THE PANDEMIC IS CHANGING THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT – BUT HOW EXACTLY?

If you take a look at current newspapers and magazines, it is noticeable that two major themes form a common thread through the newspaper industry. On one side Corona itself: infection rates, contagiousness, risk areas. On the other side: the world of work. With the direct effects of the pandemic: reduced hours, economic forecasts, and home office. And then we look ahead: how will we work in the future? What is the pandemic doing to the world of work? (Let’s ignore the daily politics for a moment.)

Corona and the world of work keep us busy – for good reasons. If you’re worried that I’m going to open another of the many oracles about how we will continue home office in the future, let me reassure you. I am concerned with a few aspects that have received little public attention. Let’s raise the curtain on my five theses on the future of work.

Thesis 1: Part of the work-life blending will remain

Or in other words: office workers get a taste for home office. A matter of course? I don’t think so. Like many of you, I first started regular home office in March. Like me, did you have to learn this way of working first? It’s not like we didn’t already know Skype, Zoom, and Teams. But now, these tools suddenly became the central focus of life, the place of social contacts “at work”. It’s fascinating that the work continued well. That was “phase 1.” Then came “phase 2”: one recognized the limits of on-screen communication. Attended webinars, after which one wondered about this new word “over-communication”. And then “phase 3”: the longing for personal meetings. And when you have one, you somehow swear to the advantages of working on site.

But with all this, you may have forgotten that there has also been a positive adjustment to the new (office) working world. That you have just had lunch with your partner, ordered in lunch, or went out to eat. That you could just pick up the children from school and help out without having to drive half an hour. My thesis for “phase 4” post-Corona: we will try out what it is like to work primarily in the office again. And then realize how many advantages the “mixed life” at home had. To make clear to us that work-life blending is not only “dissolving boundaries” but can also mean quality of life. Which, after Corona, we probably do not want to give up completely but rather partially preserve. For example, by continuing to work from home a few days a week – and combining the best of both worlds.

Thesis 2: Our skill in the use of working time will increase

Our what? Yes, I would describe our ability to organize our own working time as a special skill. By the way, at times a very demanding one. Or have you not yet caught yourself working directly on something that you had in your mailbox in the morning. And then the next one and the next one until in the evening, you asked yourself why you spent all day ignoring the really important topics? Avoiding this is the ability to prioritize your own tasks.

A further (work organization) skill: the ability to identify which means are most effective in achieving a goal and in which situation. That happened pre-Corona, too. Do I continue to work on the topic alone, do I ask a colleague for advice, or do I call a meeting? My thesis: in the long term, there will be an extra dimension to this methodological skill. Namely around this question: do I go to the office today, clarify a few things personally, have a few (physical) meetings, and “socialize”? Or do I stay at home, maybe attend a meeting or two, take time to concentrate on some tasks, and use the flexibility of work-life blending (see above)? How much do I switch between these two modes? It is this skill that can be put to good use – and that is necessary to make the much-cited “brave new home office world” a win-win situation for both employees and companies.

Thesis 3: The flexibility gap between office work and industrial work is getting wider

A wide gap has already opened up in the world of work. On the one hand, office work – for decades with flexitime and trust-based working hours as standard. With new-work, creative work on unusual chairs, table football, sabbaticals, star chefs in the company restaurant, and whatever else the heart desires. (Okay, I’m exaggerating, but you know what I mean.) On the other hand, the commercial sector. With shift work, possibly night shifts, work on public holidays and weekends, dictated working hours, and the possibility to calculate today which shift I will work on my last working day.

According to the German Working Time Report BAUA in 2016, flexible working hours are almost completely ignored in the industrial sector. And now this: Corona also allows the new-work hipsters to work from home, from any (of course, impeccably cleanly run) café, at any time, not just once in a while, but every day. While employees in production, logistics, and services are exposed to a (hopefully limited) risk of infection in factory and warehouse buildings and continue to slave away. Something’s wrong? Sort of. Let’s move swiftly on to the next thesis.

