If the pandemic taught companies anything, it’s that having the tools in place to communicate with their entire workforce effectively is critical. As offices closed, notifications went out about the state of remote work, and positive COVID cases for those still in the office needed to be tracked. Organizations that didn’t have a single system of record to manage and communicate with their workforce suffered.
In addition to the pandemic, industries like manufacturing, oil and gas, healthcare, light industrial, and others must track ongoing safety training and ensure those are signed off and reported on. Because of this, the need for an extended workforce system is becoming increasingly critical.
Research shows that “32% of organizations are replacing full-time employees with contingent workers as a cost-saving measure,” and that more than 80 percent of large corporations are planning on substantially increasing their use of a flexible workforce in the coming years to take advantage of emerging skills and greater flexibility. The need to account for all workers -- be it full-time, contract, SOW, freelance, gig worker, independent contractor, and others -- is imperative.
Utmost for Safety and Risk Management
Utmost, the first Extended Workforce System, offers visibility for the enterprise across its entire workforce. Our worker-centric platform combines data for all external workers with employee data for one total workforce view with Workday. More than an integration, Utmost natively extends the Workday object model to gather information by org location, worker, and hiring manager and can track and report on this information enterprise-wide.
This enables organizations to access, track, and report on data related to safety with customizable workflows that offer flexibility across the extended workforce.
Ecolab Case Study
Utmost partnered with Ecolab, the global leader in water treatment, purification, cleaning, and hygiene, to provide a technology solution that would allow them to have visibility into critical safety training for their workforce, as well as enable flexible global policies and procedures in certain countries.
Ecolab Mexico needed to track what training a worker had completed and what was still outstanding. This particular site has over 60 safety features by worker type (i.e., officer, worker, trucker) and different training modules they must go through to remain compliant.
Today, Ecolab partners with a leading solution for safety training and needed a technology that would enable them to deliver this out to their workforce and act as a single view to track each worker. Before Utmost, these training forms were signed off by the hiring manager and put in a safety cabinet, which is not scalable or efficient.
With Utmost:
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- Workers can upload forms directly, and hiring managers can view progress by worker, by location.
- There is a scalable solution, especially for remote work in a multinational, multi-country business model, to confirm safety requirements are met.
Ecolab also lacked flexibility in how personal worker information is warehoused and how they communicated across their workforce. There have been emergency situations in locations where it was imperative for them to get in touch with emergency contacts for their contingent labor. It made Ecolab realize they needed certain information about this population that they didn’t have like name, number, and street address to ensure they were responding appropriately based on the country and cultural norms (i.e., in certain countries, you would pay respects or communicate by going to a worker’s home, not calling or emailing).
With Utmost:
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- Ecolab can send out mass notifications to workers’ SMS based on the mobile number on file for the worker in case of an emergency like, "Hurricane is coming, offices are closed until further notice, contact your manager/supplier if you have any questions."
- Workers are able to take ownership of certain data. They can update their contact information, emergency contact, and any worker custom fields Ecolab may need. For example, if a client wanted to capture any specific skills related to safety (i.e., a valid CPR certification), Utmost can do that.
- Utmost uses ABAC (attribute-based access control), which supports privacy messaging and can be controlled in terms of who has visibility/access to various data fields.
- Ecolab’s culture is to care for ALL workers, it doesn't matter if you’re not an employee, and they need a scalable solution to do so.
Future state
As Utmost continues to develop its mobile app, Ecolab will be using our solution to automate data privacy release collection for their extended workforce, a process that is currently being done manually. This will create efficiencies on a global scale, saving time and money and mitigating risk.
Why Utmost for safety tracking and extended workforce management
Utmost is designed to elevate the worker experience by giving workers agency of their data and access to communications, enabling a more seamless, accurate solution for organizations to communicate effectively. This is critically important during times where mass communication needs to be sent across the entire workforce, and when worker or location-specific communication is needed.
Emergency communication with contingent workers has historically been difficult, but Utmost makes it easy with one system of record for the entire workforce given our relationship with Workday. More than an integration, Utmost natively extends the Workday object model, making employee and non-employee data visible under one view.
If you’d like more information on how Utmost is helping companies like Ecolab implement a safety tracking and management solution for their extended workforce, please visit utmost.co or email sales@utmost.co.
