hey are facing in the workforce is anxiety levels. Employers are suddenly required to be both crisis managers and future work designers, all with a huge sense of urgency.
With no existing roadmap, HR leaders are innovating on the fly. A Gartner survey of 172 HR leaders reveals that their priorities changed significantly from December 2019 to six months later. The current top priorities are:
- Future of work
- Critical skills and competency development
- Organisational design and change management
- Employee experience
- Current and future leadership
The future of work is now at the top of the list and flavouring all other priorities. There is nothing like a burning platform to force our hand to innovate.
The pandemic offers HR leaders an extraordinary opportunity to be part of inventing the future of business. With well-being and culture front and centre for executive teams, HR can take the lead in designing work systems that benefit employees, their families, and the business alike.
Here are three critical areas ripe for renewal:
- Employee experience
While some have relished the opportunity of remote working, others have struggled. Younger workers who have not yet established families of their own have missed the social connection afforded in face-to-face environments. Working parents have been squeezed between work commitments and home schooling. In addition, not all home office environments are created equal. Employees may struggle with internet connection, bandwidth, and productive work spaces crammed between the kitchen table and loungeroom.
The employee experience in a future of blended remote working requires employers to develop a customised approach rather than a blanket policy. Some options that businesses have successfully implemented include hotel room day passes for workers with unsuitable home environments, rotating access to office space with A/B team arrangements, and occasional access to co-working spaces located nearby to the employee’s home.
2. Employee engagement
Leaders are noticing the waning enthusiasm of workers as the pandemic and its restrictions drag on into an indefinite future. Generating energy was much easier in a collective physical work space. Leaders will need to assist managers and executives with new remote facilitation skills that focus on resilience, growth conversations, and team-led rituals that cater for blended teams.
Performance management also becomes more challenging without the situational transparency that a physical workspace affords. Leaders will need to work with managers in developing new accountability strategies and key performance indicators.
With a growing concern around mental health in the workplace, employers will also need to deploy resilience training programs for teams and their executives. Self management and well-being skills need to jump to the top of priorities for employee capacity building.
3. Cohesion and culture
What happens when our embedded cultural norms are scuppered due to restricted physical interactions? Decay in the culture is a risk. This is a tremendous opportunity for HR leaders to work with executives and their teams in reinventing rituals that reinforce the desired culture. Questions to ask are:
- How can we make recognition meaningful without a physical crowd to cheer the acknowledgment?
- What platforms do we need to enhance for increased collaboration and interactions now that the incidental corridor conversations are gone?
- How can we make virtual onboarding a special, notable process even if we can’t be there in person?
Some solutions HR leaders are trialling include customised care packages based on personal profile data, WhatsApp mini-groups for teams so they can chat in real time, and assigning virtual work buddies for newcomers to help smooth the onboarding process.
While we may mourn the loss of the familiar, there is still a fantastic opportunity to create work that matters, in a way that employees enjoy, while keeping people happy and safe. Innovation in adversity could well be a blessing in disguise.