Thesis 4: The pressure for flexible weekly working hours in shift work is increasing

Okay, not really a new topic. A recurring element in collective bargaining agreements in the chemical, metal, and electrical industries is the possibility of reducing weekly working hours. Which makes these industries more attractive to workers. So it’s a relic from pre-Corona times? Not really. The short-time working situation in many companies is stimulating the trade unions’ imagination as to whether working hours could be reduced under normal circumstances – permanently or temporarily, for everyone or for individual employees.

So which scenario is likely – in terms of Corona, the economy, and the world of work? Concerning Corona, that we have a sufficiently effective vaccine in the foreseeable future. For the economy, that under favorable circumstances, it will recover to the old level as quickly as it crashed in March (the so-called “V-Curve”). And for the world of work, that the issues of flexibilization should regain, or even exceed, a relevance at least as quickly as the pre-Corona relevance. So it’s time to think about how to deal with it – incidentally, this is a topic that many companies are indeed still dealing with, despite the pandemic.

Thesis 5: Classical shift work is put to the test even more

And now for my most challenging thesis. Admittedly one that has the highest hypothetical portion. Because it requires us to systematically rethink a few things in shift work. And who likes doing that? A word of warning – I will now take you on a little mathematical/logical digression. And ask: why do we actually have shift work?

First of all, because there are areas where we have to plan working hours in advance. In production, for example, because machines and plants should be used to their fullest possible capacity. So far, so good. Nevertheless, here’s my challenge. Let’s say you need an extra shift on Saturday – not an uncommon situation in production plants. Is there a reason why all employees are called in at 6 a.m. and then the machines are started up? Or would it be just as good to start at 7 or 8 a.m. if, despite everything, the same working hours and production volume were to remain the same? And what if you were to leave it up to the employees to decide whether to start at 6, 7 or 8 a.m. on Saturday – to introduce “coordinated flexitime” for Saturday, so to speak?

Another example, this time from logistics: many distribution centers have target figures for the daily distribution volumes that have to be achieved. And plan with a personnel availability that allows them to achieve the target quantity in the daily flow of goods via goods received, order picking, goods issued, etc. This is done by enlisting employees for shifts. For example, the early shift with fixed starting times (e.g. 6 a.m.), or even staggered but predefined starting times. In my experience, an approach that is hardly ever questioned. But how about leaving it up to the employees to decide who starts work at what time? I mean within guidelines, of course. For example, that certain minimum staffing levels must be met from 6 a.m. onwards, that the start of work is coordinated by the employees themselves, and that a specified minimum work capacity is maintained. However, none of these stipulations is a real argument against a minimum degree of working time autonomy.

You see the basic principle: sometimes a little “flexitime in shift work” is possible after all. You just have to take the trouble to look more closely and be prepared to grant some degrees of freedom.

How do you challenge shift work?

In order for infection control to be successful, it has to be conducted digitally. Why so? With the coronavirus restrictions easing, the return of employees back to the office and the restart of production in many sectors of the economy, occupational safety and infection control are perhaps more urgent than ever before. Accordingly, companies must now act wisely and implement health protection requirements. According to the SARS-CoV-2 occupational safety standard published by the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, employers must ensure, among other things, that employees continue to keep their distance in order to keep the reproduction rate of the SARS-CoV-2 virus below the critical 1.0 mark. If they cannot avoid this, appropriate documentation of employee contacts is extremely helpful. Not only can digital solutions help to limit the possible transmission paths of the virus, but also to track cases of infection and ensure the timely isolation of any suspected cases – all with the aim of possibly avoiding major plant closures.

Contact Tracing: Tracking chains of infection

In the context of the gradual re-opening of schools, kindergartens, restaurants, leisure facilities, etc., health authorities are making the effort to trace transmission chains, e.g. in the case of superspreading events. The aim is to further contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevent a second wave. In this so-called “contact tracing”, people who come into close contact to an infected person are identified and can be quarantined. Sick people, in turn, go into isolation. This allows the chain of infection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to be interrupted.

