Enterprises have always analysed their businesses to help improve productivity and ensure the wellbeing of workers but now those workers are distributed across a blend of traditional offices, remote locations and working from home. Traditional approaches don’t take account of the variety of situations involved and enterprises need richer insights into the behaviours and experiences of workers. Tollring recently launched Analytics 365 its workplace analytics to help organisations understand the needs of their people better and is finding the changing situation is placing even greater emphasis on useful insights. 

“People are trying to make up their minds between working from home or getting people back to the office,” says Tony Martino, the Chief Executive Officer of Tollring. “There are people who can work absolutely beautifully from home and want to and there are people and jobs that need to be performed in offices, analytics can assist employers in understanding the right cadence in work behaviour. That’s really what we’re seeing in workplace analytics which is more relevant now than when we were all sitting at home.” 

Martino is keen to emphasise that this is not about being an intrusive Big Brother, it’s about gaining real insights into users’ experiences so enhancements can be made. He gives the example of someone working from home thinking they are being as productive as in the office but suffering poor quality voice calls because of their location. This represents the enterprise poorly and makes it harder for the employee to do their job but, without the analytics, there’s no way for the enterprise to know the situation. 

In this example, workplace analytics can be utilized to justify upgrading home office equipment or to explain to the employee why they need to spend more of their time in the office rather than working from home. Conversely, workplace analytics may prove that some workers are in fact more productive working from home than if they are required to come into the office all the time. Analytics can uncover not only their productivity but reveal insights into their wellbeing and happiness. Importantly, issues such as ensuring proper breaks are taken and excessive hours are not being worked can be monitored, with employees advised accordingly. 

“There are so many different people and different job functions to consider,” adds Martino. “The analytics we present provides a good understanding of that and the trends that are taking place. For instance, you can look at recurring meetings and understand how much attendance is external and identify who is most effective in these interactions. The profile of collaboration is also important, highly collaborative teams may need to be in the same place more often than others that involve people working more autonomously.” 

For Martino, the challenge enterprises face is to build the right policies within the organisation to allow people to work in the locations they prefer – but only if that is most beneficial to the organisation. Analytics 365 has the capability to provide the insights needed to inform decision making, not in an intrusive way but in a way that helps both the enterprise and employees through this transition. 

“If you’re not working from home effectively, Analytics 365 can provide some evidence to say it’s not working well and you need to come into the office more often”

“It’s about helping enterprises make more informed decisions about working from home.” 

 

 



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