{"id":20406,"date":"2020-06-30T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=20406"},"modified":"2020-10-19T13:46:31","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T20:46:31","slug":"rethinking-the-future-of-offices-with-shift-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/news\/stories\/rethinking-the-future-of-offices-with-shift-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking the Future of Offices with Shift Management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Salesforce is committed to providing tools to help organizations respond and recover from the challenges of COVID-19. We recently released Work.com<\/a>, a suite of solutions and resources to enable business and community leaders reopen safely, while helping to keep employees, customers and partners safe and informed during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this series, we\u2019ll dive deeper into each of the Work.com capabilities: why we built them, how we built them, and how customers can leverage them in their response to COVID-19. This week, we\u2019ll focus on the Shift Management solution in work.com, which helps businesses coordinate the return of employees to the office with capabilities to schedule workers in shifts and help reduce office density.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To learn more about Shift Management and how the Salesforce team quickly brought this solution to life, we talked with Eric Jacobson, VP Product Management at Salesforce. Read on for the full interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What do you do at Salesforce?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I lead the Field Service Management<\/a> product group, which is focused on bringing service solutions to mobile workforces. When I joined Salesforce, I initially worked with the Platform team for five years then, a little over a year ago, I transitioned to Field Service Lightning, which is one of the fastest growing applications in Salesforce history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What are some of the challenges that organizations face in their response to COVID-19?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been a progression. At first it was, how do we adapt to the fact that we’re all working remotely? And then, how do we embrace it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having the right tools in place makes a difference. The more collaborative a company can be, the better. I see this personally from the standpoint of working with a globally distributed team. I work with people across 10-hour time differences so remote work isn\u2019t new, but given that it\u2019s become the new norm we\u2019re all now finding ways to become better at working with a remote-first culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Knowing those challenges, how did Shift Management come to be a solution?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As businesses take steps towards recovery, we started to think about how we could safely come back to the workplace. This is truly an unprecedented problem. Nobody in our lifetime has thought about the implications of closing all the offices around the globe then reopen them, bring people in, and ensure we don’t create a second phase of the pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We looked at this as a chance to solve a truly unique problem that has never existed before. Of course, people have already thought about how to do staffing, especially in retail, restaurants or hotels. But how do you get employees to come back to a large office setting? It’s just not a problem that the world had contemplated, especially in dense, urban, high-rise office settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a whole new set of conditions to think about, including how to stagger the arrival times of employees to ensure lobbies and elevators don\u2019t become overcrowded, and how to appropriately social distance once in the office – at your desk, in common areas such as bathrooms and kitchens. This was the impetus behind building the Shift Management solution in work.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. How can a business leverage Shift Management?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Companies everywhere are thinking through how they will reopen their offices, but they know they’re not going to bring everybody back immediately, depending on local, regional, and national requirements. That means that an office that was designed to hold 1,000 people might only be able to reopen with 100 people to begin with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So companies can use our Shift Management tools to calculate availability for reopening at a certain scale, and analyze the challenges at the floor level, or even specific areas within that floor. Companies can use our tools to figure out when people are available, what allocations of available space there might be, and much more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Where do you see the most potential for Shift Management to add value to organizations?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Shift Management is most useful in handling business interruptions – COVID-19 or otherwise. Given that it tackles scheduling based on allowed workspace capacity, employers and HR departments can simply set the parameters based on what is deemed safe then the Shift Management solution removes the guesswork – helping organizations get back to work safely.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
Open Image Modal<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n
<\/div>