HR IN A COVID WORLD
HR in a COVID world – email for all With over one-third of its 1,000 employees not having New Zealand Automobile Association (NZAA) email accounts nor access to company computers, NZAA found itself without a universal method of communicating to each employee directly at the time of the 2020 COVID-19 nationwide lockdown. Human Resources magazine looks at what the organisation did to turn this around.
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ZAA is an incorporated society that provides various services to its members, including breakdown services, vehicle repairs, driver licensing, insurance and finance. The organisation has over 1,000 employees country-wide, across several different sectors. When New Zealand went into lockdown last year, the NZAA encountered a unique dilemma, it found itself without a universal method of communicating directly to its employees. In response to this unique situation, the People Experience (PX) team
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HUMAN RESOURCES
WINTER 2021
created new technology initiatives to respond to legislative requirements, organisational processes, employee engagement activities and communication needs, all under significant time constraints.
The organisation found itself without a universal method of communicating to each employee directly. Implementation
As New Zealand moved through the different COVID-19 response levels, the need to stay connected in realtime on health, safety, wellbeing, pay, employment and remote working issues was essential. Government requirements around the Wage Subsidy Claim and Safe Working Declarations also required verifiable information, acknowledgment and consent from each employee. Furthermore, the annual performance review, scheduled to start during lockdown, was hosted on technology that required access to the NZAA’s network: the usual process and system was not going to be a viable option.
Working remotely, the PX project team and wider PX group collaborated to create different solutions based on need: from design to testing, piloting through to execution. They sought support and feedback from other relevant stakeholders around the business, including the Communications and Health and Safety teams. The organisation formed a COVID response committee early in 2020, and members played a collaborative role in implementing the solutions. The PX project team used the existing onboarding system Enboarder, re-engineering it to account for each new process and its requirements. This involved the manipulation of workflows, data, logic, communications and sequences. Three separate workflows were created, which enabled real-time communication to be sent to relevant people as and when required.
The PX project team used the existing onboarding system Enboarder, re-engineering it to account for each new process and its requirements.
