Yesterday afternoon, Cuyahoga County, Ohio’s largest, issued a four-week stay-at-home advisory. It took effect immediately, and is in addition to the 21-day 10 pm â 5 am statewide curfew Governor DeWine implemented yesterday and which takes effect tonight.
Let’s examine why it was issued, what is says and what it means for your business.
Why was it issued?
The county is experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.
The positivity rate within the county has increased to 15 percent and is rising.
The county suffered 50 COVID-19 fatalities during the first two weeks of November.
The county is currently reporting 500 â 600 new COVID-19 cases per day over the past week, and modeling predicts it could rise as high as 2,000 new daily cases in the coming weeks.
What does it say?
All county residents are advised to stay at home to the greatest extent possible, and should only leave their homes for work, school, essential needs.
Employers are strongly encouraged to identify and accommodate as many employees as possible to work from home.
Businesses should transition as many functions as possible to an online format.
Schools that are currently implementing a hybrid or full in-person learning are advised to transition to online remote learning after the Thanksgiving holiday.
All public or private gathering, meeting, or social event occurring outside of a residence or living unit is limited to no more than 10 individuals.
Parties, receptions, celebrations, and other similar events should be postponed.
Residents are strongly advised not to conduct or attend any indoor gatherings with guests who are not members of their household in a home or place of residence.
Residents that are exhibiting any signs and symptoms of COVID-19 must shelter in their place of residence, and people should otherwise follow CDC guidelines for isolation and quarantine.
What does it mean?
If your employees live in Cuyahoga County, more and more will need time off because their children will be home from school.
If your business is located in Cuyahoga County, you should give serious consideration to shifting to an all-remote model if possible, or at least permitting every employee who can work remotely to do so for at least the next four weeks.
This is just the beginning. We should expect similar advisories by local or state governments in the coming weeks as COVID-19 continues to surge out of control. Indeed, other counties in Ohio (e.g., Medina and Frankin) also issued their own stay-at-home advisories for residents and businesses, although neither of them recommends closing schools.
What are the penalties?
There aren’t any.
It’s an advisory, not an order.
Finally, I cannot mean this more clearly or earnestly, if everyone would have just behaved responsibly and with an ounce of compassion and empathy for their fellow humans from the beginning, we wouldn’t be in the position we now find ourselves.
For last night’s dinner, I decided to use the leftover meatballs from the prior night’s spaghetti dinner to make meatball subs.
The only problem? No hoagie rolls, which led to the following conversation with my wife:
Me: I need to stop and get buns for dinner.
Her: Ooh, will you toast them?
Me: I’ll toast your buns alright.
Her: That’s sexual harassment!
Me: Take it up with HR.
All jokes aside, does a company’s obligation to take corrective action when it becomes aware of sexual harassment in the workplace extend to an employee’s home when that home is also the employee’s workplace?
A harassment complaint is a harassment complaint, regardless of the alleged perpetrator. An employer cannot treat a complaint by an employee against a non-employee any differently than an intra-employee complaint. Indeed, in the words of the Ohio Administrative Code:
An employer may also be responsible for the acts of nonemployees (e.g., customers) with respect to sexual harassment of employees in the work place, where the employer (or its agents or supervisory employees) knows or should have known of the conduct and fails to take immediate and appropriate corrective action. In reviewing these cases the commission will consider the extent of the employerâs control and any other legal responsibility which the employer may have with respect to the conduct of such nonemployees.
There is no reason to think these protections don’t extend to employees who are working from home ⌠although the ability of another’s employer to control my conduct as a nonemployee in my own home is pretty much nonexistent.
Which begs the question: If my wife goes to HR to complain about me offering to toast her buns, what are the potential consequences? Let’s hope I don’t have to find out, but I’m guessing the risk is pretty low.
You are literally making COVID-19 worse if you are refusing to permit employees to work from home.
According to a recently published CDC study, employees who work in an office setting are nearly twice as likely to contract COVID-19 than employees who work from home.
ABC News summarizes the study’s methodology and findings:
Researchers interviewed roughly 310 people who took a COVID-19 test in July, about half of whom tested positive, and compared them to a control group of people who tested negative. The majority of both groups, all adults, held full-time, non-essential jobs outside of critical infrastructure and had similar community exposure to COVID-19 independent of work.
The groups had some differences in behavior: Only a third of the COVID-19 group reported working from home or teleworking at least part of the time before their diagnosis, while half of the control group participants reported at least sometimes working remotely. In the two weeks prior to getting sick, members of the COVID-19 group were more likely to report that they exclusively went to the office or to school than control group members were. Researchers also found an association between going to the office regularly and attending church or religious gatherings.
What does this data tell us? In the words of the CDC, “Businesses and employers should promote alternative work site options, such as teleworking, where possible, to reduce exposures.”
Unless you absolutely need employees to perform their work from your workplace, let them work from home. COVID numbers are not getting any better.
