Empowering A Global Manufacturing Organization to Go Office Optional

Enter Centric: Enabling a Successful Transition to Remote Work

The first step in any Centric People and Change project is to understand the current state of affairs. A series of focus groups with a cross-section of employees provided valuable insights into the people, process and technology challenges that would face the organization in transitioning to remote work.

The focus groups informed the following deliverables, all designed to empower and equip the company’s HR organization to transition the company through the change and execute on the plan:

• A communications plan for leadership and managers to inform employees about the changes.
• A tailored remote work best practice guide.
• A series of learning workshops covering topics such as how to lead remote employees and maintaining work-life balance in a remote work environment. We recorded these workshops so the organization could use them to educate future employees.
• An effective listening strategy to connect employees to leadership, transforming a simple point-in-time engagement into long-term sustainable engagement.

Global Operations, Regional Change Deployment Plans

For the manufacturing company, the feasibility and logistics of working from home varied greatly between regions. The employee experience wasn’t the same from one location to the next, requiring geographically tailored plans for communications, protocols and logistics, in-person gathering strategies, team routines and more.

While the regional variance proved a unique challenge, it didn’t dampen the project’s success. Centric’s partnership with the company’s HR organization led to a successful transition to remote work, so much so, employee engagement scores have increased — a rare accomplishment during a time of change.