.
Globally, governments have designed standards to ensure safety. Your organisation must institute new work policies to meet these standards to prevent a more critical COVID outbreak. HR managers must inform employees about how to view the revised policies/guidelines and access company files, such as pay statements.
Engage Employees
Some employees felt great during the first period of the compulsory work from home order. Right now, “employee engagement from home” is a 404 error (not found).
It’s, therefore, the responsibility of your HR team to leverage the collaboration or community features of HR systems for an engaging workplace. Get the team together to revitalise the old ties of working together since many employees may already have become strangers to themselves, especially if your organisation didn’t implement HR tools to engage staff during the lockdown.
Update Employee Information
If employees could not update their information from home, it’s time to get your tech team to set it up. Ensure up-to-date employee contact details so that you can share company news and other significant information quickly.
You can merely remind employees to review and update their contact. If there has been a system upgrade over the lockdown, ensure to share the steps to update changes faster. You also want to use a friendly and straightforward interface so that employees do not enter details wrongly.
Inform Employees About Changes in Workflow
There would have been workflow changes in the company. How do you inform employees about these changes? It’s simple! The human resource management system assists you in informing employees to view schedules and record time remotely. For employees whose management paper-published information about workflow changes in the past, HR tools provides a softcopy format that is easily accessible.
Moreover, consider informing employees about how they can use HRMS delegation features in the absence of a manager to support each other, especially new hires.
Remind Employees About Compliance Standards
You need not be informed about compliance standards in your jurisdiction, do you? Since you would be storing employee data in one place, you should set up automated reminders to inform employees about when particular actions to improve the company’s compliance with regulatory requirements.
Meanwhile, some compliance areas to employ HR solutions include right-to-work checks, GDPR, and health and safety compliance. The government takes data security and data-retention duration seriously; don’t forget too soon.
Oversee Workforce Collaboration Remotely
Work location is becoming more distributed between home and office, with chances that some job roles may never return to the office. In this regard, there’s the need to implement remote connection and collaboration to replace in-office team meetings and cubicle conversations.
Many organisations are fast introducing EXP (on-line workforce experience) solutions to enhance virtual employee development and training, remote work, benefits and wellbeing. Microsoft, for example, launched an EXP tool, MS Viva, operating with MS Teams with AI to get the right content to the right people timely and automatically.
Train New Hires Virtually
Your post-COVID onboarding experience ought to be more refined to meet the ‘new normal’ standards. Some hiring managers have to prepare links, documents and set up training for new hires. But with HR systems, other than onboarding, a manager can extend e-learning across the employee lifecycle.
Ensure to leverage HR tools to deliver custom and engaging employee learning experiences. Your learning platform could be customisable to ensure learner-first experience, gain actionable business insights while remaining engaging.
HR Systems Are More Important than You Think
There’s every need to address RTW (Return to Work) needs, which depends on increasing communication between managers and employees. If you employ regular and two-way conversations, your business can figure out what employees expect from a COVID-safe workstation. You want to know what benefits employees prioritise, and how they think the company can help.
Thankfully, your RTW toolset allows you to add new communication channels or leverage existing channels to understand employee needs.
Modern HR tools are thoughtfully designed to help your businesses plan, execute, and analyse to prepare and adapt your business to changes for productivity.
Final Thoughts
Notwithstanding how COVID-19 disrupted the traditional office setting, human resource management systems currently help with simplifying your HR responsibilities. When you combine your employee data with external management data, you can track employee sentiments, know what they expect, and restore the old relationship safely.