In fact, they are getting exponentially worse and are predicted to continue to do so until plateauing as late as January or even February. We all have a role to play in stopping the spread of this deadly virus.
Allowing employees who are able to work remotely to do so is just about the least you can do.
While the chief people officer may handle return-to-office basics like providing masks and stocking an ample supply of hand sanitizer, they also face the more daunting specter of easing the stress of employees as they reintegrate into the workplace.Â
âA lot of questions that might have been seen as questions of etiquette or personal choice are now questions of safety,” said Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post and founder and CEO of Thrive Global, a behavior change tech company that has been working with many HR leadersduring the pandemic.Â
Chief people officers are dealing with the fundamental questions of putting people first, and now that is no longer abstract but very real for companies. âThe health and well-being of employees for many companies was seen as a nice-to-have. Now more than ever, it is essential for the success of an organization, and thatâs why HR leaders have such a critical role to play,” Huffington said.Â
Addressing the well-being of essential workers
Employees are looking at their workplace and employer as a source of trusted information and to help them with mental health solutions, Huffington said.At Walmart, Thrive Global is making its behavior change platform available for Walmart associates â including frontline teams at stores and distribution centers â and their families across the US.
If a company doesnât address the stress of employees â whether that stress is caused by health concerns, financial worries or something else â the bottom line and the survival of the company itself may be impacted, she said. Like Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky memorably said, she added, âEvery CEO is a health CEO now.â  Â
“HR leaders no longer have to convince the C-suite that employee well-being and mental health matters,â Huffington said. âBut now comes the challenge of moving from awareness to action, as they must help their companies go from knowing what they need to address to actually doing it.â
We need to normalize talking about our mental health in the workplace, according to Ellyn Shook, chief leadership and human resources officer at Accenture, one of the companies Thrive has worked with. Having senior leaders set the tone for the rest of the organization is key to this goal.
âThe most senior leaders in the company [can share] their challenges and how they are recharging and practicing self-care, because those are the things that actually pay off around mental wellness,â she said.Â
Relationships and conversations with other executives
The global leadership team at Bank of America has had to be incredibly nimble, creative and innovative in response to the challenges that 2020 has presented, according to Sheri Bronstein, chief human resources officer at Bank of America, another company Thrive has partnered with.
âFrom the imperative to keep our 210,000 employees safe and healthy to recognizing the need for even more focus on diversity and inclusion, events of the past six months have led to more collaboration, learning and sharing between myself and my C-suite teammates than ever before,â she said.Â
Bronstein also highlighted the importance of CEO support as the company moves forward to support a healthy workforce. Support from Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has allowed Bronstein and her human resources team to take bold, swift actions as it responds to the pandemic and the health and safety concerns that employees may have.Â
These actions include âno layoffs through 2020 due to the pandemic, free, virtual access 24/7 to doctors, $100 a day to cover child- and elder-care expenses and a variety of resources to support the mental health of our employees and their families,â Bronstein said.
Shook also stressed the importance of building trust with other key stakeholders in the company. Executives working together to lead responsibly can help a company and its workforce come out of a crisis stronger and more resilient.Â
âAs we discuss physical safety and psychological resiliency, returning to the workplace and actions to fight racism in our organizations, an underlying theme of many of my conversations with other [C-suite executives] is humanityand the opportunity and obligation that leaders have to elevate their most important source of competitive differentiation â their people â especially during times of crisis,â Shook said.Â
The opportunity to create lasting changeÂ
The lessons organizations have learned from dealing with these crises will have a lasting impact on how they approach HR matters moving forward, Bronstein said.Â
At Bank of America, she added, members of the C-suite will continue to collaborate with each other, â[maintaining] our focus on cultivating a diverse and inclusive culture, and offer programs, initiatives and partnerships that drive change.â
Shook compared the current state of possibilities for HR leadership to that of finance executives during the 2008 financial crisis. The chief people officer, much like the CFO of 2008, is a key leader in an organization right now, âguiding their organizations and people through these trying times where health, livelihoods, and equality are at stake, while also keeping a foot in tomorrow.â
âCHROs have always sat at an interesting crossroads to help their organizations elevate their people, or not â whether it be AI, a pandemic or inequity,â she said, adding the HR leaders who focus on people over process can navigate disruption better in the present and also help contribute to a better future.
At Accenture, for example, Shook said she and her colleagues have learned a lot over the past few months about how people work and how they can still collaborate and be innovative while physically distancing from each other.Â
Due to this newfound knowledge, she said, âwe are [not] taking this as an opportunity to think about how we go back to what normal was.â and
âThis is an opportunity for lasting change,â Shook added. âFor modern HR leaders, this has been an accelerant to create a blueprint for the future of work, rethink the social contract and drive even greater value for our people, businesses and communities. And, for those HR leaders who are less progressive, itâs an important catalyst to begin to create a resilient organization that is prepared for whatever the future holds.âÂ
Over the past several months workplaces across the globe were forced to embrace the future of work in ways they never considered. COVID-19 may fundamentally change the workplace and in this context, here arethree key considerations as employers work through this recovery phase in reaction to the pandemic.
