Bidvest McCarthy, Dimension Data help motor retail industry return to work safely

Bidvest McCarthy, together with its technology partner Dimension Data, is giving the South African motor retail industry free access to a newly developed COVID-19 employee portal to enable the safe implementation of policies and tracking of employees returning to dealership floors.

In “unlocking” the automotive retail sector as it gradually returns to full trade, it’s critical that this process is fully compliant with all necessary safety measures and current legislation. With its fully digitised COVID-19 portal, dealerships can institute automatic assignment of processes to achieve this.

Steve Keys, Bidvest Automotive CEO, states: “As the percentage of employees allowed back is increased, it is vitally important for the organisation to plan their shift assignments digitally, so that the correct processes and thresholds can be executed.”

Through the portal, all dealerships can now access a full range of declaration documentation, educational content, management reporting and real-time tracking.

How it works:

• The online portal is desktop and mobile responsive, and maintains all records related to the latest government regulations for the “unlocking” of the sector, as well as all employee compliance and educational material.
• Real-time health tracking is enabled as employees digitally capture their “daily health status” when entering the dealership.
• Dealerships will receive automated shift level warnings to ensure the correct resourcing of employees in accordance with regulations.
• Employees can remotely complete mandatory “return to work” declarations with voluntary disclosure of comorbidity concerns, triggering a direct notification to the HR manager.
• Once return to work declarations are completed, employees are led through a series of six personal health and safety compliance training videos to ensure compliance with the correct workplace safety protocols.
• Dealerships will have access to a central repository for point-of-sale material, training collateral and all officially issued communications, including an overlay of real-time COVID-19 statistics for ongoing awareness.

Once an employee has returned to work, their short-term health history is captured to confirm they have not been in contact with an individual known to be suffering from COVID-19. “This also allows us to timeously report and manage any COVID-19 incidents, should an active case be discovered. Closing the loop, the system can be integrated to shift management extracts to payroll, to ensure salaries are paid correctly,” added Keys.

“The dashboard engine provides detailed reporting and extraction of management reports to allow the leadership of the business to monitor their entire workforce’s readiness for their return to work, as well as to give them real-time access to any exceptions that may occur.”

When asked why they were opening this up to the industry, Keys commented: “It’s important that we give South Africans any advantage they need to return to full economic productivity. We believe that the correct use of technology in any industry is a competitive advantage, so we want to support our industry as a whole at this time."

“We wanted to help the automotive retail industry return to work safely and as quickly as possible, while strictly complying with legislation. That is why we are providing the best standardised digital tools to manage, monitor and control their working environments as simply as possible,” said Callie Human, Automotive Executive for Intelligent Business Applications at Dimension Data.