Contact tracing is not only helpful in public life, but also at work – especially where employees cannot work from home, as is the case with industrial employees in production and logistics, for example. In principle, such companies can try to contain the risk of infection by separating employees into teams and shift groups. These groups will form the basis of which assumptions about employee contacts are ultimately made. If there is a case of infection in a particular shift group, the company can isolate these employees and send them home, possibly avoiding major plant closures.

The pitfalls of manual contact tracing in the work environment

However, there are many companies where contact between colleagues from different team or shift groups is unavoidable, e.g. during certain work processes, in which case employee contacts may no longer be as precisely defined. The fact that the chains of infection are sometimes difficult to trace by health authorities, is demonstrated by examples from meat plants and logistics in recent weeks. Manually recording who was in contact with whom is not only slow and laborious, but also extremely error-prone, as many contacts cannot be traced back exactly and thus cannot be identified. This, in turn, increases the risk of a company closing down.

This is one of the reasons why mobile apps for digital contact tracing are currently under intense discussion. Tracing apps use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to record who is in the vicinity of their users. If someone reports as infected after a confirmed test result, all contact persons, who have also installed the app, receive a notification. British researchers have calculated that digital contact tracing via smartphones could help contain the current SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and avoid major lockdowns. COVID-19 apps have already been introduced in Austria, Norway, China, USA and Germany.

Yet, mobile apps for corporate infection protection are controversial, just like they are in public places. Firstly, the application must be installed on the smartphone. This is difficult if employees do not have a company mobile phone, as employers cannot force the installation of an app for corporate infection protection on private mobile phones. Furthermore, contact tracing apps record the data anonymously, thus it cannot be resolved by name which employee was in contact with whom. However, this is urgently necessary for the protection against infection. Ultimately, companies must know the names of those who may be infected in order to prove chains of infection to the health authorities and implement suitable quarantine measures. Those who take a differentiated approach here, have a clear advantage in order not to have to send several shift groups home at the same time or to have to close down entire companies.

CoronaTracer: developed for digital contact tracing in the workplace

At the workplace, so-called “CoronaTracers” are suitable. INFORM has introduced these “CoronaTracers” onto the market together with SafeDrivePod and they function similarly to app solutions. CoronaTracers are small, portable, maintenance-free devices, which anonymously and on the basis of BLE, record contacts between employees who came closer than about 6 feet – limited to the working hours. Employees can wear the CoronaTracers around their necks like employee ID cards. The recording is anonymous and conforms to data protection regulations.

If an infection occurs, the data of the CoronaTracer of the respective employee can be read out. At a trustworthy location in the company, such as the human resources department, the mapping between the various device IDs and the employees is stored so that the contact persons can be resolved. Targeted measures can then be initiated depending on the intensity of contact, and personnel deployment plans can be updated. By using CoronaTracers, companies can increase transparency to the health authorities and, in the event of an infection, possibly avoid having to send large numbers of employees home or to close down parts of companies or the entire company. In addition, good contact tracing not only demonstrates the employer’s duty of care but can also contribute to a greater sense of security among the workforce.

Would you like to know how you can efficiently implement operational contact tracing? Please feel free to contact us.

In one way or another, the last few weeks have been very challenging for all of us and it seems as if the challenges change every week. Consequently, many companies must implement adjustment measures in weekly cycles. Many companies had to adjust their personnel capacities in the first weeks of the “pandemic period” – so for many companies this meant short-time working. Currently, the focus is on re-opening measures and restarting production and other sectors of the economy. Of course, considering the risks and warnings of the virologists.

Health and safety at work and organization of working time

Companies must proceed with caution and implement health protection requirements specified by each state. Concerning the organization of working time, health and safety legislation provides guidance, particularly for the following measures:

• Shift schedules should be created in such a way that where possible the same people work on shifts together.
• Wherever possible, the start and end of work should be arranged in such a way as to avoid gatherings of people e.g. in changing rooms or at the time recording systems.
• Break times should be allocated at different times to reduce the occupancy density e.g. in break rooms.