Rethinking workplaces: Ensuring the health and safety of workers will be crucial to reopening plants, offices and stores and determining new team models.
Rethinking workforces: An estimated2.7 billion people, or more than four out of five global workers, have been affected by stay-at-home measures. In addition to looking at new ways to deploy existing workers across an organization, many organizations are looking to identify opportunities to connect furloughed workers to job openings in areas with growing recovery demands.
Rethinking work: As organizations look toward the realities of a post-pandemic world, itâs likely that new business priorities will need to redesign teams and workforce policies, addressing the benefits and risks of a dispersed workforce while building flexibility.
It has become even more critical to look at the COVID-19 pandemic and how it exposed two key problems in managing the workforce. When cost management is not designed into daily workforce management activities and decisions and when there is no dedicated business unit focused on owning timekeeping and scheduling outcomes, it can be difficult to manage your bottom line or your workforce effectively.
The pandemic created an extreme disruption for workforce management. Many employers are concerned about costs and how to reconstitute their workforce to be optimally productive under different conditions.
If they are operating today, things like store hours and cleaning have changed. If they are planning to reopen, the restart may change when and how much labor is needed and can be afforded. Labor cost and revenue models are under pressure to adapt to such changes.
Unfortunately, workforce management has been mainly focused on efficient, automated, transactional processes such as reporting time and automating staffing interactions such as requesting time off. These activities and decisions arenât likely designed to act as levers to drive critical outcomes or adapt to disruption in the workplace.
Such processes typically work well for what these standards are designed todo, but not for what functions employers should be doing. Transactional, routine scheduling and timekeeping processes arenât capable of solving for pandemic-level issues impacting the workforce.
The pandemic created an extreme scenario that laid this fact bare. Employers should be operating differently and doing more. It exposes two everyday problems that have long been overlooked.
Cost and productivity should be treated as dynamic outcomes that are actively influenced by the employer in real-time workforce management activities.
Cost or productivity should be managed and influenced well with a workforce center of excellence and people who specialize in workforce management.
Labor cost and productivity can determine if an organization is competitive, profitable and serving its customers well. However, in too many organizations, it almost feels like workforce management is on auto-pilot ⌠until something goes wrong.
If the employer is already operating with workforce management 2.0 â which we will call WFM 2.0 for brevityâs sake â it likely has the following characteristics allowing them to (a) design and control their labor spending for different workplace conditions and (b) know how to assign the work to the modified workforce for the ideal productivity and outcomes.
Characteristics of WFM 2.0 â managing cost and productivity outcomes.
Ownership â A designated business unit known as the WFM Center of Excellence should be responsible for labor outcomes (cost, compliance, productivity, quality, scheduling experience, etc.) and the enabling tools required to manage (timekeeping, scheduling, absence management, mobile and web-enabled devices, dashboards, etc.). This team knows the current model and is able to design the future state and the strategy to get there.
Capability â Specialized workforce management professionals who plan, design and support the timekeeping, absence management and scheduling practices and platforms. Post-COVID-19 operations will rely on these experts to know what policies, system configuration and scheduling models need to change to optimize cost and utilization.
Access to leadership and support â the WFM Center of Excellence â the CoE â reports directly to executive-level stakeholders who sponsor the function, hold it accountable, prioritize its needs and fund its operations. Post-COVID-19 transformation will require support from finance, HR, IT and operations to execute on planning, retooling systems and testing and monitoring workforce performance.
Signs that WFM 2.0 is operating effectively.
The WFM CoE understands the workload and work priorities:
Secures accurate forecasts. This will be challenging and essential in the post-COVID-19 world to recast the labor supply-demand model.
Defines what good work and workforce look like at a detailed, task and practice level blending in the new protocols such as cleaning and distancing.
Creates solid data from time and schedule data to determine what labor should cost.
Decides what types of workers to engage or what work to automate for the lowest cost and optimal outcome. It may be time to pivot some work to machines, work from home or third parties.
The WFM CoE understands the optimal workforce:
What good work looks like â updating labor standards relative to COVID-19 protocols.
What workforce is available â WFM differs from workforce planning and headcount management. WFM is about knowing the workforce that is available âtoday, right nowâ from the active, skilled and healthy workforce.
Who are essential workers.
How much the workforce requires to earn (what compensation is necessary to make work attractive â in other words, hazard pay, shift premium for evening, overtime for excessive hours, on-call pay, paid sick time, etc.).
How to connect to the workforce using up to date, reliable contact mechanisms.
The WFM CoE understands how to put the proper combination of shifts, people and pay practices together to meet the business needs to drive cost and productivity:
Use the right mix of part-time, full-time, contingent or machine workers.
Design optimal shift patterns and rotations for new health protocols and regulations.
Deliver schedule equilibrium (predictable, stable and adequate schedules).
Score schedule quality.
