When Covid rang the doorbell and HR opened the door!

Theodore Roosevelt once said that far and away, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Covid pandemic has brought that opportunity to the HR profession’s front door like never before. While HR function is a coherent part of all businesses, it has never been in the spotlight like today. And this spotlight is going to focus on HR for long after Covid crisis subsides. Because what we imagined as the future of work and future of HR, it’s now become the present and brings along some very interesting challenges for HR professionals. 

Here is a list of challenges and changes, and hence opportunities that I believe Covid crisis will bring for HR teams to work on both during and post-pandemic:

1. First and foremost is preserving one’s Employer Brand. Most organizations are faced with tough choices today and are trying their best to meet the economic challenges while protecting and investing in their people. But more than what these organizations decide, how they execute their decisions is going to have a long-lasting impact on their employer brand. The recent execution of 3000+ employees being let go by Uber over a zoom call is a prime example of how not to do it. Whether an organization takes a sensitive approach or a more callous one, will make all the difference. How will these organizations support the exiting employees? Take for example pay cuts or downsizing – many employers have no choice but to take these hard decisions. More and more organizations will now be judged on whether they will provide a good economic package or not in case of a layoff? Whether they provide resume review and career counselling or even the placement support? Answers to these and more such questions will showcase how an organization truly treats its employees today and will be remembered for a long time to come. As the statistics show - When deciding on where to apply for a job, 84% of job seekers say the reputation of a company as an employer is important and 50% of candidates say they wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation – even for a pay increase! Clearly, how an organization took care of its employees (both current and exiting) during this crisis will quickly become a differentiator and USP for their employer brand.
2. Usage of Augmented Reality will see a steep rise in demand and many companies will be investing in integrating AR technologies in their employee experience. As we all learn and adjust to the new virtual ways of working and working from home for extended periods, processes that were designed to be on a physical premise would demand an overhaul with a heavy dose of augmented and virtual reality. The Augmented Reality Market Forecast is expected to hit $70-$75 billion in Revenue by 2023. While most recruiters are already interviewing many candidates virtually, many are yet to figure out how to onboard a new joiner online? How do you make them feel connected and engaged without providing them a physical space which they can touch and feel? How do you train new employees or upskill/reskill current employees on work that needs physical spaces or classroom training like operating a laser or fixing a customer equipment? How do you socialize and connect with your teams beyond work calls if you haven’t ever met them? And even meeting the customers virtually with a personal touch and an impactful experience? – many questions and one answer – augmented reality! Augmented reality doesn’t necessarily need investment in equipment like VR headsets and when done right can be hugely successful like Pokémon Go which has been downloaded over a billion times already. The audio-video conferencing products like Zoom, bluejeans, hangouts, MS teams are already cashing in on this opportunity by introducing the use of backgrounds and AR meeting rooms. 
3. Focus on Employee Wellbeing is another top priority which has become even more critical owing to the work literally becoming something we carry in our pockets, with remote work becoming the norm creeping into our living rooms. As highlighted by a report from the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) 41% of highly-mobile employees feel some degree of stress, compared to 25% of office workers. 42% of work-from-home employees surveyed suffer from insomnia, compared to just 29% of those who work in an office setting. Isolation increases the risks of mental health issues such as depression, dementia, social anxiety, and low self-esteem. And current uncertainty has only added the fuel to the fire. There are clear risks linked to the encroachment of work into spaces and times normally reserved for personal life and with remote work becoming the only way to work for most of us, wellbeing initiatives and programs need to be re-looked at in terms of both planning and delivery. Reports say that this is going to translate into pre-traumatic stress even after COVID is over and hence there needs to be a strategic, long term plan to manage this by all orgs that truly care. 
4. As work from home becomes a norm and the whole world practically becomes one talent pool, the war for talent will intensify further - not just externally but internally as well. There is already a huge need to balance the demand and supply of the talent inside an organization, elevating the need of an Internal Talent Market and Gig-Economy. Having implemented a similar initiative myself, I can only vouch for the value and RoI this brings for an organization with thousands of hours of work unlocked as productivity. With a truly open talent market, anyone, located anywhere, can apply for an internal job or a gig, at any time - which results in not just optimizing the workforce productivity but also allowing your employees to follow their aspirations, learn on the job and build their own career paths. This also increases employee engagement as employees find a way to repurpose their existing skills or learn new skills that help contribute to their organization during uncertain times, giving them a sense of purpose and satisfaction. As per Gallup research, changes in employee engagement are best attributed to changes in how organizations develop employees. Their State of the Global Workplace report states that 85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work, resulting in approximately $7 trillion in lost productivity. With cost savings due to internal hiring and additional productivity due to unlocked hours and increased engagement - a well implemented and truly open talent market can contribute directly to both the top-line and the bottom-line. While creating an open talent market like this would have been a huge challenge a few years back, its not the case any more with niche AI technology products in this space like Gloat, Fuel 50, Saba, Talent360, and more. Working closely with Gloat for creating this game changing Open Talent Market in Schneider, I can confidently say that a truly open talent market opens up a plethora of opportunities for realizing and tapping into the true potential of internal talent, especially in a crisis like co-vid.