All these requirements directly affect workforce management. In general, companies aim to contain the spread of the virus by keeping individual teams or shift groups among themselves and separating them from other teams and groups. This can also be achieved by changing shift models. For instance, by staggering shift start times, contact between the employees can be avoided. It is also possible to extend shifts where much work remains to be done.

Digital implementation possibilities

These are intrinsic tasks of staff scheduling. Shift schedule adjustments, scheduling of lunch breaks as well as changes to teaming structures can easily be implemented and tracked digitally. There is also the possibility of mobile time recording (e.g. via smartphones) which helps to avoid clashes at time recording terminals.

But that’s not necessarily all it takes. Companies must ensure that they keep track of suspected and infected cases and protect employees from infections as good as possible. This can be done in ways that comply with data protection and privacy regulations as e.g. mandated by the GDPR.

Central to infection protection is the tracing of contact persons. Companies could e.g. assume that the contacts of a given employee are exactly the colleagues in his/her shift group of team – if those become separated as described above. However, the question arises if contact tracing can be made more specific, by tracing the effective contacts. This can be done using CoronaTracers. Data from CoronaTracers can be used in order to take quarantine measures. If data is automatically transferred to the workforce management tool, it can be easily verified that quarantine periods of affected groups are really observed.

Important functionalities of a workforce management tool in times of corona:

• The registration of employees who belong to groups at risk and blocking of those employees from critical work assignments.
• Tracing of infections and suspicions in a way that is compliant with data protection and privacy requirements.
• The possibility of blocking employees of the relevant teams as part of the quarantine measures.
• Defining a maximum staffing per work area to implement minimum distances in work areas.
• Staffing of all work areas with at least one person that is trained on infection prevention measures.

Other specific measures may also apply, e.g. a limitation of carpooling to teams or shift groups or working time restrictions for employees who need to look after their children.

Workforce management tools for compliance with the protective measures

What are the advantages of such a mapping in a workforce management tool? An implementation of digital infection protection as an integral part of workforce management allows a consistency in data processing. Workforce management is the natural place where shift schedules, teams, working times and locations are stored – and it is precisely this data that is needed when implementing containment strategies. If features of a schedule contradict infection protection, a suitable workforce management tool can directly alert the planner, team, or department head by means of integrated rule violations. Ideally, this is directly visible in the planning tool and not only in side evaluations or numerous Excel sheets. This allows quarantine measures to be consistently maintained. Payroll-relevant topics, (e.g. government compensations for lockdown measures, reduced working hours or childcare) can be implemented as part of payroll integration.

Everyone should have realized by now that the virus will continue to challenge us and the way we work for some time to come. How are you tackling the new challenges?

Would you like to know how software can help you to implement the new challenges well, or do your challenges look completely different? Contact us.

During my childhood, I had the opportunity to watch my dad play a lot of chess matches. I was astonished by his mental speed and his ability to consider several moves at the same time. He used to study many chess players, but Bobby Fisher was his favorite. I thought it was impossible, almost magical to hear the “tic” and intensity of the chess clock when he played matches of 1, 2 or 5 minutes long. I couldn’t understand how he could process and anticipate his opponents’ moves in such a short time. He used to frequent chess cafes where he competed against other people. He also used to set up some matches at home with a couple of friends that shared the same passion. As time progressed, those meetings started to diminish, and my dad started to play less. During that period, there were some chess computer games, but even set to the highest level of difficulty, they couldn’t beat him in “ping pong matches”. However, this quickly changed …

It was in February 1996 when the challenge between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov was set up. At that time, Kasparov had won 11 straight world championships, and he seemed invincible. Kasparov won that series against Deep Blue by 4-2. Just one year later, more precisely, on May 11, 1997, the improved version of Deep Blue beat the champion 3½-2½. With a memory that duplicated its intercessor, it was capable of processing 200 million positions per second.