Prevents payroll leakage (avoiding time inflation, overstaffing, gaming the system to inflate pay and benefits).
Turn on self-scheduling, shift swapping and other self-service scheduling processes as needed.
Use float and standby staffing appropriately.
Is up to date on scheduling laws such as the fair workweek, wage and hour rules, and collective bargaining requirements.
The WMO (workforce management office[DM1] ) or WFM CoE understands what tools the business needs and how to use them, such as:
Timekeeping systems and devices will drive cost and payroll.
WFM devices that improve safety so workers can return to work.
Scheduling systems and communication tools to engage with the workforce in real time as situations change.
Ideal absence management systems to easily facilitate planned and unplanned time off.
Dashboards to monitor cost and utilization, react in real time to problems happening on the front line to ensure consistency in how managers operate.
Data-supported insights to inform internal and external stakeholders to show how cost and productivity are being delivered to support and satisfy workers, managers, investors, regulators and the community.
WFM 2.0 was bound to happen. The pandemic is a catalyst for immediate business transformation.
Labor cost and productivity are critical to the financial and competitive viability of employers. Leaving things on auto-pilot isnât a cure for COVID-19âs impact on any organizationâs health.
Businesses that will recover and thrive can start by establishing a permanent workforce management center of excellence acting as the command centerfor managing labor cost and utilization.
Lisa Disselkamp is the managing director at Deloitte Consulting LLP.
As the future of work rapidly evolves and organizations integrate people, technology, alternative workforces and new ways of working, leaders are wrestling with an increasing range of ethical challenges.
These challenges are especially pronounced at the intersection between humans and technology, where new questions top the ethics agenda about the impact of emerging technologies on workers and society. How organizations combine people and machines, govern new human-machine work combinations and operationalize the working relationship between humans, teams and machines will be at the center of how ethical concerns can be managed for the broadest range of benefits. Organizations that tackle these issues head-on â changing their perspective to consider not only “could we” but also “how should we” â will be well positioned to make the bold choices that help to build trust among all stakeholders.
Ethical concerns are front and center for today’s organization as the nature of work, the workforce and the workplace rapidly evolve. In Deloitteâs2020 Global Human Capital Trends report, 85 percent of survey respondents believe that the future of work raises ethical challenges but only 27 percent have clear policies and leaders in place to manage them.
And managing ethics related to the future of work is growing in importance: More than half of the respondents said that it was either the top, or one of the top issues facing organizations today, and 66 percent said it would be in three years.
According to our report, four factors rose to the top of the ethics concerns: legal and regulatory requirements, rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, changes in workforce composition and pressure from external stakeholders.
The leading driver that respondents identified was legal and regulatory requirements. Given that there is often a lag in laws and regulations relating to both technology and workforce issues, this perception is surprising. However, outside of a few moves including fair workweek rules for hourly workers, policy changes have been slow in coming.
The pressure on ethics created by the rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, however, is much more understandable. AI and other technologies make ethics in the future of work, specifically more relevant because the proliferation of technology is driving a redefinition of work. Perhaps the issue that has attracted the most attention is the question of how technology affects the role of humans in work.
While our survey found that only a small percentage of respondents are using robots and AI to replace workers, headlines of the forthcoming “robot apocalypse” continue to capture global attention and raise concern. Organizations that are implementing technologies that drive efficiencies can expect to make decisions whether and how to redeploy people to add strategic value elsewhere, and what, if they decide to eliminate jobs, they will do to support the workers thus displaced. AI will also be a part of scheduling work across a blended workforce of machine and human workers.
As technology becomes more embedded into work, its design and use needs to be assessed for fairness and equity. Organizations should consider questions such as whether their applications of technology decrease or increase discriminatory bias; what procedures they have to protect the privacy of worker data; whether technology-made decisions are transparent and explainable; and what policies they have in place to hold humans responsible for those decisions’ outputs.[1]
Our research found that the third driver of ethicsâ importance in the future of work is changing workforce composition, which raises issues about the evolving social contract between the individual and the organization and the organizations and society â the growth of the alternative workforce is one major phenomenon contributing to these concerns.
The number of self-employed workers in the United States is projected to hit 42 million in 2020. “Invisible labor forces” are being exposed in the recent research by Mary Gray and Siddarth Suri’s âGhost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass,â which talks about the unsavory working conditions of many workers performing the high-tech piecework (labeling data, captioning images and flagging inappropriate content) that powers automation and AI.
The fast growth of this workforce segment is calling to attention related ethical concerns, including alternative workersâ access to fair pay, health care and other potential benefits.
