During the last few months many companies have moved their employees from office work environment to a work from home arrangement in an effort to slow down the spread of COVID-19.
Many organisations have been staying connected with and checking in on their employee’s emotional well-being, their social connectedness as well as their work environment by implementing CPC’s Work from Home Check In™ survey.
Client Profile
ComAp designs and manufactures control products for power generation and engine control, along with associated accessories and software. We’re leading the way in providing intelligent electronic control products and solutions that are highly flexible, intuitive, and scalable.
Continuous investment in our specialist global network enables us to maintain excellence in customer service, empowering our people and partners to deliver the highest standards of technical expertise, and local support to our customers across the world.
COVID-19 Challenge
Like most organisations across the world ComAp was impacted by the sudden onset of COVID 19 and as a result implemented a number of strategies to keep their people as safe as possible.
By March 16 2020 the majority of ComAp staff across Australia commenced working from home whilst the other APAC subsidiaries (China, India & Singapore) were already dealing with the pandemic in accordance with local requirements. The progress of the virus was also different in each country and as such ComAp needed to adapt accordingly.
Solution
Given the global locations of ComAp they needed:
A way to stay connected with employees throughout the pandemic
An ability to check in on people’s welfare no matter where they were located
The Centre for People and Culture (CPC) worked with ComAp to implement the Work From Home Check In™.
ComAp elected to run the survey on a weekly basis to continuously check in with their employees about their emotional and social well-being as well as their ability to continue to be productive.
The solution also needed to be highly flexible to meet the changing needs across various countries within COVID-19 pandemic.
Experience and results
Jo Minge, HR Business Partner from ComAp, shares her thoughts on the Work From Home Check In™ experience
Ease of Set-Up
1. Because the survey used email delivery, there was no complicated software set-up at our end, and we were able to provide the survey to our co- workers and their managers in China, India and Singapore, where it was very well received.
2. The Work from Home Check™ In data security and privacy information was provided by you automatically, ensuring we were able to quickly satisfy security and privacy requirements both here and at our head office in the Czech Republic.
Manager and Staff Feedback
3. Managers really appreciated the ease of use of the survey to monitor the welfare of their staff, including the colour indicator bars, the indicators of % movement from the previous survey and the ability to filter the survey to focus in on particular teams and locations, which they were able to pick up quite intuitively.
4. Staff appreciated that the survey was short, used simple communication methods and fast to complete.
Cultural Boundaries
5. It worked across cultural boundaries and we accordingly received a reasonably high response rate.
6. The word cloud was a really simple way to take the temperature of the group and by location; the key words from our teams over the six weeks provided a wonderful picture of what staff were thinking and feeling.
Connection and communication
7. We talk a lot in business about the importance of communication: in a situation like the pandemic, this is really put to the test. The Work from Home Check In™ provided a simple and effective additional channel to communicate and, as far as was possible, make sure of every worker’s welfare.
8. The free text provided an additional opportunity to communicate. This proved valuable in several ways, a practical example was when one of our Indian colleagues indicated that he struggled working at home due to lack of a printer. Management here in Australia was able authorise the purchase of an inexpensive inkjet printer for his use at home. We would not have known about this easily remedied issue if it was not for the Work from Home Check In™.