5. Staying at home, spending time with family and learning to manage with lesser wants and focusing more on needs is surely going to nudge many of us towards the path of Self Realization. Some of us would want to focus more on family, some would want to work with a purpose and others would have a new found love for their job realizing the impact its creating in a crisis. Now, I don’t have any surveys or numbers to quote for this but it will surely lead many organizations to re-evaluate and redesign their Talent Practices. It will call for redesigning job descriptions, flexible work arrangements and creating job structures that can attract, engage and retain a diverse workforce with diverse needs. We will need to rewrite the definition of performance and potential, ones that foster agility, resilience and inclusion. Adaptability, collaboration and empathy will be the top factors and contribution of the team vs that of an individual will lead the way for talent evaluations in the future. This will also call for organizations training their managers to change the out of sight - out of mind mindset and move to measuring 'input' and ‘results’ instead. According to a study by Harvard 40% of the supervisors and managers in their study expressed low self-confidence in managing workers remotely and there is a big need for training the managers in how to devolve job autonomy, and to check in rather than check up on. Trust is not optional anymore and micro management needs to be strongly discouraged to foster a culture of productivity, collaboration and mental wellbeing. Many organisations are in fact already investing in disrupting how we connect, collaborate and communicate with special focus on re-learning ways of working in the virtual world. Empathy, and inclusivity will now hold a much higher weightage in evaluating employees than ever before.
6. Rewards and Benefits is another area which will have a long term impact and will be reformed beyond short term pay adjustments and COVID focused cost cutting measures being taken by the organizations today. Rewards composition will need to be rethought and redesigned as the meaning of rewards and benefits change for employees. More employees will increasingly look for long term health benefits even if it calls for adjusting some component of their monthly in-hand with insurance/medical care. There will be more focus and demand for more money being invested by employers on retrials, WFH benefits and maintaining hygiene at the workplace. There will also be an increase in the ask for benefits like child care, family care and coverage for COVID like uncertain situations, supported by telehealth, telemedicine and related insurance. As per a benefits report by Fortune, since the pandemic, 86% of companies are encouraging employees to access telemedicine or telehealth services if they need care. With the concept of hot seats and working from home becoming the new normal, the pay structures and flexible benefits will also need to align with needs of working from home vs working from office, from paying for performance to paying for skills, and from paying a bigger lump sum for yearly incentives to smaller sum for short term incentives combined with higher fixed pay. A study by Korn Ferry has suggested that “predictability of pay” will be an increasingly important factor going forward, which means that employees will place a greater premium on a higher fixed base pay, rather than highly variable and potentially sky high ‘performance-linked’ incentives. As more employees set up home offices, companies like Adobe and Oracle are already setting an example by covering home office setup costs and allowing employees to use office equipment at home where necessary. And the organizations will have to find a way of balancing these costs with the savings that can come from infrastructure, logistics and utility costs required for running a physical office facility. There should also be additional rewards warranted for front line workers in the field as they are prone to more exposure than others. As per a report by KPMG Nigeria, once such a component is the hazard pay that should be considered for those performing essential services that cannot be done remotely or from home. 
7. Last but certainly not the least, dealing with the spike in cyberattacks and managing new issues faced by Cyber Security will also need HR to play a big role. While enterprise IT teams are doing everything they can to beef up the security protocols and protect the enterprise assets, especially the data we carry with us in our laptops and phones, it will still be the HR - and especially the L&D teams task to focus on training and sensitizing employees around information security, social breaches that can happen while working remotely and how to safeguard the organizations interest and information in this new normal. In the long term, information security needs to be ingrained in the culture, led by HR. Cyber security is no more just a mandatory learning To be completed as a part of yearly goals but a critical employee policy with consequences in case of non-compliance. As reported by Cybint, approximately $6 trillion is expected to be spent globally on cybersecurity by 2021 and 95% of cybersecurity breaches are due to human error. HR can play a crucial role in avoiding such breaches by helping employees navigate technology and turn them into partners in securing the organization. 

There is so much going on in the HR world today as we all combat the current uncertainty, trying new things and experimenting with new processes, new policies and new technology. One thing that personally interests me is to see what we can learn with our collective intelligence and insights that orgs worldwide would have generated from various experiments and outcomes of COVID crisis response projects/changes. And how we can leverage our learnings from these initiatives and insights to keep this spirit of innovation and agility continuing even in the post-COVID era.

__________________________________________________________________________* The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

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References:

• https://www.talentnow.com/recruitment-statistics-2018-trends-insights-hiring-talented-candidates/
• https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/cx/2016/10/global-recruiting-trends-2017
• https://www.gallup.com/workplace/284180/factors-driving-record-high-employee-engagement.aspx
• https://hbr.org/2020/07/remote-managers-are-having-trust-issues
• https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/r-srinivasan/reinventing-the-meaning-of-work/article32164493.ece
• https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/92571-increasing-cybersecurity-gaps-and-vulnerabilities-due-to-remote-work-during-covid-19
• https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/ng/pdf/advisory/covid-19-and-employee-rewards.pdf
• https://fortune.com/2020/04/16/coronavirus-employee-benefits-sick-leave-covid-19/
• https://www.cybintsolutions.com/cyber-security-facts-stats/