According to a recent survey, more than 90% of employees want to return to the office at least one day a week. Is your business ready for life after lockdown?

What does an office look like? Movies and TV are a good place to start. From the typing pools of The Apartment, to the corner offices of Mad Men and the glass walled meeting rooms of Call My Agent, the office has evolved in step with the working culture of the day.

From 1960s New York to 2015 Paris, all these spaces had one thing in common. They were the stage on which our professional lives unfurled and where we gathered to collaborate on projects and celebrate their success. Even with the rise of remote working, the office was a second home, our colleagues a second family. 

COVID-19, of course, has torn up the script. Nobody really knows what the workplace looks like anymore. 

But it is a powerful reminder of how HR teams are now center stage, preparing for the physical and psychological realities of office life once lockdowns ease and people return to meeting rooms, corridors, kitchens and other shared spaces.   

Data under the spotlight
It won’t be easy. The most dangerous way to approach the disruption caused by the pandemic is to think about it as a yearlong event. In reality, it has propelled businesses half a decade into the future with quarterly cycles crammed into weeks, sometimes even days. From lockdown to lockdown, HR leaders have been forced into tactical decisions that may be effective from one crisis to the next but are difficult to assemble into a long-term plan. 

The pandemic also exposed the limitations of existing HR workflows and systems. All too often, HR lacked the data and insights to manage remote employees or staff on furlough. That’s hardly surprising. Historically HR systems were organised around static events in the employee lifecycle:  hiring and onboarding, performance, training and exiting the business. Almost no one was prepared to report on health status before entry to work sites.  No wonder data is often out of date or incomplete when the status of an employee has so many daily touchpoints from their location and health, to the security software on their home office laptop and wireless router. 

By the measure of today’s fluid, hybrid workplace, this approach feels out of date, even broken. Especially when employees now spend so much time away from the office and their well-being is harder to monitor. It also puts additional strain on employer-employee relationships. With ‘duty of care’ processes under the spotlight like never before, it only needs one small misstep to alienate an anxious employee. 

Above all, it is a telling reminder that in many organisations, Operations, Marketing and IT have already benefited from ‘digital transformation’ of their systems and workflows.  If we really care about employees, why are HR systems so out of date by comparison?

How do HR teams become strategic business partners?
The good news is that technology has caught up with the ambition of today’s HR leaders and puts them front and center of digital transformation strategies in the wake of the pandemic. A popular example, in recent years, is  a flavour of cloud computing known as iPaaS (integration platform as a service). Put simply, iPaaS connects previously fragmented legacy business systems, combining data from many sources. This enables the seamless integration of workflows that were previously isolated and owned by different parts of the organisation. The industry-leading iPaaS solutions also allow non-technical HR staff to build user-friendly apps that support employees as lockdowns ease and they gradually return to a blend of office and remote working.  

From technology customer, to technology leader
This flexible approach to data and workflows also makes the businesses more resilient and adaptable to the future. On the one hand this includes the automation of core HR processes, on the other, it opens the door to more complex, workflows that meet the needs of the post-pandemic workplace. 

With the right iPaaS platform, HR teams can build and automate such workflows using simple, low-code interfaces and reusable components. For example, businesses could deploy of ‘edge’ technologies based on facial recognition and thermo sensors that monitor movement around the office. With employee consent, a workflow based on these internal ‘track and trace’ systems would not only protect the individual, it may also excuse the business from future lockdowns. Especially if it can prove to the authorities that it has the protocols and reporting systems in place to keep the office open safely. 

This low-code approach also supports the creation of user-friendly apps assembled from pre-built components. This means that HR employees, no longer rely on developers to create applications which deliver engaging employee experiences. For instance, a daily ‘how are you feeling’ questionnaire, or a training app that automates the entire onboarding experience.  

It all contributes to a more  seamless experience for employees from hiring and onboarding, to training in new technologies that boost productivity in the digital workspace. This self-service approach to workflow and app production also reduces the resource burden on other teams, especially IT, Innovation and Operations. s. 

Above all, it means that HR can take a more prominent role in digital transformation programs. No longer technology customers, they become technology leaders, using HR workflows and apps to drive innovation across the organization. At the human level, this is fundamental to the physical and psychological wellbeing of employees.  From a business perspective it is equally critical where employee retention and productivity matter more than ever to business success. Having proved themselves at the front-line of the business during the challenging months of the COVID-19 pandemic, heads of HR have the experience—and now the tools—to take the leadership role they rightly deserve.