Say hello to Sapience Analytics – our new partner with the kind of solutions that will help employers and employees alike with the new normal of working from home. Sapience is specifically geared to assisting organisations by providing them with data to make smarter, more accurate business decisions that will save costs and increase efficiency for data-driven digital transformation.
The Lockdown Lament
The Covid-19 pandemic lockdown has forced many companies to request that their employees work from home. This situation, especially because it’s been done in hurry, has created a fair amount of anxiety among managers in particular. We all know that not everyone is happy with this plan – and for several good reasons:
- Many managers feel that if they’re not physically watching their employees, workers may slack off and inevitably productivity will fall. Perhaps a case of when the cat’s away, the mice will play.
- At home, an employee with every will in the world to work well, may be distracted by a host of things, such as the dog barking, the children playing in the yard, lack of air-con and the ensuing heat or cold discomfort, the inconvenience of not being able to get hold of colleagues for urgent collaboration on specific tasks. It’s an unstructured environment that is full of potential disturbance and delay.
- Self-discipline is not everyone’s top attribute, and many employees need the motivation of a structured timeframe and workplace, and positive engagement with fellow workers. While some may work more effectively on their own, there are those who can’t concentrate without close connection and guidance. This doesn’t mean these people are bad workers – not at all. It simply means different types of personalities prefer to work in different ways.
- For some employees working at home creates a sense of loneliness, loss of motivation and morale. There’s no one to work with, no one to keep their spirits up, no one to bolster confidence and to help with tricky questions. This feeling of disconnect leads to loss of productivity. Again, this is not the worker’s fault. While some people embrace being on their own, in others it may create debilitating anxiety.
- Before thinking that working from home is the answer to lockdown, and possibly a different working model for the future, give some thought as to how your management will control and motivate from a distance.
Our solution
In partnering with Sapience Analytics, we are able to offer an advanced solution that automatically amasses data at every business level, channel, device and input – and converts it into actionable reports that drive smarter business decisions. Before you implement any productivity tool, make sure you understand how a work-from-home situation impacts employees, and then find the right strategy to empower them to be successful in a new, highly distributed and unstructured environment.
- We provide essential, automated visibility into your remote workforce — and it can be operational within days with minimum overhead.
- Insightful dashboards show individual and team work patterns, and productivity levels.
- Employees’ own efficiency data helps them self-manage time without becoming overwhelmed.
- Regular reports help managers identify patterns, address bottlenecks and ensure a flow of productivity.
- And we’ve thought of everything! There are even Gamification and Wellness tools to support morale.
The real positive that will emerge from this difficult lockdown time of the Corona virus, is that many businesses may ultimately let go of the old-fashioned 9 – 5, five days a week working schedule and embrace the more modern, cost-efficient, and environmentally-beneficial approach of remote working. Businesses can find themselves working effectively through a network of moveable parts rather than a closed composite system in a glassy high-rise building.
Finding what suits who, and who suits what, will be one of the great new journeys of business that will impact significantly on future engagement. And Human Resources will be at the forefront of that change – tackling problems, finding solutions, researching opportunities. Doing what we do best, enhancing connections, polishing potential, and making your business grow.
The new value of Human Resources
At the HR Analytics Institute we believe there is a smarter way to get the best out of your staff and improve your business. Not only do we clearly see the potential to improve business through better relationships, but we are passionate about training HR practitioners to understand the value of their interface role between staff and management. Our practical courses will enable you to play a far greater role in strategic decision-making within the business as a whole.
Find out more about us at: www.hranalyticsinstitute.com
