The New Normal : A Post – Pandemic Work Era

          Sejal Patil Marketing Manager, Extentia Information Technology.

We’re no longer in Kansas folks, the world as we know it has changed giving us a 2020 perspective on work, family, and everything in between. As much as we’d like to go back to normal, we’re heading for a new normal and unchartered territory. With that in mind let’s talk about the mostly virtual but some physical re-opening of work in this post-pandemic era.

Most people look to the heavens for answers, we, look to the cloud. Our favorite cloud, Salesforce took the lead in redefining industry standards while the world was grappling with COVID-19. The repurposed initiatives and new solutions left little to be desired as Salesforce ensured its Ohana was well equipped to work from home productively. And now, they’ve once again demonstrated their vision by discussing and putting in place practices to facilitate the return of the workforce.

Work.com is Salesforce’s latest initiative to streamline the process of its employees returning to the office. Salesforce has also rolled out this suite of features to all of its partners and customers as well. The application provides a dashboard overview of employees’ health status across various office locations. Contact tracing is an essential offering in Work.com. Any employee who reports a fever can inform the organization and this will trigger an in-house tracing team response. The tracing team will speak with all employees the unwell person has been in contact with and ask them to quarantine at home.

Employee wellness assessment allows you to run secure surveys and assess employee health before bringing them back to the office. Going forward, working in shifts is going to become a rising trend. The shift management and planning feature will help you coordinate and allocate shifts according to requirements. Of course, nothing would be complete without working in Salesforce’s signature Trail head. There will be trails to re-skill all your employees on Work.com’s offerings. A lot of these will soon be implemented when Salesforce opens its South Korea office. An intriguing new system also involves providing employees with tickets for their slot on an elevator. Whether you want to sign up for Work.com or not, there’s no denying that all of these features will have to be implemented across offices in some manner or the other.

It’s important to note that Work.com will only be generally available on June 01, 2020.

At Extentia, we’ve not let the virus affect our spirit or our productivity and we’re looking forward to embracing the new work culture when it comes our way. The process is not going to be perfect and there are going to be multiple learning and iterations along the way. But as always, safety will be our priority. Going beyond the Salesforce platform, there are multiple things you can do to ensure a healthier workplace.

1. Reopening guidelines ;

Ensure that you are following all the information sent out by your national and local authorities. Divide this data based on your office locations and set up a procedure per office, so that you can quickly scale up or down depending on the virus re-emergence.

2. New health and safety measures ;

Our offices are never going to look the same again. Temperature screening, wearing face masks, redesigning for physical distancing, frequent cleaning, posters to communicate and remind everyone about physical distancing, manual contact tracing and so much more are going to make up our new normal.

3. Communication is key ;

Let your employees know how you plan to ensure their safety before they return to work. Conduct webinars to set expectations regarding the new work environment. Once people return to work, ensure you hear all their questions, over communication will help reduce anxiety with the populace.

4.How to distance ?

Take a look at all your work spaces from a redesign perspective to maintain social distancing. This could translate to defining capacities for meeting rooms, or setting in place work shifts, Of course, let those who can work from home continue to do so to reduce the strain on your organization and staff.

5. Cleaning up ;

Deep cleaning is going to play a major role in our offices, from wiping down handles to elevator buttons high contact surfaces will need special attention as they can be hot spots for the virus. In the future, antimicrobial metals such as copper, and its alloys will be heavily used in office design.

We have a long road ahead of us, tools like Work.com will make the journey that much easier. How are you planning on paving the path back to your workplace? Let us know, we’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions!