HR during the COVID-19 era

Before COVID-19 hit, HR did not had a seat in the table in many companies. The pandemic changed that; HR now has a permanent seat and has cemented its position as the right hand of the MDs, helping navigate complex people-centric challenges. Due to the pandemic both employers and employees were threw into chaos and uncertainty, with no clear end in sight. HR operated in crisis mode for most of 2020 and all of 2021, figuring out how employees could work from home, trying to provide extra mental and physical health support, and working more than ever on C-level strategies for keeping their organizations functioning. As the dust continues to settle and companies adjust to a new normal, the role of HR has fundamentally changed.?Most changes where spotting on the following areas:

Putting the ‘Human’ Element Back in HR

The pandemic completely changed the way organizations are operating, now they are putting emphasis on their people and this is where HR is taking action.?Organizations are trying to understand what their people are going through and to support them outside the company as well. HR professionals are still focusing on tasks such as performance, productivity and efficiency of the workforce, however, at the same time they are trying to understand the challenges their team members are facing and what problems they are dealing with in and out of work. According to researches, employees who are receiving support from their organizations report positive impact on their overall wellbeing.

In each organization, is important this support to the HR professionals coming from the top. Senior management is realizing that HR is one of the most critical functions in a corporation and it is important in order to ?get a holistic view of employees and support them effectively. The new way of operating has created more flexible work, new opportunities and challenges and ?has forced HR professionals to define and develop new skills and processes to optimize what is expected of them in order to make sure that the employees are ?engaged and inspired. HR professionals were always focusing in both the physical and mental health of the employees, however, now, they are more proactive. That led them to become more emotional intelligent and develop skills that help to understand problems early and try to help.

There were many different ways HR professionals put the “Human” back to their roles and the most import was to focus on the “Employee experience”. Few areas HR had to focus during the pandemic were:

1. Pay attention to the employees who start working in the company during the pandemic in a complete remote environment. Those employees never met in person any of their colleagues, thus, HR professionals had to come up with new mentoring and co-workers connection programs to help them understand the company’s culture and values.
2. HR professionals had to establish new ways to have the “tough conversations”. Face-to-face discussions were no longer and option and the people’s team had to train the manager on how to host those conversations in a virtual environment.
3. Employees’ mental health is also a very important topic for the HR. HR had to focus on the uniqueness of each employee, pay more attention to them as people and to what might affect them and establish programs to help them cope with their mental health, eg frequent wellbeing checks with HR or their managers.
4. Since most of the people are still working from home, HR became responsible for different things such as where the employees work; how they work; is their work efficient?; do they set boundaries?.

Destigmatizing Mental Health Issues

Even before pandemic more and more companies were focusing on their employees’ mental health. During the pandemic more people were diagnosed with mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. That led many companies to focus on increasing their mental health benefits and addressing issues to the company’s culture, and its employees’ attitudes and values. ?The best way for the HR professionals to support the team members with mental health problems is to create a culture which is supportive. To do so they need to:

1. Be vulnerable and authentic. That could mean many different things such as sharing your own personal experience with mental health issues. Even talking to your team about having a bad day. That will show to your team that you have a human side as well and it will encourage them to be more open with a variety of topics.
2. Model mentally healthy behavior. Act as an example in order to help your team to demonstrate healthy work/life boundaries. For example, tell them that you will not reply to emails after a certain hour.
3. Be curious about your employees, but don’t assume anything. Even though managers should check in with their teams very often, they shouldn’t jump to conclusions. For example, a team member who’s tired could show signs of depression, however, they might had a night out too. It will be better to try to determine the cause through discussions.

New Ways of Working

Finally, HR is the main function where its professionals had to understand what will work better for the employees in the new post-pandemic environment, onsite, remote or hybrid. To do that HR professionals need to be flexible, adaptable and creative. The need of those skills among the HR professionals will continue even after COVID, thus, HR will play an important role in determining what worked well during the crisis and building on that to create competitive advantages. Moving forward, companies will have to understand how they want to function in both operational and cultural levels. That task is very complex and it falls within the HR function. HR professionals will have to update their processes once again, in order to improve their workflows. In addition, they will have to review their culture, values and operations and make sure that they are aligning with the new environment and with their goals.

Furthermore, many companies have started rethinking the office concept. COVID helped the organizations to understand where they are standing and to redesign their workplaces. ?Based on their needs, many companies are reducing the space they are using and they are focusing on allocating the real estate funds to other functions more important to the organization and to their employees’ experience. The new norm is more flexibility with employees all over the countries, thus, organizations are focusing on the change management instead of the traditional office management and in the employees’ experience in all the different levels instead of only the performance management.

How companies enable and adapt to the new work environment is key to their gaining a competitive advantage and to their ability to attract and retain the right talent.