ServiceNow, a leading digital workflow company that makes work, work better for people, has released ServiceNow Safe Workplace, a four-app suite and dashboard designed to help companies manage the essential steps for returning employees to the workplace and support everyone’s health and safety.
Immediately available on servicenow.com/safeworkplace, the Safe Workplace app suite is powered by the Now Platform.
“Let’s get the world healthy, safe and back to the workplace,” said Bill McDermott, ServiceNow CEO. “ServiceNow is helping companies manage the complex workflows required to keep employees healthy and workplaces safe. The ServiceNow Safe Workplace app suite and dashboard are engineered to make returning to the workplace work for everyone.”
ServiceNow Safe Workplace Apps and Dashboard
ServiceNow has expanded its employee workflow portfolio with the ServiceNow Safe Workplace app suite. Powered by the Now Platform, the suite includes four new apps and a dashboard that help companies assess both their workforce and workplace readiness as they prepare for employees to return to the workplace.
“In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, business transformation is happening before our eyes and organisations are relying on technology to enable employees and digitise processes,” said Josh Bersin, Global Industry Analyst and Dean of the Josh Bersin Academy. “ServiceNow’s Safe Workplace app suite is exactly the kind of solution organisations need to effectively manage the return to the workplace and optimise employee experience.”
To support companies’ workforce readiness efforts led by Human Resources, IT, Legal and Workplace Services departments, ServiceNow has released the following apps:
• Employee Readiness Surveys: Helps organisations gauge their workforce’s level of preparedness to return to the workplace by presenting and capturing employee responses to a series of questions that address employees’ personal readiness for and level of interest in returning to the workplace. Based on employee responses, employers can determine the necessary and appropriate steps to help ensure a smooth and safe re-entry for employees.
• Employee Health Screening: Enables companies to screen employees before entering the workplace to ensure compliance with entry requirements such as temperature check and personal protective equipment (PPE) allowing employers to determine if it’s safe for the employee to enter the workplace. The app also provides a reporting dashboard to view trends by sites and record the return of employees into their facilities.
ServiceNow also released two new apps to support companies’ preparedness to bring employees back to the workplace:
• Workplace Safety Management: Allows facilities and workplace services managers to quickly configure clean and hygienic, socially distanced workspaces so that employees can safely return to the workplace. The app lets managers assign shifts so that employees occupy these workspaces for a specific amount of time and configure cleaning schedules at the end of each shift. Out-of-the-box reports and dashboards give managers a real-time view of both workspace reservations and reservation thresholds across floors, buildings and sites. Workplace managers also have a real-time view of all cleaning task status, including a full audit trail history.
• Workplace PPE Inventory Management: Helps organisations manage and monitor their PPE inventory needs to ensure the physical safety of their workforce. The app’s dashboard provides a comprehensive view of inventory by facility, as well as an aggregate look at the entire workplace and historical data on how equipment levels have changed over time. Inventory levels can be updated daily for accurate, real-time inventory management.
Using the power of the Now Platform, ServiceNow pulls together all of the data collected by these apps into a single view with its Safe Workplace Dashboard. Available at no charge, the dashboard provides visualisations for data collected by these apps, and will be overlaid with a map using aggregated public data on infection rates. This enables organisations to see what infections look like geographically and drill down into specific workplace locations. Sites are marked with indicators flagging a company’s ability to open and remain open based on workforce and workplace readiness.
“At Lincoln we have teams across the organisation working tirelessly to develop, communicate and execute a plan for returning our employees to the workplace,” said Lisa M. Buckingham, executive Vice President and chief people, place and brand officer for Lincoln Financial Group. “There is no margin for error when it comes to the health and safety of our employees and given the constantly changing circumstances and multitude of factors at play, technology solutions like those offered by ServiceNow are invaluable in effectively co-ordinating, monitoring and evaluating our plans and progress.”
Returning employees to the workplace requires careful planning, execution and agility on the part of organisations. Business functions across the enterprise – from IT and HR to Workplace Services and Legal – must work together seamlessly to create a safe and productive experience for all employees, whether they return to the workplace or continue to work from home. These are workflow problems. Complex, cross-functional workflows are critical to providing employees the services and experiences needed to do their jobs seamlessly and efficiently, no matter where they are.
ServiceNow’s comprehensive employee workflow products enable these and other experiences to happen simply and easily. For example, ServiceNow’s existing Targeted Campaigns capabilities can inform different groups of employees – such as employees located in specific geographies or in certain departments – of return to workplace plans, engage employees for feedback and initiate workflows to act on that feedback. Additionally, ServiceNow’s Lifecycle Event Engine can create workflows associated with the employee’s journey – like returning to the workplace, onboarding, transfers and leave of absences. Lifecycle Event’s capabilities can be used to automate processes spanning HR, IT, Workplace Services and other functions to support returning employees to the workplace seamlessly.
Organisations that are digitally transformed with digital workflows in place will be better-enabled to get back to work more efficiently, productively and safely. ServiceNow is committed to helping its customers manage through this pandemic and make going back to the workplace work for everyone.
Expanding on Emergency Response Apps
Today’s announcement builds upon ServiceNow’s March 16th introduction of a customer care program to support customers as they focus on maintaining business operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the March announcement, the company released four community apps that help government agencies and enterprises manage complex emergency response workflows. These apps are available at servicenow.com/crisisresponse for customers to access free of charge through September 30, 2020. Almost 6,000 installations have taken place to date.
Today ServiceNow also released updates to two of these apps to further support companies as they pivot to return their workforce to a traditional workplace. These updates include:
• Emergency Self Report: This app helps an employee notify their employer that they are self-quarantined and when the employee will return to the workplace, and provides workflow support for the employer. The app is now supported on Now Mobile so that employees can self report from their desktop or mobile device.
• Emergency Outreach: This app helps companies connect with employees to assess the impact. Employers can reach out by email to provide information and safety measures and request a response to confirm if employees are safe and where they are located. Employers can also leverage the ServiceNow Now Mobile App to send push notifications to employees via mobile to get response. ServiceNow has updated Emergency Outreach to integrate with other communications channels such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.
