Back to work: HR gets in on the balancing act
This week Cognition24 is doing exactly what so many of you out there are doing – back to work, settling into a new office, with a new way of working. Gone is the nine to five routine (sorry Dolly. You’re going to have to come up with a new tune). Instead, the majority of us are finding a new balance of working in the office some of the time and from home the rest, often flexibly around childcare and other life commitments.
This new hybrid working system has the potential to create chaos within the HR department. Your staff are now scattered all over the place and it can be very difficult to monitor how effectively they’re working and how they’re coping from a mental health and well-being perspective. It’d be very easy for your employees to feel alienated and out of touch with what’s going on within the company and their colleagues. To help combat this, Salesforce has expanded Work.com to fulfil a vital HR role.
Work.com
Salesforce released Work.com in June 2020 to help businesses reopen safely and efficiently in the post-pandemic world. The platform is a suite of solutions, including apps, products and resources, which have been specifically designed to assist companies evolve to the new hybrid way of working.
The Work.com platform has been updated to offer an HR support function focusing on employee growth and well-being, and the employee experience. Designed to work seamlessly in both the office and at home, the new HR tools are for everyone to use – employees, managers and the HR team. These tools include Talent, an HR Service Centre, Employee Service, Service Catalogue and Employee Concierge Bots.
Employees can:
- Publish and track their skills, development goals and career path aims.
- Receive career guidance, including recommended further study from Salesforce’s online learning platform Trailhead.
- Source internal job opportunities that fulfil their job interests and goals.
- Access information about HR policies and benefits.
- Complete HR tasks, such as updating a direct deposit.
- Use the Service Catalogue to find and request products and services, such as a new laptop or a request to fix their mobile device.
- Answer questions through the new Employee Concierge Bot.
Managers and HR teams can:
- Get an insight into their employees’ career aims.
- Quickly source staff with the right skillset for a new project or role.
- Streamline fragmented HR processes, such as onboarding, into one unified experience.
- Manage requests through a dedicated service console with AI-powered recommendations that automate case resolution.
- Automate requests made through the Service Catalogue for common products and services.
Well-being in the workplace
As well as striving to improve the employee’s experience with Work.com, Salesforce is introducing wellness checks into employee workflows to ensure their well-being. Employees answer the questions confidentially and are given content that’s relevant to their responses, such as tips on reducing stress or how to connect with a financial advisor.
While the wellness checks are confidential (Salesforce works with its Office of Ethical Use to ensure there are restrictions on the tool to keep data classified), managers can access anonymous information on how their teams are feeling, as a whole. This then enables them to implement processes to help their employees collectively when or if needed.
We all know how important it is to have your staff’s well-being at the forefront of your agenda. These new tools from Salesforce can help with this and give your employees a voice, making them feel a valued and integral part of the company, rather than an island in a stream. (No need to change the lyrics for that one, Dolly.)