Redefining Role Of Hr Following Covid-19 Pandemic

 

Corona virus pandemic has disrupted the lives of millions of people across the world. It has caused companies to rapidly change the way of work according to the environmental changes. There has been a paradigm shift in what companies considered as an idle work culture. All face to face meetings, collaborations, have been replaced by videoconferencing, and emails. Work from home or remote working has become the New Normal.

It is in these testing times, role of Human Resource teams become more crucial in organizations across the globe. HR plays a vital role in maintaining swift communications in an efficient manner to meet the needs of the organisations. Companies are looking forward to HR teams to help the business plan for continuity, implementing rapidly changing policies and catering the needs of clients and virtual workforce during the stressful times.

To ensure smooth functioning of the organizations, HR should focus on Three areas:

Maintaining Organizational culture- Peter Drucker once said that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This means that a corporate culture is just as importance as corporate strategy. It is crucial to maintain culture specially in the times of crisis as it plays crucial role in building team morale and productivity. It is the responsibility of an HR to foster company culture for remote workforce through clear communications, creating dedicated space for employees to connect, by holding virtual team building events, scheduling regular calls, involving employees’ families for small virtual get together.

Wellbeing and work life- The current virtual culture primarily focuses on work. This abrupt transition from office to remote work, has created a void in the social life of employees. It is having some serious repercussions on employee’s wellness and is leading to reduced productivity. In order to keep the moral high, HR should focus on designing effective employee engagement initiatives, introduce the upskilling programs, foster flexibility and conduct online sessions on wellbeing.

Focus of Administering HR systems- Covid-19 pandemic has forced the organizations to establish new rules and regulations based on central government or state mandates and must implement their approaches. HR must respond quickly to develop new policies or written FAQ’s, providing clarity and consistency to the stakeholders and remote workforce. Apart from this HR should also focus on addressing compensation need of all employees as it is critical for employee’s financial health. In addition to this, they should also come up with the plans toto offer increased flexibility, to change work status, or shift retirement plan. Human resource department within the organization should use People Analytics to support employees, allocate resources and focus, measure impact and plan.

Today HR plays a central role within the organizations. The HR function is at the fulcrum of the response by the organizations to the crisis. The current pandemic has presented the HR’s with an unexpected opportunity to experiment with their way of working and ensure that the employees are motivated and empowered at home.