Topia has added a Remote Work management solution to its Global Talent Mobility platform. Companies worldwide are faced with an increasingly disparate workforce. Topia solutions are already assisting with the challenges of global mobility.
However, there are also individuals who either want or need to work remotely from an office. For organisations, this raises various challenges. How do they administrate employees working remotely? Does the organisation know where employees are? How do they address the compliance challenges? These are the challenges that the new Remote Work Management solution aims to address.
The new solution is generally available in early 2022. Topia has already signed up multiple customers and should hit the ground running with the solution. Customers include high growth remote-first firms and multinational organisations with over 75,000 employees across more than 100 countries.
It has features that enable companies to create an end to end solution to manage remote working. This includes everything from remote working options to a request tool for employees who wish to work remotely through risk assessments and analytics.
Steve Black, Topia’s Chief Strategy Officer, commented, “Employees are demanding flexibility when it comes to where and how they work. These shifting preferences are creating real concerns for talent attraction, retention, and overall strategy. Leading companies want to offer more flexibility, but the lack of technology to manage this new workforce category has been a huge blocker to leveraging remote work at scale.”
What is Remote Work Management
The new solution leverages other components from the Topia platform and combines them with new features to deliver a complete package. The solution puts employees at the organisation’s heart but still ensures that the employer remains compliant.
Topia Remote Work management consists of an exploration portal that provides the information that an employee needs to decide on whether they wish to work remotely or not. It considers factors such as legal status, company footprint and workforce policies.
A request tool then enables employees to submit a request to the Topia One management platform. Topia will then process the request using predetermined approval workflows. The request process can include checklists for managers and employees to ensure that they have the right environment to work remotely. With a platform controlling the process, no emails are required. It is a simple matter to understand where each process is.
Once approved, remote workers will find further information available. These include required compliance tasks, timelines for process, the ability to upload documents. Local interactive guides provide support for their remote work experience and ensure they are better connected to the organisation.
There are Risk Assessments for both the approval process and remote workers. They ensure that the policy and local regulations, such as DSE in the UK, are met and checked appropriately. Many required assessments and policy documents can be completed using self-service tools available within Topia.
It means that data is captured electronically in a format that can be moved between systems without manual effort. Other self-service tools include configuration, vendor and policy hubs to enable organisations to personalise their remote work management settings.
Why is this important
Pete Tiliakos, Director & Principal Analyst at ISG. “Remote work is an increasingly important part of a modern talent and business strategy moving forward. Having the right technology in place to manage this process is key to providing a great experience for remote employees and HR teams. Topia’s remote work offering provides an employee-centric solution that brings remote work into the fold of global talent mobility and strategy.”
Having a tool that enables employees to empower themselves to work remotely is a positive thing. Talent is hard to find and easy to lose. If an organisation can enable employees to work where they wish to, they are far more likely to stay. However, organisations still need to remain connected with their employees and ensure that they work in a safe environment and a compliant one. Are they, though? Topia also has an answer to that challenge
An optional compliance add-on enables HR and Mobility teams to check that employees are working where they are approved to work. This is important as employees working in a different country than expected can open up the organisation to various risks.
Enterprise Times; What does this mean
This is a sensible move by Topia to extend the functionality of its platform to meet the requirements of a much wider range of organisations. Historically it has met the needs of companies that regularly move employees across borders.
Today, companies are increasingly looking to employ workers in any country. However, understanding the risk of doing so and managing them is not part of many HR solutions. Topia works with leading HR solutions and, in combination with them, can provide a complete solution to meet the needs of tomorrows global enterprises.