Similarly to chess, where we have 16 different pieces of 6 different types and almost an infinite number of variables, companies have to deal with roster planning complexity.  Their employees have different functions, but even in a same function, they face different restrictions and preferences. Imagine that one of your “knights” couldn’t move in an “L”, and can only do a limited “I”, or that the queen “would prefer” to move only in black or white squares like a bishop. The complexity would increase enormously.

Managing an endless number of variables

Work planners face these kinds of changes and individual restrictions on a daily basis. Planners must deal with an endless number of variables: employees that only work in certain shifts or time frames, that can only work certain days of the week or have particular restrictions for a particular day, who have different contracts with different time restrictions, that are capable of working in more than one function, etc. This sounds difficult, but if we consider that the planner is coping with a group of 300 employees with dynamic demands, this turns into a very complex task.

Just to explain this complexity in numbers, imagine that these 300 employees are rostered for 30 days. In a datasheet this gives us 9,000 cells to be filled. Even if you have a very simple shift model, for example: 4 shifts (Morning, midday, afternoon, night) and a Day Off shift, this results in (300×30)^5 different plans that the planner would principally explore. The result is 59049000000000000000 options – quite an impressive number that illustrates the complexity of this problem.

Limits of vertical thinking

The human mind uses a logic of vertical thinking to solve the challenge of shift building. Vertical solutions are based on the premise of existing knowledge, where we search for the best option at hand to solve the problem. The essence of the logic is, that when we make a decision, we need to have a justification and we base every decision in the principle of avoiding “mistakes”. This in chess, many times, is not the best option, where you could sacrifice pieces with the objective of achieving a major benefit. Due to the complexity that a roster plan has, it is practically impossible to program or “play” with the shifts in that manner.

Kasparov described this in a perfect way after his first match during the second challenge when Deep Blue made a move without an immediate material advantage; pushing a pawn to a position where it could be easily captured.

“It was a wonderful and extremely human move,” Kasparov noted, and this apparent humanness threw him for a loop. “I had played a lot of computers but had never experienced anything like this. I could feel — I could smell — a new kind of intelligence across the table.”, he explained in an interview for Time.

This seemingly “human” movement later proved to be a consequence of the huge processing capabilities of Deep Blue. The machine could anticipate a future material advantage produced by the sacrifice of the pawn that would only be perceptible several moves ahead. This is exactly what we would face with a workforce management optimizer, where sometimes some coverage on a particular day has to be sacrificed, or a day off is given without an apparent reason, all  to break a shift sequence to avoid having bigger coverage problems in the future.

Those who have manually managed rosters, no matter the “method” used, beginning from the last days and moving to the left, from the middle to the extremes, placing the restrictions beforehand and completing the shifts afterwards, or any other tactic, have all faced the same problems. The dynamic nature of the requirements and the difficulty behind them are so high that later changes to shifts result in suboptimal and subjective solutions, where we are prone to mistakes and even omissions of legal and union rules or employee preferences.

Reaching optimal solutions by anticipating

Magnus Carlsen, the youngest Chess Master in history, and the youngest to obtain the first position in the Elo rating system (13 and 19 years old), explains in an interview the reasons behind this. Whenever he competes, he can mentally analyze between 15 and 20 moves ahead, but he explains that the trick is his ability to evaluate the final results of the calculations and potential scenarios.

This skill of anticipation, of thinking and reaching globally optimal solutions, is basically what an advanced workforce management system with a powerful algorithm based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) can achieve. In contrast to Garry Kasparov, Bobby Fisher, or even the unique Magnus Carlsen, we don’t need extraordinary gifts and capacity to operate this system and achieve optimal results in a fraction of the time.

Closing Ideas…

AI applied to different industries is going to change the way we do things, and workforce management is not an exception. The days are numbered for manually managed rosters. The increasing demands of employees and the dynamism the different industries face, is too much for the human mind. The benefits behind this type of technology in terms of efficiency, life quality results, and improvements in the service delivered to clients, are notorious. Companies that do not view this as a competitive advantage will become obsolete.