Human resource management is an ever-evolving discipline in business management.Â
Dating back to the early 1900s, experts recognized that managing a workforce goes beyond carrying out transactional tasks and ensuring that there are hands on deck to get the job done. Gradually, more attention is given to understanding employee well-being and its importance in delivering quality work.Â
One expert who delved into the study of the workforce was James R. Angell, president of Yale University and the Carnegie Corp. He started a joint initiative between the Engineering Foundation and National Research Council to propel a research movement that looks into the science behind workforce management through unifying modern engineering, labor management, and educational bodies. It has given birth to Workforce.com today and for 98 years, this initiative has delved deep into the issues within the workforce and understand best practices in human resource management.Â
As market trends change and employee behavior and preferences shift, an organizationâs human resources management practices should also pivot to meet these developments. Today, it is all about engaging the workforce to push the business forward and is a key component of business success.Â
Human Capital: Investing in your organizationâs best asset
Human resource management, as its name suggests, is an area of business management that ensures a holistic experience for the organizationâs most important resource â its people. Itâs involved with the following:
Recruitment: Recruitment is the core foundation of building an organizationâs human capital. It is involved in identifying the needs of the company and the particular roles that can fill those gaps. Attracting, screening, and onboarding candidates are all part of the recruitment process. The goal of the recruitment process is to successfully find candidates whose skills, values and motivations are aligned with the organizationâs goals and culture.Â
Compensation and benefits: Compensation and benefits refer to what the company gives its employees in exchange for their work or service, and they include monetary and non-monetary components. A companyâs compensation and benefits package includes an employeeâs salary and government-mandated benefits. Other perks and incentives can be part of the deal such as insurance coverage, gym membership, housing allowance, company-sponsored trips and events.Â
Labor law compliance: Running an organization is governed by employment laws. Human resource management is involved in creating company policies that comply with labor regulations. Labor law regulations vary per region and they can change from time to time. That being said, a crucial part of human resource management is staying at pace with these changes and ensuring that company policies remain compliant.Â
Training and development: Training and development are focused on nurturing the potential of employees. Training refers to programs that are geared toward improving skills or learning new technical knowledge needed to perform tasks. Meanwhile, development is focused more on programs that enrich an employeeâs overall growth concerning soft skills, leadership, communication, and adapting to certain situations.Â
Retention and engagement: Human resource management is also involved in creating strategies to keep employee turnover to a minimum. Retention and engagement programs are proactive steps to ensure that employees are motivated to perform their best not just for a paycheck but because they have a clear alignment of values with the organization. All of these parts should move cohesively to ensure the best experience possible for staff at every stage of the employee lifecycle.Â
Overcoming human resource management problems
Human resource management involves a lot of moving parts and these can come with their own sets of challenges. Here are common challenges in human resource management and ways to solve them.Â
Difficulty in attracting the right talent.
Delays in hiring can be costly, but an unfit hire can also be detrimental to an organization. So how do you know a candidate is fit for the role? While skills and experience are important in assessing whether an applicant is qualified or not, itâs also essential to look into whether they can fit into your company culture.Â
How to solve:Â
Itâs all about clarity and a good candidate experience. Create your job ad in such a way that it highlights what youâre looking for and whatâs in it for a qualified candidate when they get in. Provide information about the working style and culture that you have in your company. This will attract people who both have the required skills and similar values as you. At the same time, this can also filter out candidates who have a different working style and culture preference. Another common challenge is convincing candidates who are highly skilled and qualified yet passive. These candidates are most likely in touch with a lot of recruiters and are considering more than one job offer. How do you stand out? Look into what motivates this type of worker. Investigate what that person is looking for in an employer and see if that aligns with your goals, culture and compensation package. Customize your messaging accordingly.Â
Boosting your brand as an employer can also help increase your chances of attracting the right talent. According to research from Glassdoor, organizations that invest in employer branding are three times more likely to make a quality hire.Â
Poor candidate experience can also be the thing between you and a quality hire. Communication is at the core of solving this. Make sure that all details and instructions are clear at every stage of the process. Timely feedback and response are also crucial. Take a look at your current process and see how itâs affecting candidate experience and employer brand. Glassdoor found that organizations that create a strong experience for candidates improve their quality of hires by 70 percent.
Dealing with too much paperwork.
Human resource management deals with a lot of information â from employee details, company policies and other essential business documents. And too much paperwork can be a burden, especially when done manually. It can take time away from more valuable tasks like strategizing and optimizing programs and processes.Â
How to solve:
There are digital solutions that can remove the tedious task of processing paperwork. For instance, digital employee onboarding solutions help eliminate the long forms that new hires need to fill. They enable new staff to log in their information and upload important documents online. This ensures better accuracy of information, improves the employee onboarding experience, and allows for a better way for a new hire to spend his first day at work.Â
Understanding and applying labor laws.
Staying compliant with labor laws is a must. However, understanding regulations, applying them in policies, and staying at pace with labor law changes can be very challenging.Â
How to solve:
Implement a compliance strategy to avoid any potential financial and reputational repercussions of failing to comply. A compliance strategy is a set of programs and processes thatâs geared towards ensuring regular updates and audits of policies and communicating any changes with staff promptly. Given the ever-evolving nature of regulations, itâs best to build a strategy and assign a working group to focus on compliance. Technology is also helpful in staying at pace with changes. For instance, some solutions automate labor law updates and ensure that these are reflected in the payroll computation.Â
Retaining employees.
