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COVID-19 and working from home

What a challenging and worrying time! We are facing unique challenges in a fast-changing environment – who had even heard of COVID-19 three months ago?


Many colleagues will need to work from home and unfortunately, we can expect an increased incidence of sick reporting. Industries such as manufacturing/distribution/retail, for example obviously must have colleagues on site, but in the coming days with school closures etc businesses may have to get creative to unlock the required man hours from the available staff.


We are getting increasing questions from clients as to how CaptureIT can help meet some of their challenges, so we thought we would put together quick guide of what’s available.

The Remote Clocking Utility


This is installed on a PC and allows clocking in and out, to lunch, to jobs and to see “who’s in” – perfect for users using VPN into a company network whilst working from home.

The Web Remote Clocking Utility


This web site delivered feature that can be accessed either Extra or Intranet based, no PC install is required.
This has the same functionality as the Remote Clocking Utility – perhaps better suited to the larger organisation where installing on a lot of clients is not desirable, or in an environment where colleagues are using their own devices.

The Mobile Clocking Utility


This web site delivered feature that can be accessed either Extra or Intranet based, no device install is required.
The MCU has much the same functionality as the Remote Clocking Utility (who’s in and some reporting is not available) – perfect for clocking from mobile phones.
The clocking’s can be geo-located so you can see (on a map) where they were made from.

Self Service*


This web site delivered feature that can be accessed either Extra or Intranet based, no device install is required.


This supports a whole raft of sophisticated functions:

  • Absence requests and approval workflows.
    Configurable to including Sick, Absence and Holidays.
    In the current situation this could include a set of absence types for ‘COVID 19 – Isolating’, ‘COVID 19 – Pregnancy’, ‘COVID 19 – Age/health’ – these could either be self-approved, or set to require various approval flows (naturally this is fully integrated into CaptureIT and any payroll export you may have from CaptureIT).
    Annual leave/Family Leave/Unpaid Leave etc. are intrinsic to this functionality - for shop-floor based business this could help to stop a ‘paper trail’ that could become a viral pathway through a business.
  • Timesheet amendment requests and workflows.
    Employees can request timesheet alterations (or even create days) and then have the changes approved or declined by their Manager, this is beneficial for staff and managers who are home based temporarily and again could help to stop a ‘paper trail’ that could become a viral pathway through a business.
  • Clocking in/out and to lunch
    Employees can clock in out and to lunch from inside the same self-service screen, handy for home-based employees.
    All this functionality is integrated to your Email system such that managers are notified when Absence/Timesheet requests exist, and they log into the self-service to approve or decline them – employees are notified by email when a request changes status.
    The process is all web based and managers do not have to be CaptureIT Administrators.
    If exposed on the Extranet (Internet) then managers and employees can perform all the above from any web browser – perfect for home-based working.
    *requires CaptureIT v5

 

Shifts and Flexitime


For those businesses requiring ‘feet on the ground’ of the workplace family care commitments, self-isolation absence and general difficulty of life issues may cause issue with getting sufficient productive man hours available.
Whilst none of us can do much about self-isolation etc. childcare issues are likely to become a very real issue as schools close and the caregiving services of Gran and Grandad won’t be an option for most given the current situation.
As organisations we are all going to have to get creative in managing the requirements that childcare etc may place on colleagues – this is especially problematic in the manufacturing/distribution type business where ‘home working’ is simply not viable.
Options here are likely to include flexitime and shift working (will many businesses have to run morning and afternoon shifts to allow one parent to perform family duties then swap to the other parent each working different shifts?).

CaptureIT can inherently and easily cope with these situations and provide support to enable back office staff to work from home.


If you feel that any of the above might offer solutions to the challenges you’re facing right now, or shortly may face, please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss how we can help.


Please stay Well and Safe,
The CaptureIT Team.