Over half worked in units with under 25 staffers, but there were many others working in units of over 250. So our survey embraced a fairly wide spectrum of disciplines and departments.
The first question we asked sounds almost painfully obvious: Have your department operations had to change under the threat of the coronavirus? Yet in light of the media frenzy and general sense of disruption around the outbreak, it was mildly surprising to see that anyone, let alone a quarter of respondents, said it hadn’t affected them yet.
Respondents’ biggest concern in terms of managing their departments? As you might expect, it’s how they’ll handle current workloads during the outbreak.
The survey allowed people to write in any additional answers, and some of the other concerns mentioned included maintaining employee morale/mental health, checking physical mail by visiting the office, missing work by being ill, and caring for the sick.
The top three technology tools being utilized now that remote working is the order of the day and face-to-face meetings are – at least temporarily – a thing of the past? Teleconferencing takes first place (89%), followed by intranet use (67%), and collaboration tools like Slack and MS Teams (46%). Many companies are using a combination of multiple tools, of course. Use of some – such as Travel Management (28%) – may decline, while the need for others, like automated Policy Management (11%) may increase.
Workflow automation is being employed by 27% of respondents. We expect that number to grow, too, as more of them realize its business value for improving collaboration and allowing them to accelerate urgent responses to COVID-19-related demands, such as for automating employee health checks and other key tasks. Plus, we’ve begun to offer free use of our own workflow automation solution and coronavirus-focused workflows to anyone who needs them, regardless of whether or not they’re a current client.