Attracting the right talent is just half of the battle. The other half is retaining them and keeping them satisfied with their role, especially those that are performing above and beyond.Â
How to solve:
Itâs all about consistent growth and learning. Employees are more likely to stay the course when they are given opportunities to grow and are recognized as a vital part of the organizationâs success.Â
Training and development programs are essential to retaining employees. But creating these programs is not a one-time thing. Thatâs why itâs important to have regular alignments with your staff. Regular check-ins can help you get a pulse on their current sentiment about working in the organization, satisfaction with their roles, and the challenges or gaps theyâre facing. From there, you can customize programs or identify next steps that can help them stay engaged.Â
It also pays to have a competitive compensation and benefits package. One of the things to keep employees happy and make them know that they are valued is by providing not just what they need to get their job done, but also offering other incentives that will motivate them to perform better and stay aligned with the values of the organization.Â
Engaging talent at every stage of the employee lifecycle.
Human resource management plays an important part in engaging employees, and it is a continuous process throughout every stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding up until the time an employee leaves an organization. All of these stages affect culture, staff morale, and the success of the company.
An organization is only as good as its employees. Itâs imperative to nurture and cultivate staff no matter where they are in their tenure with the organization. Doing this takes time. Thatâs why itâs important for human resources to have the right technology in place so that they can reduce time on administrative tasks and focus more of their energy on engaging employees.
Leon Pearce is a senior software engineer for Workforce.com. Photo by Lenny Gilmore
Creating innovative HR technology that empowers employees while also saving organizations time and money is an accomplishment to be applauded.
So when the founders of Workforce.com initially developed a highly advanced time-and-attendance platform in their native Brisbane, Australia, in 2014, it was only natural that the four friends were ready to take it to a global stage. After international wins in tech hot spots such as the United Kingdom, Israel and Asia, unleashing their product on the hyper-competitive shores of North America is now a success story thatâs ready to be told.
From those early days with just the first four employees, Workforce.com now boasts dozens of employees who diligently serve businesses nationwide and across the globe.With a commitment to success and a reputation for achievement, Workforce.comâs talented and diverse team is building a strong tradition of delivering excellence by customizing its offerings to their client’s evolving business needs, be it large or small, simple or complex.
Among those dedicated to superior customer service is Chicago-based Workforce.com software engineer Leon Pearce, who has maintained a commitment to promoting the productâs ease of use.
âPeople are the most significant competitive advantage any business can get, so they need to be truly engaged for long-term success,â Pearce said. âWe want to help tackle these complex problems and streamline those processes so they can focus on the essentials of managing their workforce: worker happiness, welfare and efficiency.â
Considering that human resources practitioners must be all things to all people, the sheer volume of work they perform to keep a business functioning smoothly can be overlooked and underappreciated by organizational leaders and employees. Workforce.com technology supports their efforts and provides them with the opportunity to become strategic business partners, Pearce said.
âIn essence, we build the software with the purpose of improving workforce compliance, automation, engagement and productivity,â he said. âThis helps HR stay compliant with ever-changing labor regulations, automate administrative processes, build trust with front-line staff and improve business productivity.â
That said, software and technology isnât very effective if not used properly. As an example, Pearce evoked the tool wielded by the Marvel Comicsâ God of Thunder.
âYou could own Thorâs hammer but thatâs not very useful if nobody can lift it,â he said.
Software fundamentally changes business operations, which means itâs also important to make sure the partner you choose aligns with the vision you have for your teams.
âWith the emergence of Software as a Service as the future of technology adoption, you are not necessarily buying into what it is today, but its ability to improve and help your company reach its potential in the future,â Pearce said.
Ask multiple questions of the software provider, Pearce added, such as:
How many features did they release in the last 12 months?
Who is your chief technology officer?
Do you understand the future of work and whatâs your product road map for the future?
What improvements to the user experience have been made recently?
What percentage of revenue do you commit to new research and development compared to supporting old infrastructure?
Are you going to grow and improve your product as we grow and improve our business?
When it comes to implementation, a common complaint about HR software is when it purely serves management and not the rank-and-file employee.Â
Ask to see it live in a demo and test the software by placing it in the hands of the end user and get their honest feedback, Pearce said. And there are numerous techniques to understand if users like a product.
Yet, he pointed out, many of these techniques are flawed.
âYou can compare companies based on revenue, but then are you evaluating how good the product is or how slick the salespeople are?â he said.
App store ratings give a voice to the people who actually use the software. Since users didn’t choose it, they will be honest with their opinion.
âThe biggest mistake we see is when software is chosen because it ticks the boxes of a proposal and not how it works and is used by the front-line employees,â Pearce said. âIs it intuitive and easy to learn? Iâd always make sure to evaluate whether it enhances or detracts from the employee experience.â
Pearce said that Workforce.comâs technology fits seamlessly into the big picture of people management, helping guide where the world of work is heading and providing a path for HR to be there alongside it.
