"Dovetail was an instrumental tool during the switch to remote working, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. During COVID-19 when HR staff went remote, Dovetail was utilized much heavier (than before), and even became a main tool that we used for the unfortunate reduction in force process we had. It helped get those employees who were impacted their answers quickly and documented."
Tina Aquilini-Batten, HR Operations Manager at Tower Health
Are you developing strategies to protect and communicate with your employees as they return to the workplace? Has your HR Services team recently become a remote working team? Do they have the right tools in place to carry out their activities effectively? And, as an HR leader, do you have the Reporting & Analytics technology in place to ensure you can manage your team’s performance?
If you’re managing HR services using outdated technology, such as spreadsheet trackers and a shared inbox, it’s likely the transition to remote work has not been smooth sailing. All the usual pain points, such as losing track of employee cases, lack of workload visibility, and the time-consuming collation of data for reporting, are all exacerbated when taking your team remote, that is, unless you have the right Cloud-based tools in place.
Tools like HR Case Management, Employee Portal, HR Knowledge Management and HR Reporting & Analytics include features and benefits that enable HR teams to effortlessly make the transition to home working.
Read below to discover 5 reasons why HR Services technology can help your teams perform better in a remote working environment:
1. HR Cloud-based SaaS Technology Ensures Remote Teams Can Work Anytime, Anywhere
A key reason why Dovetail customers have been able to seamlessly move to remote working is that Dovetail applications are cloud-based, which means users can connect to Dovetail anytime, anywhere.
That means from the moment a team moves from office-based work to home-based work, they are ready to go.
Other advantages of cloud-based technology include an easy and fast set up (can be completed in as little as 2 weeks), as well as regular, automatic upgrades to the software - which means your organization will always be on the latest version of Dovetail and you’ll never have the hassle of running time-consuming technology projects.
2. HR Reporting & Smart Analytics Mean You Can Manage Your Remote Team’s Performance
Managing a team is complex at the best of times. If your team is working remotely, it can be difficult to gain visibility on team workload, productivity and performance.
Dovetail’s Reporting, Dashboards and Analytics capabilities open up the possibility for you to pull together all the management information concerning your HR team tasks, as well as KPIs, such as Total Number of Cases Open/ Closed by Individual, and service indicators, such as Average Case Handle Time. Using this analysis you can generate insights that help you monitor and guide your team, ensuring they have the right feedback to perform at their best.
3. Advanced Case Tracking Capabilities Mean You and Your Team Will Never Lose Sight of Employee Questions Again
“With a Shared Inbox we ran into issues when people were out and we’re trying to get into their work. It was felt that an HR case management system was 'a natural evolution' from a shared inbox solution.”
Suzanne (Keller) Smith, Senior Director of HR Operations, Vizient
Issues like the one faced by Suzanne (above), are only going to become more frequent and perhaps more serious when your team is working from home, when face-to-face communication is no longer possible. And leaving a post-it note message on your colleague’s desk while they're on a break, is no longer an option.
Also, the use of a shared inbox and spreadsheets to track employee cases almost always leads to cases going missing. Coupled with a lack of case visibility, this causes inefficiency in HR operations, and can negatively impact service quality, which in turn, can lead to a lower level of employee satisfaction. Case Management and other HR Services technology helps resolve these potential pain points. For example, Dovetail’s HR Case Management solution, with automated email-to-case creation, advanced tracking functionality and robust reporting capabilities, ensures your HR service teams never lose track of a case.
In addition, in the new pandemic-induced world we live in today, you have the option to track the COVID-19 health status of your employees across your entire workforce. Click here to view Dovetail Check Track Trace to find out more.
There are benefits for employees too, as they appreciate having a case number assigned to their employee question, making it easier to track their case. The result is employees feel more in control, as they know they can check the status of their inquiry without having to contact HR.
4. HR Knowledge Management Capabilities Enable Team Members to Be More Self-Reliant
“The fact that we could learn from past disasters and leverage previous Knowledge content, rather than create it from scratch, has been a great thing to be able to do, and has enabled us to be agile when time is of the essence. I hope to never see another crisis like this again, but I know if I do, we’ve got the structure in place and our knowledge base enables us to be a lot smarter and faster about managing and supporting our employees during a crisis.”
Krissy Murdock, Director of HR Shared Services, Memorial Hermann Health System
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a disaster for many businesses of all sizes. And these same businesses are responding by mitigating its impact, firefighting and resolving adverse problems as they go along. However, this means companies are generating a wealth of knowledge in how to deal with future pandemics, and disasters in general. By capturing this knowledge, organizations can access not only during this pandemic but also when future disasters occur.
As you and your team resolve and document solutions to complex employee questions, you can store this information in an HR Knowledge Management database (accessible to you and your team at any time of the day and from anywhere they are located).
HR team members working remotely will find the Knowledge Base enables them to be more self reliant, as they are able to access and find the right answers to employee questions, without having to request assistance from others.
5. Collaboration Features Enable Remote Teams to Work Together Effectively to Resolve Employee Questions
If you’re using a shared inbox and spreadsheet trackers to manage your employee cases, then collaborating with colleagues to resolve employee questions, inquiries and requests, can be time consuming and cumbersome, and that’s even before you consider the lack of face-to-face communication working remotely entails.
Dovetail’s HR Case Management platform with collaboration tools such Team Queues, Child Cases and Automated Workflow makes it easier for HR team members to communicate and collaborate with each other to resolve employee questions, inquiries and requests, while working remotely. It means you and your team don’t have to email or leave voicemails for colleagues in order to get the information needed to resolve cases. As a result, teams can work just as effectively from home, as they would in the office.
Conclusion
The remote working trend accelerated exponentially due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a consequence, companies of all sizes need to have the right tools and systems in place to ensure their teams can be effective while working remotely.
As managers of HR services, you will want to take care of your team, but also maintain high levels of individual and team performance, in order that the organization's employees continue to receive a high quality service experience.
By implementing Dovetail HR Services technology, with its advanced features, such as Smart Reporting & Dashboards, Case Tracking, HR Knowledge Base and collaboration functionality, you will have the right tools in place to manage your remote working team, while helping them to perform at their best.
