In a time of the Great Resignation, HR professionals are striving to create more inclusive, diverse workplaces that are free of toxicity. There is no quick fix to cultivate a thriving workplace where all employees feel valued and comfortable using their voices. To fully support HR professionals in this mission, an efficient, tech-forward solution must be implemented, which is why Work Shield focuses on supporting HR teams through streamlined documentation, dedicated support, real-time data and a solution that boosts retention and overall workplace culture.
Work Shield Director of Client Success, Alicia Valdez, brings more than 12 years of HR development and management experience to the table. We’re sharing her answers to a few questions surrounding the importance of offering a solution that fully supports HR teams across the country.
How does Work Shield help HR professionals with long-term employee retention?
When toxicity is present in the workplace, healthy cultures cannot thrive, often driving away good employees. With Work Shield’s solution, HR professionals can have confidence that when their employees experience or witness harassment or other misconduct in the workplace, they can report it to our team without fear of retaliation. For those incidents that are investigated by our legal professionals, the turnaround time from the initial incident report to a resolution recommendation is expedient and efficient.
We address toxicity quickly, which helps to promote a culture of empowerment and fairness for all. When employees have psychological safety that their voices will be heard and addressed, they want to come to work and are less likely to quit.
What are the main benefits of replacing piecemeal paperwork with Work Shield’s technology?
It amazes us to find out that when we onboard clients, many of them are managing this process through spreadsheets, which is both cumbersome and time consuming. Work Shield’s technology provides HR professionals with a secure and compliant platform that stores and houses all incident documentation in one centralized location. HR professionals have access via their portal to real-time progress of reported incidents that are under investigation and on the path to resolution. Additionally, the full-service portal allows HR professionals to run reports on their employee populations by incident, status, location, resolution and more. From this data, HR professionals may extract actionable insights and identify trends and patterns across multiple locations and departments.
For instance, a client was able to pinpoint the trend of an uptick in workplace incidents, and through Work Shield reporting capabilities, they isolated these incidents to one primary location. From there, they targeted this one location rather than allocating resources to provide specialized training to their large employee population, which saved both time and money. Overall, utilizing technology to discover such insights allows HR professionals to make better business decisions that have a positive impact on workplace culture and their bottom line.
Does partnering with Work Shield improve workplace retention?
Addressing toxic behavior as soon as it occurs helps strengthen workplace cultures and instill trust and integrity between employers and employees. For example, the restaurant industry is notorious for having high attrition, and one of our clients in this industry lowered their attrition rate after implementing Work Shield’s solution.
How do you see Work Shield establishing more inclusive workplaces?
Inclusivity is essential for healthy workplace cultures. Employees should have psychological safety that they can bring their whole selves to work each day and feel welcomed and valued for their contributions. Employees want to feel that they belong and have a connection not only to their work, but also to the people around them. It’s easy for employees to work when everything is going according to plan, but when there’s an environment of harassment or discrimination, they must feel empowered to speak up and be heard without fear of retaliation.
Work Shield provides an innovative tech platform that gives HR professionals peace of mind that their employees’ voices will be heard and that if an incident rises to the level of investigation, it will be handled fairly, ethically and consistently. In fact, the effectiveness of the Work Shield solution is proven in our recent incident report, which shows that 67.71% of our reported incidents were made non-anonymously. What exactly does this mean? Essentially, Work Shield is effectively helping organizations build cultures of trust where employees feel safe reporting incidents and sharing their information, which further cultivates a more equitable and inclusive workplace.
