Operational Planning
Collaborate with different business leaders and department heads. There’s a strong likelihood you’re already doing this: A Gartner study conducted in April found that executive management teams aremeeting two to three times a week, if not daily, in response to COVID-19. As part of thiscollaboration, business leaders must work through various forecasts to compare different options for bringing their team members back to the office, and how it impacts workplace capacity and productivity.
Recognize that every location is different. Assess each location on its own merit. One approach is a community safety measure score based on infection rates and trends, with every site receiving a readiness score based on its level of preparation (with such factors as having enough PPE, or personal protection equipment, on site). Empower local leaders to play a significant role in determining how their workforce makes its return.
Compare what-if scenarios across regions, districts, and locations. Reopening means different things to different businesses. Restaurants, for example, have to be calculated and thoughtful about what reopening will mean for their supply chains, food inventory, location, traffic, and employees. This requiresflexible scenario planning, especially when Gartner found thatthree-fifths of senior finance leadersare accounting for a second wave of disease outbreak in their scenario planning.
Consider your customers. With restricted traffic or location capacity, what does this mean for generated revenue? For one Workday Adaptive Planning customer in higher education, returning to work means students returning to school. This means they’re actively:
Running scenariosaround the possibility of a lower enrollment than expected, including lower room and board revenue, and reduced tuition and fees.
Evaluating financial implications of potentially continuing or even expanding online learning in the fall.
Calculating additional costs for enhanced cleaning and sanitation protocols in classrooms and other facilities.
Driving forecast revisions that will guide longer-term decisions for the future, such as planning for large capital improvement projects, graduate school course degree expansion, academic hiring, or research initiatives.
Workforce Planning
Model how employees will return. Some organizations may plan for all workers to return to their primary workplace at once. Many, like Workday, plan a phased-in approach–but what’s critical is determining who returns at which point. One option is to first identify which job roles are considered essential for operating locations when workers are on site, and combine that data with insights into which employees believe they need to return (their home situation may not be conducive to work) or simply want to return (they prefer to work around colleagues). This brings me to the next point:
Build workforce sentiment into your decision making. In determining your return strategies, you and your leadership will need to factor in workers’ preferences, sentiments, and concerns. At Workday, our HR team hosts “Feedback Fridays,” which uses ourBest Workday Surveyto measure and track employee sentiment. Now is the perfect time to implement this feature in your own environment. But no matter how you go about it, partner with HR to ensure whatever action you take aligns with employee readiness.
Determine what testing, if any, you will implement. Will you handle health screenings in-house or will you direct employees to area providers for testing or other services? Note how this may vary by location (some states or countries may have different guidelines or requirements than others).
策划如何员工福利需要另一个星球ve or change. Consider the impact of potential changes to health coverage, sick leave, PTO, etc.
Factor in flexibility. Any decision should have flexibility baked in and allow for employees to opt-in (or out)–not only because of the chance of a second wave, but for the well-being and security of your staff.PwC found that 54% of CFOsplan to make remote work a permanent option.
Use Every Tool You Have
Regardless of what your return-to-workplanningprocess looks like, I encourage you to use the powerful tools already at your disposal. Workday customers certainly are: Since the pandemic began, companies have increased their planning efforts to achieve greater agility and resilience in this environment of extraordinary disruption. In fact, in just one week in March, Workday Adaptive Planning customers created 30 times more forecasts and scenarios than usual. And建模and recalibrating has increased by 15 times on average.
Harness all the technology and data available to you to help you clarify what the future holds, and to marshal all your resources to meet it with confidence, respond to disruptions with agility, and seize opportunities when they emerge. Do this, and it can help increase your chances of joining those finance leaders surveyed in June by PwC, 72% of whom said they believe they stand to gainbetter resiliency and agilitycoming out of the current situation.
Watch the on-demand webinar, “How to Recalibrate and Plan for the New Normal.”