âTechnology is changing how people approach their work and their relationship with work, so we’re engineering to build a future where teams can perform better through improved workflow and feel empowered with the right technology,â Pearce explained.
For employees that means intuitive mobile apps to see future work hours, swap shifts, provide company feedback and apply for time off and schedule unavailability. For managers, itâs being able to easily build, send and optimize schedules against forecasted demand while tracking actual hours worked.
âAnd for HR and workforce professionals it means being able to manage and oversee this in one place that they can customize perfectly to their way of doing things and integrate with their existing payroll and technology stack,â Pearce said. âOn the whole it means building a platform that leverages the very best technology to help the workforce win and reach its potential.â
Competitive advantage is key to any software platform. Finding what separates one product from another doesnât necessarily take a publicity-hungry influencer. The benchmark for software in this space would be a solution that can follow best practices for each particular industry and help teams get to where they want to be, while being easy to use.
âCreate a solution that supports an organization while they find their way forward and enables them to operate in ways that create new competitive advantages,â Pearce said. âOur strategy is to build our software like a platform that provides adopters with a starting point of industry best practices, but is also flexible enough to evolve with them. Stagnation always ends in failure, which is why enabling our users to keep tweaking their functions and improving the way they operate is so important to us.â
While many see software â any type of software â as a tool, a thing to use merely to accomplish a task, Pearce fancies a more cultured approach.
âItâs like art. Seeing people use the software I helped build definitely gives me pride, but I think more to the point is the knowledge that I was involved in hopefully making peopleâs lives just a little better,â he said. âI thank our customers every day for giving me that opportunity.â
Don’t take our word for it. Thereâs a lot that goes into making time and attendance software simple to use and hassle free. Try Workforce.comâs multifaceted time and attendance software and youâll be lifting Thorâs hammer in no time.
Some 768 million days of paid time went unused by American workers in 2018. That time amounted to about $65 billion in value.
While those statistics point to an American workforce that is overworked, it also presents an underlying problem many workers face: an organizationâs time off policies that are poorly communicated, too complicated and overly cumbersome.
That could lead to employees shirking the system, which frustrates managers and angers payroll staff. Simplifying time off policies helps employers to more easily track their workforceâs vacation and sick time while allowing employees to take off the time they have earned.
Considering that some payroll systems are stuck in decades-old processes, an upgrade may sound easier said than done. But thatâs not the case.
Even if a time off policy is locked in a paper-based 1980s time warp thatâs as scary as Michael Jacksonâs âThriller,â employers can channel their âOld Town Roadâ and easily upgrade to a fresh, comprehensive 2020s system that promotes modern sensibilities through ease of use.
Here are four ways a tech upgrade canstrengthen your organizationâs PTO policy:
Simply simplify.
With a simplified time-off system, employees are more likely to take the time off they have earned and deserve. That leads to happier employees, which in turn leads to higher productivity. An updated time off policy includes features allowing employees to submit time off requests from any device at any time, making it a convenience rather than a cumbersome process.Â
Communicate your time-off policy capabilities.
Employees can be intimidated to take time off for whatever reason. And if they donât know that their employer has upgraded to an employee-friendly, mobile-enabled time-off system they are less likely to request earned PTO. Itâs clear that a rested employee is more productive. Your enhanced time off system also should provide an easy and effective way to communicate anything from a newly opened shift to a companyâs time off policies.
Paperwork is a relic of the past.
 A time off system that relies on technology rather than file folders and cold steel cabinets is not only a nod to a more mobile workforce but to the younger demographics of todayâs working population. A mobile-friendly time off policy makes it easy to manage PTO requests and sends the message that youâre encouraging employees â especially millennials and Generation Z â that they should use their time.
Build a more productive, trusting workforce.
By encouraging employees to take their time off, rather than obfuscating it through some dim, impermeable system, employers can enhance engagement, promote transparency and build trust. Such employee engagement tactics lead to a more positive work environment. Streamlining the PTO process makes it easier for employees to use their paid time off and leads to a more productive workforce.
An engaged, rested workforce leads to a more harmonious and productive workforce. A mobile-friendly leave management system also allows employees to better plan for their time-off needs, switch schedules and communicate with one another.Workforce.comâs intuitive leave management provides seamless operations and provides tie-ins to scheduling and payroll.
An organization may call their head of HR a chief people officer, chief human resources officer, chief talent officer or something else. Whatever the title, the chief people officer has evolved over the years, and they should be aware of the macro trend impacting their role.
This is according to âCHRO Trends 2020,â a report from consulting firm Talent Strategy Group. Researchers produced the report by analyzing Fortune 200 companies and publicly available data. They looked at the 36 new Fortune 200 chief people officers who came into the role in 2019 and identified seven distinct trends. These 36 leaders include UnitedHealth Groupâs Patricia Lewis, General Electricâs Kevin Cox, PepsiCoâs Ronald Schellekens and American Expressâ Monique Herena.
