Workday has announced a COVID-19 Vaccine Management Solution to support Multinationals as their employees return to work. The solution strengthens the Workday Return to Workplace, which provides functionality and analytics for firms to return employees to offices. Organisations cannot afford to leave it to governments to manage and track the vaccinations of their employees. They need to have some oversight to ensure the safety of their wider employee base. Two recent studies have shown that immunity from the virus after infection can last for as long as eight months, it might last longer. It is not yet known for those employees receiving the vaccine how long the vaccination is effective for.
As people return to the workplace, organisations will need to closely track employees health. If they don’t, they risk a sudden outbreak that may decimate staff in a single location. This could lead to a loss in production as a swathe of people are forced to self-isolate.
Organisations, where travel is important, will also need to ensure that vaccinations are up to date and meet the travel requirements of countries the employee’s visit. Barbry McGann, Executive Director, Office of CHRO Solution Marketing noted in a recent blog: “Ensuring employees are vaccinated against COVID-19, or even facilitating those vaccinations, will provide much-needed protection against virus transmission and help organizations ensure the health and safety of remote and on-site workers.”
Workday Vaccine management solution
To address this challenge, McGann believes that “Organizations worldwide are racing to create policies, processes, and programs for vaccine management, reporting, and distribution. “
To facilitate that the new Workday solution provides the building block for them to do so. Powered by Workday HCM organisations, it leverages functionality from across the Workday application suite:
- Workday Adaptive Planning: to provide scenario planning for different scenarios.
- Workday Prism Analytics: To report and analyse on employee health and COVID-19 initiatives.
- Workday Learning, Help, and Assistant: To enable communication to employees and case management of issues.
- Workday Extend: Will enable organisations to build additional functionality to solve organisation specific requirements.
The new solution appears to combine the above elements and also provides four specific features
Centralised control centre
Leveraging dashboards powered by Prism Analytics users can proactively manage vaccine programs, tracking immunization metrics such as vaccine availability, vaccination rate, and adherence. The dashboards will also reveal information about employee health, including status by infection type, job profile, location, region, and worker.
Scenario Planning tool
Users can model office space demands, personal protective equipment (PPE) needs, and workforce availability. Importantly they can plan vaccination programs to prioritise key workers. Organisations can ensure that those employees are ready to return to work quickly, with sufficient cover such that any outbreak has minimal impact.
Employee Communications
This includes features that enable two-way communication between the organisation and the employee. Employees can inform their employer if they are infected, self-isolating. Employers can rapidly inform employees of additional precautions or whether a planned return to work must be delayed.
Reporting
The solution also enables the organisation to provide reports to healthcare organisations about vaccination programs where appropriate. It can track both the vaccination dates, types of vaccine used and any data around infections and symptoms.
Pete Schlampp, executive vice president, product development, Workday commented: “As the core HR system for some of the world’s largest companies — and with a customer community representing more than 45 million workers — we’re in a unique position to help organizations navigate the changing world of work.
“We understand the complexity that comes with exploring the safest way to return to the workplace, which is why we’re doubling down on delivering innovative solutions like vaccine management that truly support customers’ evolving needs so that they’re prepared and focused on what matters most — their people.”
Enterprise Times What does this mean
Organisations are already leveraging the Workday solutions in place. McGann revealed three examples in her blog, two healthcare organisations and a technology company. Each organisation has its own approach as Ashley Goldsmith. Chief People Officer, Workday confirmed saying: “On the heels of one of the most challenging years, HR leaders are now working to address the many twists and turns of vaccine management and a safe return to work.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all as we look to scenario plan and adopt the right approaches to each of our office openings based on vaccine protocols and progress with vaccine distribution. Having this unified data where and when we need it is a key component in prioritizing our employees — our number one core value — and their well-being during such a critical time.”
Organisations leveraging Workday already could see huge benefits from implementing more of these features. If nothing else it will potentially manage and mitigate the risk from COVID-19. However, it is unclear whether this is a stand-alone solution or whether organisations have to already have all the products. If they don’t have Adaptive Planning, Prism Analytics and Workday Learning, and not all companies do, it could be expensive to deploy. Especially at a time where cost control is important.
