Gather all the information required to safely return to work

As lockdown orders become less strict in some parts of the world, many organizations are beginning to reopen their worksites for employees. Employers have to be meticulous and evaluate different risk factors before reopening. Each stage of the process should be done in a way that is consistent with government guidelines to ensure employee safety. Not following these guidelines could put the health of your employees in jeopardy and damage your reputation as an organization. So, as an HR professional, you have to ensure that both your employees and organization are completely ready to transition back to office work.

We would like to do everything in our power to help you with this, so we’re introducing “Office Readiness,” an exclusive feature in Zoho People that is designed to facilitate office work and make it as easy and safe as possible for your employees. Office Readiness has three forms that cover:

• How ready your worksite is for the transition

• If your office work procedures fit official safety guidelines

• How prepared your office and employees are for visitors

These forms will help you collect the data required for assessing whether or not you are ready to transition back to the office and how to do so safely. Here’s how they work:

• Work Premises 

This first form will be especially useful if your organization has offices at different locations. Filling it out will help you ensure that each of your work locations is ready to accommodate your employees.

As the Zoho People Admin, you will be able to register all the necessary details, including the building name, location, and maximum occupancy for each location. It will also allow you to designate the Premises Incharge. Any requests that your employees make to work in a particular location can be sent to the Premises Incharge for approval.

• Work from Office

This is a request form that has to be submitted by employees who wish to work from the office. Details about the work location, worksite, what day they will start and end office work, and their mode of transport should be filled in by your employees.

For the mode of transport, they can choose either “Public vehicle,” “Alone in self-driven car,” or “Carpooling.” As an admin, you can configure the approval settings to auto-reject employee requests that have Carpooling, Public vehicle, or both. Likewise, this form can also be associated with the Employee Health Status form, which is a short survey designed to inform you about every employee’s health status. You can require employees to submit the health status form at least once in the 15 days before the requested date of entry.

• Visitor at Office

This form can be filled out by your employees to request entry on behalf of outside visitors for a single day. Details such as the name of the visitor, their contact number, worksite, and reason for visiting have to be submitted by your employees. This form is designed to make sure that outside personnel don’t visit your office without suitable permission.

The Office Readiness feature in Zoho People will help your organization restart operations safely by collecting all the required information from employees. Approvals can be configured to send the requests to the Reporting Manager and Premises Incharge. By using the employee health status form as well, you can be sure of your employee’s health status before allowing them to work from the office, which greatly reduces the risk of COVID-19 infection. Notifications can be enabled to inform your employees about the status of their requests. Learn more about how to use our Office Readiness feature!

Give this feature a try and let us know how this feature has helped your organization to manage work from office requests from employees in the comments section below. Have questions? Feel free to drop a mail to support@zohopeople.com.