HR Services and uncertainties of current environment

Thousands of blogs and articles have been written about in the last few months. They cover issues relating to health, safety, disruption to work, impact on productivity, and job losses temporary and permanent. I have been attending webinars every week to understand and learn from experts from a variety of background. One of the main issues that organizations are dealing with is the fear of sustaining morale and productivity with the forced choice of virtual workplace due to the pandemic. 

During last 10 years, even traditional organizations have gone a long way in accepting virtual working since research has proven the benefits of virtual working such as improved productivity, increased motivation, attract and retain top talent and improve diversity.

Organizations that are technology driven including start-ups have been using virtual and remote working for the last 10 years effectively with improvements to infrastructure and technology innovations. However, small to medium organizations that don’t have dedicated HR Services departments to assist and enable virtual working, face a higher level of challenge in creating and sustaining remote working for all employees due to the current pandemic. 

They require training and investment in helping the employees adapt technology to the changed circumstance, create flexible yet robust processes to working productively in a team based environment, and tailored communications to keep the employees engaged.  While some of them use external HR Service providers, many of them may view such HR Services as not critical to their business and learn on the fly and make lot of mistakes that impact the employee engagement, morale and productivity. 

HR Service providers can effectively assist such organizations in creating and sustaining polices, processes and systems including training the leaders and people managers in playing critical role in this new environment which is expected to last a considerable time in the future until a drug and vaccine has been created to alleviate this illness.  

HR Service providers have come a long way in being able to assist such organizations due to their experience of working with a multitude of organizations and their ability to customize services that is tailored to such organizations in need. 

HR Service providers also have a significant role in helping organizations to prepare for the future as it gets to the “new normal”, even after the pandemic has been stopped with vaccines and drugs. They offer solutions to transform the workplace to the needs of the new reality. This includes changing hiring practices, business travel, new standards of workplace hygiene, protective equipment, and changes to workplace reward and recognition systems to the new normal working.

While there is no cookie cutter approach in dealing with this, organizations that proactively adapt and execute their future workplace will gain significant competitive advantage. HR Service providers can make a difference to such organizations.