Are you well-equipped for Work From Home (WFH) arrangements for your employees?
With the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic showing no signs of dissipating, and governments urging citizens to practice social distancing and implementing nation-wide lock downs — ‘business as usual’ has undoubtedly had to change. To adhere to government recommendations, many companies are now offering work-from-home arrangements as a viable alternative for their employees.
Since most employers have not had to implement these measures before, they are frantic over the change to how business is run, and find themselves at a loss over what to do and how to introduce remote working arrangements. Technological advancement is one answer, since cloud-based tools can help coordinate work arrangements and meetings and provide a seamless way for employers to connect with employees. What might be lacking? Education.
What Can I Do For My Company?
1. Set your Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
What is BCP?
The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is the process of creating a recovery system / back-up plan to ensure the continuity of daily business operations and to protect the company’s assets from potential threats / disasters.
One of the key essentials is to have your company’s internal data stored on the cloud.
What is the cloud? How is my data stored?
According to Amazon Web Services, “Cloud storage is a cloud computing model that stores data on the Internet through a cloud computing provider who manages and operates data storage as a service. It’s delivered on demand with just-in-time capacity and costs, and eliminates buying and managing your own data storage infrastructure. This gives you agility, global scale and durability, with “anytime, anywhere” data access.”
To put this simply, cloud is an online data storage space which allows you to retrieve information as long as you have internet connection. This gives you the mobility to work anywhere and anytime – which is what you can now do with Swingvy.
As Swingvy’s HR platform is cloud-based, this allows you to access to your company’s data easily, and will not affect internal processes for employees (e.g. leave application, claims, medical insurance, and payslips). In fact, Swingvy promotes your workflow efficiencies.
2. Understand the profile of your company
What is the nature of your business? What kind of resources do you need? Is your company able to fully operate remotely or by staggering rosters?
Start with understanding your operational flow and business nature by reviewing your daily operations with some questions like:
- What are your day to day operations like?
- Can employees be fully deployed remotely or with a staggered team arrangement?
- How many offices / factories / locations do you operate from? Are they in Singapore or overseas?
- Which offices / factories / location are in COVID-19 hotspots that might affect your business should you be in the retail / F&B space?
Log in to your Swingvy account, take a look at the number of locations and departments you have, and sort them according to the amount of manpower required for each department. Form teams with different key personnel from each department, so that if one team is down, another team will still be up and running.
Form a communication call-tree, ensuring all contact details of employees are accurate, and do some test-runs to ensure everyone stays contactable during this period.
Having employee information at the tip of your fingers makes contacting staff much easier. For access to your employee directory anytime, anywhere — especially in case of last minute staff replacement due to medical leave, Leave of Absence (LOA) / Stay-Home Notice (SHN) or quarantine notices, Swingvy’s mobile app has you covered.
3. Take a look at your company’s profile and calendar in Swingvy
Based on the nature of your business, plan your rostering and schedule with the help of Swingvy’s built-in calendar. One glance at the calendar and you can easily see all public holidays, leave, and employee birthdays. This helps with allocation of team resources and planning of duties for each team based on availability.
Equip employees with the necessary information and tools (e.g. laptops, equipment, software, hardware, guides, Standard Operating Procedures) to ensure employees have everything they need, whether they are working remotely or have staggered work hours.
Should your employees need to take leave at any point in time, or should they receive a notice from the Government due to COVID-19, updating leave can be done directly through Swingvy’s mobile app or through the web platform. Managers are also able to approve leave either on-the-go through the mobile app or via web, as long as they have an internet connection.
4. Set your HR policy for BCP
Update your HR policy to include your Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and BCP measures clearly. Ensure your company makes this announcement through a centralised, company-wide platform, so everyone can be kept informed and in the loop.
Send company-wide announcements easily through the click of the button! Insert any link, photo, or image — and it will be updated on your Swingvy News feed. You even have the option to send an email to selected, or all employees to notify them about this.
Employees are able to log into their Swingvy account and refer back to the policies established by management at any time. The Swingvy platform aims to be a one-stop handbook with full transparency on HR policies that employees can follow.
5. Ease the situation in your company – Don’t panic
At this point in time, your employees may worry about the company’s finances, and if they are able to receive their salary on time — since some hard-hit companies have been forced to put employees on no-pay leave.
To avoid panic, you can assure employees by setting clear guidelines and company policies regarding financial matters. For example, employees who might still have to travel via taxi, will be able to submit their claims through Swingvy’s Claims, which automatically integrates into Swingvy’s payroll for reimbursements.
Payroll can also be done easily through Swingvy’s payroll undisrupted, with payslips sent directly from the platform once the pay-run is done.
Employees will receive email notifications when pay comes in, and can easily retrieve their payslip from their Swingvy account online.
6. Health and medical protection for your employees in the era of Coronavirus
Some of you may have bought medical and hospitalisation insurance (known as Group Insurance) for your employees. Check with your Insurer to determine whether hospitalisation covers COVID-19, and convey this clearly to your employees to ease their anxiety.
It is important to ensure the health and well-being of your employees, as they are the key to ensure the continuity of your business operations, especially during the pandemic. Your people matter.
If you are thinking of getting coverage for your employees, Swingvy’s Benefits platform allows you to get instant free quotations, manage your billing, and perform employee insurance onboarding / off-boarding directly from the Insurer in both Singapore and Malaysia — all paperless and free. No more worrying your health may be at risk during physical meet ups since everything can be done online!
Note:
For Aviva policy holders (Singapore): https://www.aviva.com.sg/en/novel-coronavirus-notice/
If you are working around a budget, you can explore allocating a fixed amount for employees to claim – known as Flexi Cash. This allows employees to purchase their own plans and be entitled to reimbursement up to a flexible amount that your company sets.
Swingvy’s Benefit Claims helps you to allocate a specific flexi cash budget to your employees, so they can submit claims for approval easily, while also limiting the amount employees can claim.
How to get help?
Don’t worry! Swingvy is here to help you tide through this difficult period.
We have our Help Centre with images to guide you through the process step by step. Should you require more assistance, our Customer Success team is readily available at support@swingvy.com, either through email or by directly submitting an enquiry on our platform.
Lets work together hand-in-hand to combat COVID-19!
People matter.
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