Caught Unaware

The outbreak of Corona Virus has caught the world unaware and big organizations known for their foresight and vision have also dealt with it re-actively for the first time in decades.

From moving systems and work to homes overnight to rescheduling of important meetings/events to avoid the threat the virus poses to human capital, the risks have pushed most firms to revisit their business plans and potentially prepare for another worldwide recession.

The HR fraternity has been dealing with questions on the future of work, manpower rationalization, productivity tracking and duty of care.  

There are predictions about how long will this situation prevail, will it change the way of work and there are projections on the possible business remodeling, manpower cost cutting and re scaling, up-scaling of technology to replace in person meetings, while no one has a definitive answer or plan, there are few trends formidable to ignore

Productivity Tracking

Productivity is more important and critical than ever and its rather ironic that we have offices empty with most employees working through calls and video conferences from home Managers will have to step in and take accountability of their Team Members’ work more than before, this is difficult given the current work from home and can be managed through:

Breaking goals to smaller tasks which need to be tracked on a daily basis, Goals will have to be tracked through crisp and short reviewsOrganizations will benefit from using productivity tracking platforms like Basecamp, Wrike, Asana, JIRA, Mind manager

Quick adaption will be helpful and will go a long way in ensuring discipline and trust early, if the lockdown continues or repeats or not, it’s a good time to reduce dependency on in person meetings or infrequent performance reviews

Structural Changes

Sooner or later the organizations will have to create a list of their Core team members, once this list is ready, organizations will have to look at non-core functions which could either be automated, outsourced or converted in to freelancing / project basis contracts.

While there is no great time or a great way to announce the news of cost cutting to your employees, the sooner you communicate the business issues to them the more are their chances of being prepared and figuring their options.

In the whole process HR and Management must be Transparent and Genuine yet sensitive and empathetic. Businesses will have to keep aside money to cater to severance .

Talent Acquisition

While there are going to be job cuts and talent pool will be available to hire, the time to offer conversations will be longer, people will be sceptical to leave organizations even if they are taking pay cuts in their current workplace

The talent market is not yet used to moving on same or lower salary levels and the trend can take months to set in, as mankind we are hopeful and optimistic and psychologically it is still wrong to switch jobs at minimal or no pay hikes.

It’s a wrong time for people to leave safe pastures and hence job markets will see a surge of applicants but the time to convert applicants to joiners will be considerably increased

Duty of Care

Workplaces of tomorrow will have to focus on health and well-being, organizations will have to keep aside enough budgets for heath check-ups, sanitization and even health insurance for the workers and employees

Apart from the obvious physical well being, there will be an increased demand of psychological experts to deal with impact of anxious and uncertain times on the minds of their employees.

The organizations of tomorrow will look more like hospitals and medical clinics  

Your regular pantry and coffee machine will see lesser footfall than ever,

Organizations will have to focus on innovative engagement initiatives for cohesiveness and sense of belonging.

Learning & Development

With the best universities offering some of their courses for free, the manpower will optimize this opportunity to upscale their skills, People will want to create a skillset totally diverse from their current job roles in order to bring in security and keeping constructively occupied

It’s the best time for Organizations to crack online learning deals with some of the online academies like Udemy, Coursera, Upgrad , Lynda, skillshare, bitdegree etc.

This will go a long way in keeping workforce engaged and focused.

In fact, L&D can be the new Employee engagement of tomorrow.

These are very generic thoughts from what I have read and experienced so far working with some start-ups and smaller enterprises, let me know what you think about the future of work