WOLIBA - WOrk and LIfe in BAlance

Shifting the Work-Life Balance Culture

What it does?

It provides employees with complete control of their work-life balance (WLB). They set their working schedule around their own lives (not the other way round). They track how well they adhere to that schedule during their working week. They see dashboards informing them of their WLB and how well they're doing. As well as measuring when they're working, it also captures 'what' they did and 'how' they're feeling. This information is also visible for employers to track and see how well their employees are managing their work-life balance, how they're feeling, allowing employers and managers to determine if any interventions are necessary. Input into the solution is facilitated by a chatbot which (rather than employees having to constantly fill in forms) captures the data from the employee, puts it into Salesforce, allowing rich reporting functionality.

How we built it ?

The backbone solution was built in Salesforce, which stores all information regarding employees' schedules, their actual metrics in terms of schedule adherence, the activities they're doing, as well as how they're feeling. This therefore allows us to leverage Salesforce reporting capabilities as well as its mobile app capabilities. Additionally, the solution incorporates an IBM Watson chatbot to integrate with the solution, allowing employee data inputs to be captured and integrated directly into Salesforce.

Challenges I/we ran into:

Not having an entirely 'native' Salesforce dev team therefore took slightly longer than expected to get used to the system. It also took a bit longer than anticipated to determine the right data architecture to enable the levels of reporting required. Furthermore, enabling the IBM chatbot to integrate with Salesforce proved a little tricky given some APIs which had to be leveraged.

Accomplishments that I/we are proud of:

Firstly, building a solution which will start to shift the culture regarding work-life balance within organisations. Secondly, the branding and the name (WOLIBA - WOrk LIfe BAlance) provides a striking brand. Thirdly, developing a solution which starts to integrate IBM chatbot capability with Salesforce and help employees input data directly into the solution was a particularly proud achievement.

What I/we learned:

Capabilities around Salesforce configuration (notably calendars and events); IBM Watson chatbot capabilities, and leveraging APIs to integrate with Salesforce; remain focused on standardised config solutions - no need for complex coding at times

What's next for WOLIBA:

In terms of deployment, the ambition would be to test in a sample of clients within the small-medium sized Tech Services sector. Subject to feedback, wider scaling and deployment would be considered. In terms of continuous improvement: 1) continue to voice-assisted elements e.g integrating with Alexa for home working; 2) explore integration with other productivity tools such as Outlook; 3) explore application of sentiment analysis to track employees mood/feelings; 4) start to measure productivity as well as time spent.

Built With

• chatbot
• ibm-watson
• salesforce