Mask mandates may soon be going away in cities and counties throughout the country. Viruses - Covid or otherwise - certainly are here to stay. One positive effect of the pandemic for many companies is that more attention has been brought to the physical health of their overall workforces. At workplaces where employees have already returned or will do so soon, allowing a few potentially ill employees to interact with lots of healthy ones in close quarters has become a true threat to conducting business. Employers can't afford to have large groups of employees out sick for an unspecified amount of time, especially in such a challenging hiring environment. Increasingly, companies are looking for contactless technologies that will help protect the wellbeing of their employees, their customers, and their business operations alike. Touchless timeclocks are a key component of this health-maintenance strategy.

Did you survive year end and getting all those W2s into the waiting hands of your employees? If you answered "Yes!", then a big CONGRATULATIONS to you...and welcome to 2022! We have all hit the ground running and, believe it or not, we are well into February already. With April right around the corner, we thought now would be a good time to remind everyone about two new taxes that went into effect in Oregon and could require filing.

In March of 2020, working from home became the new normal for many people. Organizations may not have been prepared for this new normal, but ready or not, the transition needed to be made. Some employers went with the Band-Aid approach of doing what they needed to do to get by temporarily, while others fully embraced the challenge and sought the potential long-term advantages that it offered to employer and employees alike. Most employers did not expect this new normal to last as long as it has, or for it to bring so many unforeseen challenges.

A recent Ankura survey found that 48% of employees wish that workplace technology performed as well as personal technology. This high number indicates a broad divide between employee expectations for information usage and what employers are actually delivering. While data-driven apps, mobile-ready devices, and search engines like Google offer people near instantaneous access to information in their personal and social lives, as employees they continue struggling when at work to access basic information regarding time off accruals, hours usage, and scheduling. Furthermore, they frequently find themselves tethered to non-mobile points of access. These technology impediments are also expensive for employers, since excess time, energy, and costs are continuously expended when employees have to waste time seeking basic information and answers.

You may have previously considered, or even had plans for, giving your employees the ability to work remotely. Due to the recent social changes in response to COVID-19, those considerations may have accelerated into a necessary reality to keep your business running during this time that we're all supposed to remain at home.

A few days ago, our I.T. Manager, Dionne, published a blog post about the various technologies that you might need to rely on so that your employees can get their work done seamlessly and securely from a remote location. That post addresses how people can stay connected to your organization. But how does your organization stay connected to them...informationally, culturally, practically?

A cloud-based Human Capital Management system offers many built-in solutions to keep your organization aware of your employees' activities and help them stay informed in the face of rapid change. The following features keep everyone working together, even when they're in different places.

The research* provided by The Aberdeen Group on successful approaches to managing a workforce has so far focused on automation of employee management tasks and integration of workforce management systems.

The final and least technical practice is for an organization to always be improving an its approaches and methods of managing their overall workforce. Such improvement is a long-term proposition that takes place gradually. It requires persistence and a commitment to merging modern HCM tools with a consistently advancing workplace culture. As both become more developed and in aligned with one another, an organization's workforce shifts from a practical cost to a strategic and competitive advantage that provide the business with a true edge in the marketplace.

This four-part series takes research* done by The Aberdeen Group on successful approaches to managing a workforce and presents it in graphical form. Businesses that practice all of these behaviors tend to function efficiently and reduce - or eliminate - the wasteful costs involved in managing people.

Integration is the second beneficial practice. Many organizations still manage time and attendance with one automated system, payroll with another, and human resources with no intelligent business system at all. The systems that are in place tend not to communicate well, which is unfortunate, since they all fulfill critical functions with regard to workforce management and coordination, and miscommunication just means more time and more cost spent on otherwise simple tasks. Implementing a unified Human Capital Management system can store all of your employee information in a single location and transform your workforce from an expense to a strategic asset. Here are just some of a unified system.

In this four-part series, we're sharing visualized research* on the impact of efficiently managing an organization's workforce by practicing three habits. The first habit, automation, can mean many things, from building a performance review workflow system to deploying electronic timecards to offering Employee Self Service tools that your employees can access wherever they are and whenever they need to. Implementing a unified Human Capital Management system can provide all of these benefits to your organization and transform your workforce from an expense to a strategic asset. Here are just some of the advantages of doing so.

What makes some organizations exceptionally efficient - and therefore cost effective - at managing their workforces while others struggle just to make sure employees show up? It's not luck, and it's not just the way things are. By embracing three key practices, almost any organization can begin transforming their workforce from a burden into a strategic benefit. Over the next four weeks, we'll share with you some research-based infographics* that highlight each of these three practices. Let's begin with an overview and the potential benefits.