Leading and Learning Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis

By Julie Jessup, Stephanie Parry and Antoine Tirard

Twenty Human Resources leaders described how their organisations were able to change quickly and mobilise people while focusing on well-being in response to COVID-19. They are now asking themselves how to sustain these advances, what will the future of work look like and how will they get there? 

We recently ran a series of peer conversations involving twenty international HR leaders ranging from some of the largest blue-chip companies through to innovative start-ups. Some were major contributors to supporting businesses and the public during this crisis, while others had to temporarily lay off a significant portion of their workforce.  

Regardless of the specific challenges each was facing, these HR leaders shared common experiences and questions that we believe have wide relevance:

• Changing Fast -- The COVID crisis revealed that the ability of organisations to transform quickly is higher than ever imagined – how do they anchor this in their DNA moving forward? 
• Mobilising People -- Compassionate and transparent communication from leaders was reinforced and this engaged people throughout many organisations – how do they turn it into a leadership habit?  
• Well-being -- The pandemic has further increased pressure on the mental, physical and emotional well-being of employees – how will organisations reconsider their health and wellness programmes?
• The Future of Work -- Companies have an opportunity to proactively define what comes next: how we use office space, what work is digitalised or how we collaborate – what does this mean for the future of work?  
• Getting There -- Human Resources have been at the centre of managing the crisis - what will their role look like in the future? 

Changing Fast

For most of the participants, their organisations have demonstrated a speed of transformation and resourcefulness they had rarely experienced in the past. They were able to equip and secure a distributed workforce, create solutions, shift production to life-saving products, and manage the complexity of a crisis across geographies. 

To capitalise on this moving forward, we believe it is essential to bring this capacity for change into the organisational narrative and anchor it in the DNA of its culture. We believe this starts with gathering, understanding and communicating success stories which change corporate identity and drive the behaviours and habits of the entire organisation. 

Mobilising People

All of the participating companies have become more purposeful about internal communications during the crisis. Executive Committees were reaching out more, by necessity and concern. With a fast-evolving situation and stark shift in what and how work gets done, increasing top-down communications was essential. HR leaders intensified their listening to employees through more frequent and tailored surveys or added “coffee slots” in their calendars for a chat. In addition, leaders made an extra effort to check-in with employees, to understand how this situation was impacting them, and to work to alleviate pain points where possible. Compassion felt more normalised and easier to express. The increase in communication and compassion helped mobilise the workforce. Many spoke of high engagement, renewed purpose, and closer ties with leadership.

“We received the results of our people engagement survey and realised we had better results during Covid-19 versus last year. Why? Communication never stopped – from the CEO, the heads of departments, there were lots of exchanges.” 

We think that this is the time to ensure that leaders clearly see the link between their actions and increased engagement. Encouraging leaders to be aware of how people have reacted to these renewed efforts can help them identify what has been impactful and why.  This can help leaders embed these habits as organisations move out of crisis mode.

Well-being

In all the conversations the theme of “well-being” was highlighted. All employees have indeed faced a change in their working circumstance, whether it is a shift to homework, more intense production rates in a manufacturing plant or being furloughed. Cultivating compassionate leadership has become critical to care for people in crisis and to set the stage for business recovery. The conversations covered how to avoid burn-out caused by relentless zoom meetings, non-stop work to produce essentials such as hand-sanitiser, or the stress of precarious employment. There were many examples of emerging good practice but underlying all of these is the fundamental concern about how, despite the blurring of boundaries between home and work, employees and their families can properly disconnect from their work, given that the shift is towards indefinite home work.

We believe that the need to consider well-being in the workplace has become more important in recent years. But like many things, the need to integrate it fully into organisation life has accelerated with the Covid-19 crisis. In the past, “work/life balance” was largely left to employees to manage. We are convinced that given the accelerated impact and potential risks, companies must now take a larger role in establishing best practice and many have. Now is the time to intensify efforts which include all aspects of well-being to ensure efficiency, effectiveness and ultimately business success while reinforcing employee resilience. 

The Future of Work 

Clearly one of the most obvious changes has been an almost overnight shift of large parts of the workforce being able to work from home, even in companies that had previously refused to take the step due to perceived security and productivity risks. This has opened the door to new thinking about where and how work gets done. HR leaders predicted several trends:

• A mix of office and virtual work which would significantly reduce the need for centralised office space
• Time in office would concentrate on collaborative work
• Increased usage of collaborative virtual tools when gathering in an office is not practical
• Reduced travel – we have seen what we are capable of without face to face meetings

Which work is essential, and how that work is accomplished digitally, at a distance, or face to face is also being re-examined more broadly across most industries. For example, what does retail look like moving forward? Can more processes be digitalised than was originally thought? What is the role of sales, and what are the best techniques working virtually? 

“The Word ‘hope’ is important”

HR leaders agreed they have the opportunity to be proactive in defining the new shape of work. Stepping back, challenging their thinking, ensuring they are including all stakeholders, becomes an opportunity to better serve their customers and rethink their businesses. This thinking had already started before the crisis, but we can now accelerate it and build on this unexpected practical experience to engage all parties in shaping the future.

Getting There 

All of the participating HR leaders we spoke to were at the centre of helping their organisations through this crisis. We believe that their skills will be essential in identifying and leveraging the learnings from this crisis, and many have already begun.  They are asking the right questions to strategically lead the future definition of their work and the workplace (see box below). 

5 Key Questions HR Leaders Need to Ask to Lead Forward 

1. How can we completely rethink the way work gets done in order to better serve our market given the practical experience we have gained? 
2. How can we take the lessons learned around well-being and encourage flexible work practices that also protect from burnout? 
3. What is our role regarding the health of our employees?
4. How can we relook at some of the key HR processes such as performance management, compensation and benefits, learning and development, and adapt them to this new way of working?
5. How can we create and maintain a strong corporate culture in this new environment which will anchor the learnings around fast change, compassion, communication and empower people to make the right decisions?

Human Resources leaders are uniquely positioned to lead the thinking in their organisations on these topics. They can take the opportunity to shift the paradigm around work and play a key role in bringing their organisations out of this crisis towards a more efficient, more productive, and more compassionate organisation that creates sustainable performance.

We are in the centre of a constantly moving situation with significant uncertainty. We cannot yet even be sure what we have learned or are learning, but the HR leaders in our discussions were working hard to notice, to bring to life, and to hold on to the positive behaviours and trends that seemed to have the greatest impact. We believe we are starting to see a convergence around several key themes that organisations must address in order to succeed in the future. These seem to us to amount to a fundamental change in the ways we think about and organise work.

How about you? (please post your comments)

• Is this what you are seeing?
• What else are your experiencing? 
• What else is on your mind? 

Julie Jessup (www.juliejessup.com) is a leadership coach and consultant. She has held several senior international HR positions and has been developing leaders for over 25 years. Stephanie Parry (www.stephanie-parry.com) is an executive coach and organisation consultant. She led International Employee Development at EMC Corporation. Antoine Tirard (www.nextalent.fr.en) is a talent management advisor and the founder of NexTalent. He is the former head of talent management of Novartis and LVMH.