HR management must fix its covid-19 practices

Covid-19 has hit our society badly, killing 1,5 million people to date, and infecting close to 70 million individuals worldwide. About 40 millions of the infections relate to workers,- who are also facing additional pressure points  besides risk of contamination.

Examples of pressure points to employees during covid-19

Consider the following:

The first pressure point relates to job delivery. If remote work may be safer, this typically covers 40% of the tasks of population ; further, this is not to say that it is something workers aboslutely appreciate.  In fact, most of work today  happens in team and community, making the bonding a core component of job well being and productivity.

When it comes to job on-site, the issue is still the health hazard- in effect, 50% of physical contact of workers traditionally happens at work. Various surveys suggest that a large stress may remain about coming back to work.  Silicon Valley is a case in point - while a champion for pushing for back-to-work, it is reported that 70% of the tech professionals in the US[1] are fearing to come working back on site,- the so called FOG (fear of going back at work).  Another September survey commissioned by the work platform Envoy, found that about 3 out of 4 on US employees remains worried to go back onsite.[2]

The second pressure point is the fear of job loss, and finance stabilization- fror most workers, work is the main source of funds for their lifestyle.  Most of large pandemics that our world has encountered, have lasted for a period of 8-16 months. As most of companies (and a fortiori SMEs) have only a few months of cash to survive any crunch, bankruptcy risk might only, but increase with the length of the sanitary crisis. ILO recently warned that more than 400 million enterprises face high risks of serious disruption worldwide, due to covid.[3]

The third pressure point for workers is social—some occupations, like the healthcare workers, can support the risk they take,- but are especially worried that they are more exposed to contamination—and in effect, would be the main channel to infect their close ties,- kids and old timers.

HR practices common used during covid-19

If the crisis for employees is more than just health hazard risk, this requires to identify the mix of those  causes, and frame  enought of innovative human resources management (HRM) practices, to stabilize well-being.  

Besides sanitary practices on social, and quarantine via teleworking, a set of common practices have emerged. The practices include work flexibility,  removal of pay incentives only to top management to avoid hits on the most modest portion of the employee pyramid,  the  redeployment of lifestyle-based and education trainings, or the delivery of all needed tools to work effectively from home.

Surprisingly, the above tactics are rarely balanced with the mix of risk of the workforce, let alone that tactics have been made in mass-, without consideration that not every worker is the same regarding its attitude and perceptions around the covid crisis.

If the mix of risk perception is not addressed, and if people react very differently to a ? one size fits all ? approach, HRM practices are likely to be a very big miss, even will possibly worsen the situation.  

The big misses of current HRM during covid-19

In our recent research[4],  we first discovered  (see Figure 1)  that risk expression are rather large and balanced ( even if health remains the largest worry—but only account for 40% of total worry expression by workers).

Figure 1 : the mix of worries expressed by the European workers during covid 19

We then found out that clearcut attitude segments of workers prevail. The European population may be split into 5 segments—where the first one is mostly overwhelmed by the covid crisis, as they suffer from an exhaustive area of risk, from health to financial and pyschological risks. Contrast this segment with the 5th segment, which is much less worried ( 3 times less than the first)—and is main worry is social. In between the level of stress is large too, and segments differentiate based on whether the main risk is job/finance oriented or health oriented, or both.

Figure 2 : European workers have different level of stress during Covid 19

Those segments show that proposing health protection to the last segment, or the finance worried segment is a big miss- and this covers aboiut 50% of the German and Scandinavian worker population. Not addressing the full range of risk, eg mental health elements for example, misses the target of segment 1, or about 40% of the Spanish population.

Finally, while not necessarily of focus for enterprises, 1/3 of employees worry about domestic violence—and this is often not integrated in HRM practices, while work and home have collapsed into one location.  

Reframing HRM practices

The above cleary suggests that HRM has been more HR- mismanagement. THe results above explain why, but also provide a key reframing practices:

1. Embrace a broader set of issues and location to offer HR practices. We have seen that home worries are overlapping with working time worries- and especially because of large teleworking during crisis lockdown. Also, embrace a much larger spectrum of worries as they all have effect on well-being, thus on labor productivity ultimately.

2. Consider to poll your workforce, so that you can identify to what segment they belong to address their mix of concern. Five segments seem to prevail, and a few markers can be easily identified to allocate workers to segments. Those with mental health issues are more probably fitting the first segment- and those workers are likley to be the ones who would want to come to work, but are facing the dilemma that they are really afraid of getting infected. Those who want to come to work and worry more about domestic matters only are likley to be the last segment; those that want to work to preserve job and finance, and likley to be segment number 3

3. Develop a cohesive set of practices by segment, so that workers feel listened to, and feel to be re-insured.

Above all, given the stress level to everyone, there are also a few non-regret moves that should be applied to everyone-- with the option to use or not, as part of their attitudes. Level of stress is high to everyone, even if relatively different by segment; thus offer perspective on health cure, ontop of pure protective matters; offer felxbility in work time to accomodate the collsion of home and work, secure the finance, and treat well those who the company will have to lay off. Provide clear signal that agaisnt this risk of lay off, people will be compensated, insurance such as health and home coverage could be part of leave package, etc.

HR management is really strategic at this time- make labor being real human being is a no regret move and a guarantee of resilience for the future of companies

(c) Jacques Bughin

nota: I wish to thank my academic colleagues in footnote 4 for their inspiration.

[1] See https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/coronavirus-is-triggering-fear-of-going-to-work

[2] https://envoy.com/content/new-survey-highlights-employees-fears-about-returning-to-work/

[3] See COVID-19: Stimulating the economy and employment: ILO: As job losses escalate, nearly half of global workforce at risk of losing livelihoods. These enterprises are operating in the hardest-hit economic sectors, including some 232 million in wholesale and retail, 111 million in manufacturing, 51 million in accommodation and food services, and 42 million in real estate and other business activities.

[4] See Bughin, J., M. Cincera, R. Ohme, D. Reykowska, M. ?yszkiewiczb (2020., The great employee divide: clustering employee ? well-being ? challenge during covid, iCite WP2020 -. Université libre de Bruxelles.