LONDON - JULY 7, 2020 - As government restrictions around the world begin to lift the focus for many employers and employees is on the reopening of the economy and the return to work.

Business owners need to be mindful that this period in time is about more than just reactivating the economy. It requires understanding of and adaptation to a number of evolved perspectives about the new world of work now held by customers and workers in order to rebuild a successful business.

Over the last six months Deputy has been focused on rolling out tools to help better monitor the wellbeing of employees and automate new workplace tasks business owners are required to comply with as they pivot their strategy to rebuild their company so it can thrive in this new era of entrepreneurship.

Deputy's Head of Product, Deepesh Banerji predicts businesses that are disciplined and consistent will be the ones that will begin to thrive in this new environment.

"Metrics will matter in this new world" says Banerji. "Small business operators will need to execute with the same diligence that large companies do - that requires democratisation of business performance intelligence and Deputy is leading the way with this toolkit of new product features focused on protecting your people and driving sustainable business growth."

Protect and preserve employee well-being and rebuild your business intelligently with Deputy's Return to Work Toolkit below.

Return to Work Toolkit

Touchless Clock-In 

When enabled, the Deputy Kiosk (iPad app & Android) uses facial recognition and voice commands to enable employees to clock in and out of work, as well as start and end breaks, without touching a screen.

• Employees experience a faster and simpler clock-in process, while also limiting exposure between employees during clock-in procedure and contamination of the device.
• Removes the worry and stress of verifying employees onsite and recording accurate timesheet data during a time of a lot of changes in shifts and rostering.
• Ties in with Deputy’s built-in compliance, accounting for overtime, breaks and stress profiles. 

Video in News Feed

Allows managers and employees to record short videos on their phone or desktop device and post directly to the News Feed. Videos can be viewed and confirmed on all devices.  

• Video allows rapid, more personal communication between employers and team members.
• Can be used for important visual walkthroughs of new procedures (such as stricter hygiene practices) or situations within the workplace.
• Introduce new team members remotely during times of social distancing and working remotely. 

Deputy Stats Panel

An easy-to-interpret dashboard on how businesses are performing. With the right demand metrics, owners can make informed decisions when scheduling their teams and stay within budget.

• This includes daily summaries at a glance, enabling customers to instantly see daily summaries of wage costs and sales vs wage percentage.  
• A daily snapshot of the variance between required staff vs scheduled staff is also included.
• The design suite got an upgrade, including improved graphs library (for better readability and option to visually  illustrate relationships in the customer’s data), enhanced legends and improved accessibility of graphs and colours.

Area Based Pay

This tool enables companies - namely restaurants, food and beverage makers - who have had to shuffle roles to meet current government regulations and consumer demand to offer different pay rates based on skills, capabilities, and roles.

• Deputy’s Area Based Pay  allows Premium customers to set different rates for specific areas of work. 
• Adding Area Based Pay to the default pay rate will allow two different rates to be applied to the same employee. If a company has a default rate, but needs to pay an employee a different base rate for other jobs or for working in other areas, they now can.
• Most importantly, it's not just a single hourly rate. Area Based Pay can be used with any of Deputy’s existing pay rates (excluding Salary). 

Shift Questions

This feature provides a critical first step for employees returning to the workforce.  Business owners can enable questions to request confirmation that staff are healthy.

• The product has been designed to be fully customisable for business owners, enabling them to apply the latest local or state safety and hygiene regulations to the checklist. 
• The employer-generated checklist appears as a series of questions employees are prompted to complete before and after their shifts.
• If an employee does not pass their health and safety check, management is notified immediately and the employee is no longer allowed to clock-in.   

Open Shifts 

Staffing open shifts is not a simple matter and it can be time-consuming and costly for businesses - especially when specific certifications are needed to fill a role. 

• Deputy solves for this by enabling managers to ensure the most suitable employees are selected for a shift - effectively matching the right skill set for the position. 
• Democratizes open shifts policies, allowing all employees to request an available shift  advertised by the manager. 
• Helps to avoid unfair penalisations for those who were not quick of the mark to claim shifts. 

Shift Questions - Employee Responses Report

A report that clearly displays all the employee responses to the shift questions that are asked when on shift.

• Understand which employees could potentially place others in the business and customers at risk.
• Prevent employees from working if they are found to be experiencing symptoms.
• Reduce business liability with a legally binding declaration stating that an employee is healthy.

Contact Tracing Report

Easily trace the people an employee that returns a positive result for COVID-19 has been in contact with during their shift via three different report views.

• All - populates the below table with any employee who has an overlapping timesheet with the selected employee in the selected period.
• Location - populates the below table with any employee who has an overlapping timesheet in the same location as the selected employee and period.
• Areas - populates the below table with any employee who has an overlapping timesheet in the same area as the selected employee and period.

Site Scheduling

New ability to capture geo-location clock in details for remote or site based employees through adding addresses to an area of work.

• Businesses can better schedule their remote or field-based workforce, through allocating different shifts to different addresses. 
• With geolocation clock in, employers also have peace of mind that employees are in the right place, at the right time (and a record of this). 
• Employee’s have a clear idea of where they need to be for each shift, with a pin drop on how to get there. 
• Employee’s have proof of being at the scheduled location at the time of clocking in.

Smart Scheduling

Drive down costs and ensure optimal schedule coverage with clear and accurate business insights. While easy and intuitive to use, Smart Scheduling surfaces powerful insights about business performance that can be used to make better business decisions

• Empower management teams with the guardrails needed to stick to budget.
• Businesses are able to better optimise and automate their scheduling operations.
• Data driven insights replace gut feel and guesswork, with all the right guardrails in place to confidently empower managers of all levels to independently manage their teams to budget

With demand-based rules, Deputy will use unique business logic to effortlessly scale with changing demand, ensuring minimum coverage is always met.

Mat Beeche Global Strategic Communications Director

mbeeche@deputy.com