Celebrating one million safe returns to work

In the past seven months, we’ve seen people’s thoughts and concerns about their workplaces change. Rather than pondering “What’s for lunch today?” employees now need to think “Will I get sick if I go to the office?”. Although many people remain working from home, just as many continue to go into their workplace daily. Many companies and places of work have no choice but to do their business in person.

As the head of customer success at Envoy, I’ve spent hundreds of hours talking to companies about their reopening plans these past few months. Every single one made it clear that their top priority is their employees’ health and safety. This feedback led us to build Envoy Protect, a solution designed to help workplaces keep employees safe and healthy at work.

As of this week, we’ve seen companies use Protect to power one million safe returns to their workplaces. These teams are researching therapies for COVID, keeping food on our shelves, and educating our youth back in their workplaces.

Today, we want to celebrate and thank the teams that are back at work and keeping the world moving, as well as the companies that protect them.

Here are just a few of the exceptional teams who are back in their workplaces and keeping their work moving forward:

• The New York Stem Cell Foundation returns to their lab to perform and accelerate COVID-19 treatment research. The team creates stem cell models that the scientific community uses to develop therapies to stop the spread of COVID-19.
• Financial technology company Ripple reopened their offices to provide employees who can’t work from home a safe place to work. In light of the ongoing California wildfires, they’ve opened up their spaces to employees who are in need of shelter.
• Sweetgreen, an American fast casual restaurant with over 100 locations, continues to deliver on with their mission to deliver locally sourced and sustainable food products. The company adopted rigorous and clear guidelines for who can come into their retail and corporate locations to ensure everyone, at all their locations, stay safe.
• At 23andMe, the DNA testing and genomics company, many of their employees continue to go to the lab each day. In addition to keeping their business running, these teams perform research to help the medical industry understand how blood type affects peoples’ susceptibility to COVID-19.
• Production companies like Legendary Entertainment and others, are back on set filming TV shows and movies, keeping hundreds of people employed and providing millions of people watching at home some small respite from the happenings of 2020.

And with more than 6,000 companies utilizing Envoy today, that's just the start. It’s inspiring to see workplace leaders jump to share their lessons learned and help each other navigate a safe return to work. Leaders from Slack, The Golden State Warriors, Clorox, and a dozen others have opened up their return-to-work playbooks. Each of these companies have shared their specific plans—from how to manage elevator shifts to temperature screens. You can watch these conversations here.

These companies and many others also shared their feedback to ensure Envoy Protect became a solution that puts employees’ safety and experience first.

To our customers, thank you for trusting us to support you as you navigate these uncertain times. Despite the odds, may we all continue to come together as teams to do the work that matters.