What was designed to be an exchange of experiences about employee participation in workforce management quickly became an interesting round of experts with highly topical insights. 320 specialists from all over the world came together for the 10^th annual GroundStar User Conference in Berlin in order to discuss challenges and solution approaches in workforce management and resource allocation. Employee participation is a highly demanding and very diverse topic, even without considering the broad international perspectives from experts from all over the world.

The staff planners and supervisors quickly pointed out that employee participation can only succeed when the conflicting priorities of cost/productivity, quality and employee interests are considered. Especially service companies in the aviation industry are facing a highly competitive market environment in which employee participation is only possible within narrow economical parameters. Companies are confronted with economic constraints both on the sales market and the job market, for example when employees switch over to a competitor for a minimally higher income.

Which requests need to be considered?

Employees’ needs don’t always focus on monetary dimensions, but also on shaping one’s working hours: shift work will most likely not be accepted if it is not compatible with private needs. The attendees pointed out that private constraints often depend on stages of life, e.g. child care or nursing a relative. In essence, they are highly individual. What may be attractive to one employee may not meet the needs of others.

Other companies reported that they achieved a higher employee loyalty thanks to attractive reward and bonus models for long-term employees. However, they also mentioned that the wish for flexible working hours differs amongst the various generations of employees. The panelists agreed that especially younger employees have higher expectations towards a good work-life balance.

An interesting discussion evolved on how employee interests can be integrated into the company routine. Some panelists pointed out that employees’ wishes may be contradicting, e.g. when employees wish for a reduction of the weekly deployment factor while at the same time requesting shorter shifts. Participants also mentioned that employees will typically prefer reliable rosters published as early as possible (typically this implies a rather inflexible planning) while at the same time wanting the planning to be flexible and adjustable to private wishes at short notice.

The organization of working time can be an important competitive factor, as one participant explained who lost employees to a local competitor which offered a more attractive workweek structure, for example by guaranteeing weekends off.

How can employees get involved?

There was also a lively discussion on means that are used to realize employee participation. One participant described how his company implemented a methodology for shift and off-day preferencing and how, thanks to WorkforcePlus optimization technology, the rate of wish fulfillments rose significantly. Where denial of such requests leads to misalignment with personal needs and constraints, participants expected that employees would achieve a posteriori flexibility by shift swapping options.

Modern mobile applications enable employees to influence their working hours. With digital technology, the attendees hope to achieve easier roster creation as well as better staff retention, especially regarding the younger generations. Some participants dwelled on the idea of transferring and digitizing the entire scheduling process to their employees. One company reported on such a pilot project. However, all in all, the bottom line was that self-rostering hasn’t become a common practice yet.

What are the results of the discussion?

The discussion led to various insights:

• Generally, the pressure has risen to implement measures for higher employee participation. Many companies no longer ask if but how to implement employee participation.
• Employees’ needs are highly individual and are influenced by a company’s culture. The assessment of concrete measures is therefore only possible when taking the specific context and conditions into consideration.
• It is necessary to involve the employees in the implementation of employee participation and avoid one-sided strains. Employee representatives should be involved early on, even if the process of digitization implies a stronger individual involvement of each employee.
• The complex mutual interdependencies within different solution directions must be taken into consideration. Discussions should focus on realistic and balanced solutions. Expectations should be moderated, aiming at accomplishing win-win-situations for everybody involved.
• In the fight for talent, even companies in the low-wage sector are forced to pay competitive salaries. However, a pay structure at or above market standards can only be achieved at a sufficient level of working time productivity. Thus companies are forced to find a balance between productivity considerations and employee interests.
• Increasing employee participation, individualization and flexibilization inevitably increase the level of complexity. Modern technology and digitization help to master this complexity and avoid additional strain for the planner.

Thanks to vivid participation and high expertise, we experienced an insightful discussion. We’d like to thank all participants and look forward to staying in touch about these interesting topics.