IBM Corp. and Workday Inc. are teaming up on a joint offering that aims to help companies plan and monitor their workplaces as they reopen their physical premises for business.

Announced today, the approach combines Workday’s planning capabilities with IBM’s tools for analyzing employee, health and workplace data. At the core of the new Return to Workplace Planner product is Workday Adaptive Planning, which is a product that provides comprehensive planning and modeling capabilities, and Workday Human Capital Management, which offers data and analytics on employee’s sentiments.

Those will be paired with IBM Watson Works, which is a suite of tools that uses artificial intelligence models to help businesses determine when it’s safe to bring staff back to work, and to manage employee access. It leverages Watson AI for facility management, workplace re-entry, care management, workplace safety and contact tracing.

Workday and IBM Services will also provide consulting services for customers to help them plan, program and implement their return to the workplace.

The companies said the offering is meant to help facilitate plans that balance workspace demand with reduced capacity, which is necessary since social distancing rules remain in place in many areas where COVID-19 infections continue to rise. The approach will incorporate constantly changing data gathered from multiple sources.

The offering will help businesses to model site capacity at their premises and evaluate each employee’s role and eligibility for returning to work. By looking at various different scenarios, businesses will be able to anticipate demand for space and plan how it is used in the context of reduced site capacity, the companies said.

In addition, companies will be able to use the software to assess community risk and workplace readiness by identifying the latest COVID-19 trends for each location. Other benefits include managing supplies of personal protective equipment by tracking its availability and use, monitoring workforce sentiments, and compiling and publishing site readiness and safety data so it can be used for planning purposes.

“Companies are challenged with managing the complexities of integrating real-time site and worker data in a way they’ve never needed to before, moving workforce planning from strategic to mission critical nearly overnight,” said Kshitij Dayal, general manager of Planning Products at Workday. “Combining the power of Workday with IBM Watson Works can help accelerate customers’ return to workplace planning with a sustainable solution to balance workforce and workplace supply and demand in the ever-changing world.”

Workday and IBM are looking to seize a growing opportunity to help businesses get back to work safely amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In June, Salesforce.com Inc. said it was teaming up with Siemens AG to offer customers mobile boarding passes to enable access to workplace locations, an occupancy management system and contact tracing services.

Image: Workday