Office Readiness

What is Office Readiness?
Office Readiness in Zoho People helps gather all the vital information you need when opening offices for employees who want to return and work in their office.

Why is it useful?
Organizations today are working in dynamic work setups during an unforeseen pandemic. Employees and employers face difficulties in deciding how and when they can resume office at the work location due to fear of safety. The need of the hour, therefore, is an application that enables organizations to feel ready to reopen their offices confidently.

Office Readiness can be accessed from the Services space or the left side menu.

Office Readiness is not enabled by default. To enable, go to Settings > Customization > Services and enable Office Readiness. Once enabled, you will be able to see this popup.

Make use of the clickable links to configure office readiness service.

Office Readiness information
Office Readiness settings
Approvals and approval notifications
Visitor and employee notifications
Daily premises capacity

Office Readiness information

Office Readiness gathers information using three primary forms:

1. Work premises

This form helps you update all information about the various premises you may have, spread across many regions. All data about the offices that are ready to receive employees can be updated here. This form is used only by the admins and is not accessible to employees.

To add a new work premises,

Click the Work Premises form under Office Readiness.

Click Add Record.
Enter the Building Name.

Select the location of the building.
Enter the maximum capacity of employees the building can accommodate.
Select the Premises Incharge who will be responsible for the building.
Click Submit.

A complete list of the work premises can be viewed under Work Premises > List View.

2. Work from Office

This form collects all necessary information about the employee who wants to resume working from the office. It can be filled out by the employee or an admin on their behalf.

To make a work from office request,

Go to Office Readiness, then select Requests.

Click Work From Office.
Click Add Record.

Select the name of the employee.
Select the location of the office.
Select the specific work premises.
Enter the From and To dates for the request.
Select the mode of travel from the dropdown options.
Enter the reason for the request.
Click Submit.

A complete list of the work premises can be viewed under Work From Office > List View.

3. Visitor at Office

This form gathers all details required about the visitor who wants to enter the work premises. An employee or admin can raise this request for the visitor.

To make a visitor at office request,

Go to Office Readiness, then select Requests.

Go to Visitor at Office.
Click Add Record.

Enter the name of the visitor.
Enter the email address and contact number of the visitor.
Select the location and premises they are visiting.
Enter the date of visit.
Select the name of the employee they are meeting.
Select the purpose of visit from one of the dropdown options.
Click Submit.

A complete list of the work premises can be viewed under Visitor at Office > List View.

Visitor at Office form can be disabled under Settings > Customization > Forms. If the form is disabled, the premises capacity report will not contain visitor information.

Office Readiness Settings

In this section, you will find options that you can use to customize and simplify the process of handling visitor and employee requests, based on the needs of your organization.

Criteria for safe entry

The following criteria can be applied at the request level when certain basic parameters are not met.

Mandate employee health status form submission

When this option is enabled, we can set the minimum number of days within which an employee must have submitted their health status. For example, if 2 days is given, employees who raise a work from office request must have filled the employee health status form at least once in the 2 days from the requested From and To date of entry.

If an employee who has not filled the form, tries to raise a request, they will be prompted to fill the form in order to submit the request successfully. A similar prompt will also be shown to the person who is raising the request for an employee.

Learn more about the employee health status form.

Restrict request based on maximum capacity

This option can be used to stop employee's work from office or visitor at office requests when a work premises has reached its maximum capacity and cannot accommodate any more employees.

In such a scenario, an error message indicating that the maximum capacity has reached will be shown.

This restriction however, does not restrict admins from adding a request.

Auto-reject requests from employees whose mode of travel is:

This option can be used to auto-reject requests from employees who travel by public transport or carpool. You can use either or both options.

Note: To configure Data and Settings Admin for Office Readiness, go to Settings > Permissions > Admin Operations.

Approvals and approval notifications

When an employee or visitor request is raised, you can configure the necessary approvals to ensure an informed decision is made while approving or rejecting the request.

For Work From Office requests, a two-level approval to the Reporting Manager, then to Premises Incharge is configured by default.
For Visitor at Office request, a single level approval to Premises Incharge is configured by default.

You can change these configurations according to your needs.

You can also customize email notifications for the following scenarios:

To approve work from office request.
To approve visitor at office request.

Click Configure beside each option to customize the approval process and email notification as per the needs of your organization.

Visitor and employee notifications

In this section, you can customize the following notifications that go to the employee and for visitor request.

When a work from office request is rejected.
When an employee's work from office request is approved.
When a visitor at office request is approved.
When a visitor at office request is rejected.

Usecase 1:Work from office request to be approved by reporting manager

If an employee's work from office request needs to go through an approval process, here are the steps to configure the necessary approvals.

Go to Office Readiness, then select Settings.
Go to the Configure approvals and customize approval notifications section.

Click Configure beside Employee entry approval.
Under Approvals, select Reporting Manager and Single level.

Enable follow-up for the approval if needed.
To customize the email template , Click Edit Template next to Message under the Message section.

Click Save.

Usecase 2: Visitor at office request to be approved by Premises Incharge and HR Department Head.

If a visitor at office request needs to go through an approval process, here are the steps to configure the necessary approvals.

Go to Office Readiness, then select Settings.
Go to the Configure approvals and customize approval notifications section.

Click Configure beside Visitor entry approval.
Under Approvals, select Premises Incharge in the first level. Click the + icon, then select Department Head and the Human Resources department from the dropdown.

Enable follow-up for the approval if needed.
To customize the email template , Click Edit Template next to Message under Message section.

Click Save.

Daily premises capacity

The daily premises capacity report displays the current booked and available seats under each premises of the organization.

Go to Reports > Organization Reports tab and click Daily premises capacity under Office Readiness.

To view the details on the employees working in a specific building, simply click on the corresponding number.