‘Remote working’, ‘Multi-modal working’ ‘agile working’ or ‘flexible working’ – whatever you prefer to call it, it’s something that many organisations have grappled with for many years. We can recall numerous discussions, projects and predictions on this topic, some of which came to fruition – but just as often not. COVID-19 has brought such conversations into sharp focus.
With no time for projects or pilots, many organisations have been forced into operating with the majority of their employees fully remote and working from home. Employees are being given the flexibility to choose where and when to work, requiring them to balance personal circumstances, workload and the demands of the current situation.
According to a forecast by Global Workplace Analytics,[1] remote working for US employees is predicted to rise from just 3.6% prior to the Pandemic, with 25-30% of the workforce working at home on a multiple-days-a-week basis by the end of 2021.
There are even suggestions that companies who have already embraced remote working may go further, with most staff working in what can be termed a “hyper-virtual organisation”. KPMG[2] have described it as “the future comes early”. Now the working-from-home genie is out the bottle, for many there may be no going back
Modelling and forecasting the impact of agile working
The current reality means it is highly likely that ‘agile working’ ( employee splitting their time working between home and the office) will increase significantly.
The crisis has proven that this can work for many organisations. Moving forward, the HR function and HR leaders will need to be at the forefront of addressing the adoption of these new ways of working.
Potential questions HR leaders may be asked – and may want to ask themselves – are:
- What roles have been performed remotely? How can they continue to operate remotely? How do we measure success? How do we support employees working remotely? How do we collect feedback and monitor progress?
- What would remote working look like for our organisation if we were to continue? How can we model this? What are the criteria for determining if roles can be remote?
- How will this affect our total cost of ownership for my workforce? Will there be a positive or negative business case?
- How will this affect our sites and building capacity requirements?
- What is the extent of the change?
- What enablers would we need for such as a change to be successful? How should we implement the change?
- What impact does this have on the terms, conditions and benefits of our staff?
- How would a new organisation set up impact our organisation design? How do we impact our financial and resource planning?
Planning and modelling such scenarios is not new for HR leaders. They typically work closely with Finance to undertake similar exercises, whether it be in the case of an acquisition, sale, new business venture or organisational change. Organisational planning and change management sit at the very heart of HR.
These processes models are data-heavy and can be cumbersome and time-consuming to create. Data manipulation can be incredibly difficult without the correct tools, data integrity can be compromised, and doubt can be cast on the reliability of outputs.
Using Oracle HCM workforce-modelling tools integrated within Oracle HCM solution can be extremely powerful, removing doubts over data integrity and streamlining these processes, enabled by AI (artificial intelligence). This puts HR leaders working closely with Finance in a position to forecast a total cost of ownership and organisational impact with reliable and seamless analytics.
Consequence and impact of increased agile working
In the event that agile working does increase significantly, HR leaders may need to review a number of HR policies and practices to support the new normal. These may include:
- Terms and conditions – Will employees’ contracted terms and conditions be impacted by a change in work location. If so, how will any changes and communications be managed?
- Pay and benefits – Does the current pay and benefits policy and frameworks enable agile/remote working?
- Training development and learning – How will staff receive learnings and skills development training remotely and digitally?
- Health and safety – Are employees working safely, new policies governing homework and environmental factors.
- Payroll, leave, absence management and other operational HR services – How are staff to be provided with basic HR services when they are working remotely?
- Wellbeing – Staff working remotely should be able to access all wellbeing services. In some cases, due to the remoteness of their working, they may need more wellbeing support than office-based staff.
- Employee Engagement – How can we remain connected to our employees? How do we maintain culture and compliance? How can employees gain insight into organizational change and opportunities without “water cooler” moments?
- Management information – It is likely the roles of managers may also become subject to agile working. To effectively manage their teams, access to information will be needed.
Oracle Cloud HCM has been developed to meet all these challenges and help organisations move to agile working. It can support the full gamut of HR services that are needed to be delivered remotely and digitally. Employee experience and accessibility is key and are the cornerstones of the design philosophy at Oracle. Ease of adoption and compliance is supported through digital assistant (known as intelligent adviser) and integrated help desk capability embedded in Oracle Cloud HCM.
In addition, managers can easily access the information they need, as well as the controls required to monitor day-to-day team operations.
Over the last few years, Oracle HR has been through its own transformation enabled by the implementation of Oracle Cloud HCM. The test of this transformation for us has been working from home for 14 weeks. It has been simple and effective. Easy access to all HR services both digitally and remotely, has been possible through Oracle Cloud HCM.
Oracle Cloud HCM can support organisations with the key topic of multi-modal or flexible working in a number of different ways.
Oracle Cloud HCM allows businesses to:
- Model their workforce and estimate the effectiveness of the new workforce set up
- Support agile working and communication through 24×7 coverage
- Increase adoption through the use of digital assistants
- Distribute data ownership to improve accuracy and timeliness of data capture using manager and employee self-service
- Enable remote support, case management and HR policy compliance by using the integrated help desk
- Model future organisational capabilities, including the financial implications of delivering such capabilities
- Provide a common platform across any device to Engage and communicate with employees
- Support and monitoring for distributed tasks to deliver a smooth and engaging remote onboarding experience for new employees
To discover how these transformational technologies can help, why not try Oracle Cloud HCM today?
Oracle are an exhibitor on the HRTech247 HCM Full Platform floor. You can visit their HRTech247 exhibition stand here.
