Belfast employer speeds work-from-home switch from months to days
Courtesy / OnProcess Technology
OnProcess Technology’s site director for Maine, Elsa Garza, is seen here in her home office. Garza was instrumental in helping the company accelerate its transition to a work-from-home model from months to days when the pandemic hit.
OnProcess Technology was on a 90-day schedule to permanently transition its Belfast workforce from a single location to a work-from-home model.
Then the pandemic hit. OnProcess accelerated the program and accomplished the switch in just 14 days.
Headquartered in Ashland, Mass., OnProcess is a supply chain management and optimization company. In 2015 it opened a service center in leased space at the former MBNA facility on Schoodic Drive in Belfast. The new center was intended to help OnProcess meeting growing demand from its wireless, broadband, technology and medical clients.
The company has several other global locations, including Amsterdam and Bulgaria. Clients include HP, Dell, DirectTV and AT&T.
Recently, the company needed to hire more employees in Maine and expand its footprint, but it wasn’t possible at its current location in Belfast, according to a news release.
Early last month, OnProcess was on track to take its Belfast workforce of 80-plus employees to a remote work-at-home model.
The transition was expected to take more than 90 days. But with the federal and state coronavirus mandates, OnProcess said it accelerated the plan, moving almost all employees to working remotely in less than two weeks, with no business interruptions.
Employees were set up with the necessary equipment plus high-speed internet and virtual private network capability to protect sensitive data. No employees have been laid off and the company anticipates hiring more.
Individual conversations
The work-from-home transition has been in the works throughout OnProcess’s locations for the past 18 months, COO Michael Stann told Mainebiz.
Originally, the Belfast timeline was driven by when the company's lease there came up for renewal, he said.
“We announced it at the beginning of March,” said Elsa Garza, the company’s site director for Maine. “We initially had a 90-day timeline, but we had to backtrack that. So we had the majority working from home within a couple of weeks.”
What was involved in the transition?
Individual discussions were held with employees to determine their internet capacities and spaces they had at home. Garza and her team worked with the company’s technology group to make sure the computers were ready to move. The team met individually with employees to help resolve any challenges they might have with internet capability or with space, and to work out solutions. The computers were fit with webcams to provide direct access to supervisors.
“The only thing we asked for was a private space and internet connection,” said Garza. “We wanted to make it as seamless as possible. They have their same office set-up.”
Some employees had to hunt for a better internet connection.
“We helped them talk to providers, to see what the best and quickest solution was,” she said.
Secure data
When it became apparent that the transition had to be accelerated, the company’s technology group worked weekends and overnights to get the equipment ready to move. OnProcess provided the equipment, including computers, monitors, keyboards, mouse, webcams and cables. Every computer is set up with the company’s virtual private network system.
“We wanted to make sure that everything was in place from a security standpoint,” she said.
Before the crisis, most employees were receptive to the work-from-home model.
“We had people who were super excited,” said Garza. “One of the things that pushed us to go forward with the transition was the fact that I had people knocking on my door, asking to work from home. Other people were concerned about the change. We met with people individually to address their concerns.”
Some people were concerned about missing the opportunity to share ideas and build relationships in an office setting, said Stann.
“A lot of our team love coming to the office, talking with each other,” he said. “The concern was, how do you replicate that when you’re in your home? That’s a challenge. So we’re doing other things.”
Some employees have instituted virtual coffee breaks. The company will continue to participate in community events, not just in Belfast but throughout communities where workers are now located, some of whom previously commuted an hour or more to Belfast.
“Remote work opens up the ability to attract and retain more staff,” said Stann. “We now have the entire state of Maine as our footprint. That’s attractive to us as a business. We also become more competitive from the compensation standpoint by not having some of the overhead costs of a brick-and-mortar building.”
“What’s exciting about this is that OnProcess wants to keep its employees in Maine while also being able to expand its footprint without taking on additional overhead,” said Peter DelGreco, president and CEO of Maine & Co., which helped OnProcess expand to Maine in 2015. At that time, the statewide search for space that was move-in ready reflected the company’s fast-paced growth, he said.
New normal?
“But what I’m hearing now is the facility is no longer the focal point,” said DelGreco. “The focal point is the workforce.”
He continued, “It’s interesting to see how the dynamic has changed from, ‘OK, we need the building and we’ll find the people around the building,’ to ‘Technology has advanced and that allows us to accomplish everything we would in the physical infrastructure. Now we need to find the people who can keep the momentum going.’”
DelGreco said it will be interesting to see whether other companies, forced by the pandemic to the work-from-home model, will reevaluate their standard operations once the crisis is past.
“It would be naïve to think it won’t affect behaviors in the long term,” he said. “Will the companies that implemented it successfully do more of it?”
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