Navigating a Safe Return to the Office with Data-Driven Solutions

Forum Solutions partnered with a global technology and e-commerce leader to support a safe, complaint, and employee-centered return-to-office (RTO) experience. We brought a data-driven mindset to the project through the implementation of an inspection tool, dynamic dashboards, and an agile reporting framework.

Challenge

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the leadership of a technology/e-commerce company faced the critical challenge of orchestrating a smooth, global transition for employees returning to the office. They aimed to establish an audit program to inspect and monitor the company’s corporate real estate facility readiness to safely accommodate returning workers. However, the organization lacked the necessary technology and reporting infrastructure to collect inspection data from locations around the globe and provide insights to both senior leadership and operational staff at the building level in an efficient and secure manner.

Approach

We first gathered requirements from diverse global stakeholders across all levels in the organization to understand their needs and clarify success measures. Through this process, we identified the need for a new inspection tool and associated global dashboards that aligned with the strategic requirements of VPs, managers, and operational building staff.

Next, we oversaw the selection and adoption of a new inspection tool, providing product management leadership for its rollout and continued operations. We established an agile, iterative prioritization and development process, creating or enhancing dashboards every 2 weeks to address stakeholder feedback and meet evolving post-pandemic requirements.

In addition, we developed training materials and quick-reference guides for the inspection tool and dashboards to empower users at all levels with actionable insights, enabling our client to manage this process independently after we transitioned the work.

To sustain ongoing insights and incorporate improvements to the process, we incorporated an automated weekly reporting and review process with leadership to facilitate continuous monitoring, anomaly reporting, and data-driven decision-making within the client’s rhythm of business.

Results

The deployment of a new tool to collect inspection data was managed from purchase to implementation in just 10 days. A comprehensive suite of twelve dashboards was implemented to monitor the health and status of the client’s global corporate real estate portfolio, from individual locations into regional and global metrics.

 Over 600,000 inspections were completed with twelve million individual items inspected through the new tool, saving an estimated 200,000 hours of effort over an 18-month period. Insights were provided at all levels of the organization, allowing leadership and building staff alike to make informed decisions on safety and compliance in a rapidly changing environment.

 Continuous improvements in workplace safety standards were supported during the pandemic, contributing to a safe and compliant return-to-office. The project value was extended across the organization by expanding agile reporting practices and identifying additional global use cases for the inspection tool beyond RTO.