Kongsberg Digital implements the office logistics management tool KONCIV OFFICE BOOKING to make the rotation of teams and transition back to the office automated and efficient.
With COVID-19 starting to spread globally at the beginning of 2020 and countries around the globe introducing curfews, quarantine, and other measures to reduce the spread of the virus, companies with a global presence were thrown into a coordination nightmare: Suddenly HR departments were challenged with having to implement local policies for workplace arrangements on a day to day basis, not knowing what would happen tomorrow and in which country.
"Even though we have defined processes for handling an outbreak of a global pandemic, COVID-19 was really our first global-scale test of how we as an organization responded to the rapid changes in policies that had to be implemented. Having to keep an organization with offices around the globe informed about the pandemic as well as continuously evaluating our next steps were challenging, but I am proud that we as an organization were able to swiftly adapt to a whole new way of working with "home office" being the most prominent change", says Linn Johnsen-Haglund, SVP for People and Culture in Kongsberg Digital.
A new challenge arises
While people are "safely stranded" at home and starting to adjust to the new way of working, offices will eventually start reopening as COVID-19 becomes more and more retained. For most companies, the return to work will be handled in a staged approach.
"At Kongsberg Digital we currently have 50% of our employees working from home. When summer ends we will start gradually phasing employees back to the office. So now we face a new challenge: how do we coordinate the transition of people back to the office on a global scale and how are we future-proofing that we have systems in place in the short and long term for managing people, potentially at home and at the office? Initially, we were planning of managing it all in Excel, but we were fortunate to see what the KONCIV team built for office management and it is exactly the tool we need. We will now start to gradually introduce the tool.", continuous Linn.
...we were fortunate to see what the KONCIV team built for office management and it is exactly the tool we need...
KONCIV Office Booking - People coordination as a service
As part of the COVID-19 pandemic, the KONCIV team spent time on evaluating how the platform could be tweaked to support organizations in the process of phasing employees back to the office while ensuring an efficient office logistics management process. The office rotation tool allows for the efficient management of who is at the office, who is working remotely and makes the transition into a new and more agile way of working easier in the aftermath of this pandemic.
"We believe that this pandemic has taught companies that "old ways" of manually managing the work schedule and workplace of employees is not necessarily the most efficient. The way large corporations have been able to successfully and efficiently deliver results despite the pandemic is proof that more flexible work arrangements could work quite well. However, one cannot disregard the positive effects of meeting your colleagues outside of Teams, Skype, appear.in, or other digital collaboration tools. That is why we created an office rotation tool that will allow companies to define office availability, plan who is coming to work each day, and, maybe most importantly, allow employees themselves to book time slots at the office when they are required or want to come in. This is obviously an efficient tool when we are in a state of emergency, but we think it will also make the logistics of office management significantly better in the new normal as well", says Henrik Heggland, Managing Director of KONCIV.
Social media...
"Spreadsheets will never cut the mustard and large organizations will certainly need a solution like this to manage workforce. Very cool and impressive how quickly this was built. Shows the power of a good software platform.", says Kongsberg Digital`s CTO, Christian Møller in this post.