It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.
- Charles Darwin

The above quote cannot be truer than the times we are living today. From the sudden imposition of a complete lockdown to the need for safe opening of offices despite the continued threat of virus, companies are forced to evolve at lightning speed as the situation unfolds.

Darwinbox, a cloud-based Human Capital Management platform has launched a specially curated HRTech suite for Asian enterprises, Evolve, to help combat the rapidly changing people’s priorities in the ‘new world of work’.

Darwinbox Evolve is designed to meet every organization’s pressing concerns from employee safety to remote work productivity, engagement, and compliance to new regulations through a single seamless solution.

Chaitanya Peddi, Co-founder of Darwinbox shares, “As the new normal dictates new ways of working, there is a need for systems that not only automate processes but provides digitally advanced ways to engage a remote workforce and ensure a safe return to work.”

First Reactions: How organizations adapted instantly with the digital-first HR Technology 

“We have always had a drive for innovation at Darwinbox, which had led us to offer several future-ready solutions like facial recognition based attendance, digital rewards, continuous feedback, mobile-based check-ins, much before the current crisis. Leading organizations such as L&T Metro, Rivigo, Kotak Life Insurance, Adani Wilmar have been early adopters of these features. However, with the current crisis they were no longer good-to-have tech but must-haves that directly impacted business continuity and productivity” said Chaitanya Peddi.

Darwinbox has firmly held on to the belief that disruptions call for the need to innovate like no other. The hire-to-retire HR technology platform has been enhanced with contextual features at an unprecedented pace to support the customer needs well in time.  

Some of these features include Virtual ID cards (dynamically generated QR code with shift data) that is used by a leading media house, HT Media to restrict employee entry to office based on their shift (allowed entry only in office shift) and track attendance in a touch-free manner. This enabled HT Media to ensure optimal workforce at office while rostering them on staggered shifts between office and home. Also, the majority of Darwinbox’s Customers tracking attendance through biometric shifted to touch-free mobile-based attendance with geotagging and facial recognition. (Read how L&T metro replaced biometric with facial recognition-based attendance much before the pandemic)

‘Daily work check-ins’ feature was another enhancement that aided many of them including a leading Life Insurance firm in India with 7000+ employees spread across 100+ branches. Organizations were able to track an employee’s daily planned and completed work and gauge productivity levels by making this information readily available to managers and relevant stakeholders. 

Another example is where one of the top 10 Pharmacos in Asia leveraged Darwinbox’s digital HR letters capability to help employees self-generate their exemption passes that could be shown to local governing authorities while heading to work during the lockdown. 

Employee safety, remote work, touch-less operation, and a need to be connected with everyone without hampering the experience became the immediate focus for organizations. The right technology to manage the crisis that comes with the pandemic was the need of the hour. 

Introducing Darwinbox Evolve - WorkTech for the ‘New Normal’

“In an interaction with many organizations recently, we understood that several companies were not equipped with return-to-work or remote-work capabilities in their existing HRMS and were facing several practical limitations in switching to a full-fledged HRMS in such short notice. Given this reality, we set out to provide a specially curated solution like Evolve  - a collection of only must-have features that help organizations navigate this crisis and set themselves up digitally for success quickly,” shares Chaitanya. 

Agile, Flexible & Optimized on Investment

Given the current urgency that organizations are facing, the solution is extremely quick to implement and helps organizations go-live within just a few days and is flexible to operate independently or co-exist with any other system. 

In the current context, where everyone is forced to be frugal, Evolve helps organizations avoid the need to deploy an entire platform and rather invest only in features critical to their operations at the moment. Any organization not using the Darwinbox HRMS suite can also benefit from these modules specifically tailored to tide over these current times. 

Digital-first Solutions Offered for ‘Return to Work’ & ‘Remote Work’

The technology platform, Evolve, which works for businesses of every shape and size comes with select features shared below to support organizations with 3 key priorities:

Prioritize Employee Safety:

• Touch-free attendance with geolocation and facial recognition technology helps employees mark attendance directly from their smartphones and avoid physical contact with biometric devices.
• Vulnerability Analytics helps organizations avoid calling employees at risk to the office by analyzing data points like age, past health data, travel history, family members age, zone of residence (red, orange, green) etc.
• Staggered Shift Scheduling allows companies to rotate employees between the office and home shifts for the week ensuring only optimal % of employees work from office.
• Visitor Management helps organizations mandate appropriate approval flows for external visitors & use QR code-based authentication to allow entry of visitors in office premises.

Remote Productivity & Engagement

• Remote Work Check-Ins drive productivity by empowering employees to report planned and completed work for the day which is accessible by relevant stakeholders.
• Helpdesk helps resolve employee queries pertaining to COVID or remote work on priority through SLA tracking and dedicated team allocation.
• Continuous Feedback & Rewards and Recognition, a mobile-first and gamified way to help employees stay motivated & guided in remote mode.
• Digital Onboarding with e-documents and multi-role custom workflows ensure new talent is hired and enabled to be productive right from day 1, even in remote mode.
• Organizational Social Network connects employees virtually to engage in pan-organizational conversations as well as to stay updated on Org announcements through e-noticeboard.

Adapt to New Ways of Governance and Compliance 

• Virtual ID cards are dynamically generated QR code-based ID cards that display shift location (home/office) which can be scanned to mark attendance as well as to restrict entry of employees into premises only during their office shift. 
• Daily Health Surveys helps record symptoms and calculate risk score for employees on a daily basis. 
• HR Letters & Documents helps organizations auto-generate letters or mandate digital sign-off from employees on any new policy updates issued.
• Audit-Ready Reports provide the ability to report workforce % at office on any day or trace back employees who worked together in shifts for audit or investigation.

All ‘Evolve’ features are already available to Darwinbox’s HRMS suite customer base of 350+ Asian enterprises including brands like Adani Wilmar, Max Bupa Life Insurance, L&T Metro, Kotak Life Insurance, Arvind group, Dr. Reddys, Paytm, Swiggy, Bigbasket, Nivea, Bisleri, etc. Over 900,000+ employees have adapted to the ‘new normal’ at work with Darwinbox's remote-friendly and engaging technology that promotes safety in the new workplace. 

To know more about the product or to get a demo visit - Darwinbox Evolve