Chief people officers remain one of the only C-suite roles that is dominated by women rather than men, the report found. Seventy-eight percent of new CHROs were women in 2019, and of all Fortune 200 CHROs, 67.3 percent were women, according to the report. This happened in the same time span in which the CEO role in the Fortune 200 saw a decline in female representation.
FhrFurther, in the pool of CHRO replacements in 2019, a woman replaced a man in 43 percent of the instances compared to 7 percent when a man replaced a woman, noted Zac Upchurch, COO at the Talent Strategy Group and a co-author of the report.Â
Advanced education is also becoming increasingly important for chief people officers. Compared to 48 percent in 2018, 65 percent of the new CHROs in 2019 hold one or more advanced degrees. Of this majority, 86 percent have earned a masterâs degree, and 22 percent have earned a juris doctor.Â
This tracks with an overall trend for HR managers as well. HR professionals going to business school is becoming more popular, as they can use advanced education to pick up business skills in finance, marketing and operations that they donât necessarily learn on-the-job as working in HR.Â
Another finding from the report was that turnover among chief people officers has increased. In 2019, 19 percent of CPOs turned over, an increase from 16 percent in 2018. In the Fortune 10 alone, the report noted, there were four CHRO replacements in 2019.Â
Upchurch wouldnât attribute the higher rate for larger revenue organizations to anything specific. The average tenure of CHROs is a little over five years, he said, and some of them may have just reached their limit in 2019.Â
CEO turnover rates also likely impacted CHRO turnover rates in 2019, he added. The report found a correlation between the two, and 2019 saw a 40 percent increase in CEO turnover. âThe high correlation of CEO and CHRO turnover translates to an increase in CHRO turnover that we expect to continue into 2020,â the report stated.Â
For example, in November 2019 when McDonaldâs CEO Steve Easterbrook was fired after admitting to violating company policy by having a consensual relationship with an employee, Chief People Officer David Fairhurst resigned a day later.
âWhen the CEO leaves the company, it is very common for it to have a cascading effect. In some cases, other executives leave because they did not get the CEO job and therefore felt passed over. In other cases, they are not aligned with the new CEO and leave to pursue new opportunities. Every executive will now have to switch their personal loyalty to Chris Kempczinski, their new CEO, or consider departing,â said Dave Ramos, chief executive officer of consultancy Shiftpoints Inc., at the time of Fairhurstâs departure.
Upchurch expanded on this logic. A new CEO â especially if they come from outside the company rather than internally â impacts the rest of the executive team, he said.Â
âI predominantly attribute [this trend] to the changing of the guard and the accumulation of a new strategy,â Upchurch said. âA new CEO [may establish] a new executive team to drive forward strategy, and that strategy is either going to be similar to or differentiated from the previous one.â
Interestingly, while 35 percent of departing chief people officers retired, 31 percent took new or bigger roles within the company, the report noted.Â
Twelve percent took a lateral move into a business role such as a different executive position. One reason behind this is that some companies see the chief people officer as a stop along the way as someone moves up the company, Upchurch noted. Their ultimate goal may be a different executive role. They may not even have HR experience when they take on the CHRO position. In fact, the 2020 report found that 17 percent of CHROs come into the role with limited to no domain expertise in HR.Â
Examples of former HR executives who have made these lateral moves in 2019, Upchurch said, include: Jennifer Mann at Coca Cola, who is now senior vice president and president of global ventures; Kathy Gaddes of AmerisourceBergen, who is now chief compliance officer; and Stephanie Lundquist at Target, who is now executive vice president and president of food and beverage.Â
The creators of the report also spoke to many chief people officers to get an understanding of what they see as the biggest priorities on their agenda. These conversations provided some qualitative data to the Fortune 200 analysis.Â
A major theme of these interviews was building capability and accountability, Upchurch said. CHROs want the HR function and HR managers to build on their capabilities in order to meet increasing HR standards and to appropriately hold people accountable to these standards
âThereâs a lot of good research about the relationship between what we think we hold people accountable for and how drastic it is versus what we actually do. I think a lot of CHROs are clued into that and saying, âWe have good processes and practices. What we donât have is how we hold people accountable for these processes and practices, and we need to enable that by providing them the right capability,â â he said, citing a 2019 survey that found managers generally donât hold their employees accountable.
Another trend that emerged from these conversations were the challenges of balancing both short-term and long-term expectations in HR. Short-term tasks include daily or quarterly duties while long-term involves preparing for the future of work and responding to macro trends.
This delicate balance was true before COVID-19 disrupted the workplace and it still holds true now, Upchurch said.Â
âAll this is now more relevant than it ever has been because CHROs are on the front lines of contingency planning and different ways of working [in response] to COVID-19. But they also need to operate their business. So the question is, âHow do you do both these things at once?ââ he said. HR leaders must manage this complicated relationship âbetween the quarter-by-quarter basis at which organizations operate while also setting up the runway for perpetual, enduring success.âÂ
