6 Things to Consider in a Return to Work Plan

After an elongated period of shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, most countries are now announcing numerous relaxations. This clearly means that sooner or later, the businesses following the work from home mandate shall be allowed to resume their operations from their office premises.

Although exciting, it can also be a daunting task for most organizations to return to work in these testing times of Covid-19. There are a few things that must be taken care of to ensure smooth operations without health risks and monetary losses to the business.

Let us discuss a few key considerations that businesses must include in their return to work plan:

  1. Compliance Requirements – Employers must make a note of all regulations that apply to them. Ensure to check for federal regulations and guidelines announced by the Centre for Disease Control. Businesses must also ensure to check for general as well as industry-specific rules of operations announced by their state.

    All businesses must begin to build their return to work plan only after taking into consideration all compliance requirements and incorporating them into the plan from the start itself.

  2. Phased Approach – Depending upon the structure of your organization and the number of employees, it is a good idea to commence your operations in a phased approach. Instead of starting all operations at once, it will be wiser and easier to take small steps towards returning to full capacity.

    The most important advantage of the phased approach is that organizations can implement all activities in a planned, thoughtful, and measurable manner. It is definitely easier to monitor, adjust, and improve the workplace before everyone is back to the office.

  3. Employee Needs – Every organization returning to work must ensure to address the needs of their employees by answering the following questions in their return to work plan:
    1. Which employees may return to work?
    2. Which employees must return to work?
    3. Which employees are at a higher risk of illness?
    4. Which employees can continue to work from home?

It is also essential for all businesses to guide their employees around the ongoing issues, difficulties that they are likely to encounter during work, and easy workaround for these issues.

Certain important questions such as how will the employees exposed to Covid-19 inform the company, is it necessary for them to be quarantined, for how long can they still continue to work from home,  must be mentioned in the return to work plan and communicated to all employees clearly.

  1. Office Accommodations – Businesses resuming their operations must take proper measures to restructure the office layout so as to facilitate social distancing, adjust office hours to enable work shifts and avoid crowding, and promote regular sanitization activities in the premises.

    It is also advised for organizations to take steps to limit client meetings and site visits, change occupancy limits for conference halls, and promote healthy practices. These all activities must be clearly defined in the return to work plan.

  2. Conditions of Employment – Businesses might have to revise their conditions of employment. This is because certain employees who are required to travel for their jobs may not be able to do so and the sales team may also find it difficult to meet their targets due to various work and travel restrictions. Similarly, other employees may also need their goals and targets adjusted to better reflect the reality of the current business environment and trends.

    Being the employer, you have to ensure that policies are flexible to accommodate individual employee needs, but they must be applied in a standardized manner so as to protect the company against claims of partiality or unfair treatment.

  3. Be Empathetic – Needless to say, this has been a difficult phase for everyone. The return to work plan of a business must be made by being considerate about this fact.

It is also vital for businesses to speak to their employees about the reasons for policy changes. It is good for businesses to be flexible and responsive to changing employee needs, concerns, and expectations.

There is no denying the fact that coronavirus has led to unforeseen challenges for businesses in all varied industries. In this unpredictable environment, it is tedious for organizations both big and small to decide upon the next steps to be taken.

If you need any assistance with your IT projects such as ERP implementations, look no further as we at WalkWater Technologies are a skilled and reliable team of professionals specializing in Enterprise IT business applications! Feel free to reach out to us at info@e-walkwater.com. We shall get back to you in no time!

Benefits of IT Staffing Agencies

The ever-increasing number of IT professionals all across the world has made it extremely difficult for organizations to hire talented employees in a time-efficient manner. It is not only a cumbersome and exhaustive process but also truly expensive to choose the right candidate from the ever-shrinking pool of genuinely qualified and skilled IT professionals.

With every wrong hire, the company also has to bear numerous indirect costs of lost opportunities, recruitment expenses, delayed project deliveries, hampered market reputation, and bad employee morale. This is, of course, in addition to direct costs such as salaries and training costs of the new employee. Thus, a misfit employee is not only expensive but also restrictive for the overall growth of the team and the organization.

This is where an IT staffing agency comes to your rescue to save you from the  nightmares of a bad hire. Staffing agencies help you find the best talent for your diverse and challenging job profiles. There are many advantages of hiring a staffing agency for the next vacancy at your organization, let’s make a note of a few of them below:

  1. Save Time Without Compromising on Quality – The staffing agency does all the paperwork, performs a background check, and also interviews the eligible candidates to ensure their qualifications and work experience match your requirements of a suitable candidate for the new job role at your company.As only the most eligible professionals are introduced to your company, you do not waste your effort in interviewing unqualified candidates. This saves a lot of time for you and your company especially for contract jobs where the contract job needs to begin at the earliest.
  2. Bigger Pool of Candidates – It may not always be feasible for a company to start their search for the desired candidate from scratch. As the recruiters at the staffing agencies constantly keep looking for qualified IT professionals and talented candidates who are eager to shift to a new job, they have easy access to a much larger pool of diversely skilled prospective employees as opposed to the internal HR department of an IT organization.
  3. Enjoy Accountability of Agency – As the success of staffing agencies is directly dependent on the success of their clients, it is their topmost priority to make only the best candidates available in the least amount of time for a job role at an organization. The measure of success for the agency is directly tied to that of its client, ensuring accountability and performance.
  4. Decrease Friction among Hiring Managers – It is a common scenario where, after interviewing numerous candidates for a vacancy, the hiring managers of the organization get into a disagreement and fail to make the final selection of a candidate for the job role.This not only causes loss of money and time but also leads to internal conflicts that eventually results in the slowdown of the hiring process. Hiring a staffing agency will help you get rid of these delays and avoid unfavourable situations at work.

Staffing agencies are your best bet when you have to hire a candidate for a contractual job or a full-time position. The recruiters at the staffing agencies are highly experienced in finding the most suitable candidates for all different job roles. They help you save time and money, and also reduce the risk of a wrong hire to a minimum.

WalkWater Technologies is a leading IT Staff Augmentation agency based in the United States and specializes in the recruitment of IT business applications job roles for On-prem & Cloud Solutions.

We work closely with your hiring managers to understand your goals to ensure we fulfil them beyond your expectations in a time-saving and cost-efficient manner. We take pride in having served renowned companies such as eBay, Expedia, Oracle, Tech Mahindra, and United Airlines amongst the many others.

Get in touch and give us a chance to support your teams as well!

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