A thought leader and an action catalyzer rolled into one – Anil Puri is a rare combination of a visionary, and one who has mastered the art of strategic and tactical thinking to the core. He has been using this combination to seed new ideas and to lead them to their implementation on-ground. This has been a consistent feature of his career. He has been keenly watching the wide spread disruption caused by COVID 19 across the board in all contours of the industry. The spontaneous and immediate impact was on the human resource (HR) & employees. Here he attempts to decode the same and peep into transformation thereof. Further, he goes an extra mile to suggest steps which HR leaders can take to navigate through the crisis. The impact of Covid-19 pandemic on health, economies and markets is an unfolding story that is unprecedented, complex and fluid in its ever-changing dimensions. One of the biggest visible impacts of the virus has been on the organizations, people and the nature of workplaces. As the coronavirus spread invisibly across the globe, nation after nation declared lockdowns and organizations scrambled to comply with lockdown restrictions while striving to keep the operations going. The current humanitarian and economic crisis forced people and corporates to consciously step up and reset priorities for steering growth and stability while weathering the storm. Work-from-Home (WFH) became the immediate solution to business continuity. As the guidelines from MHA kept pouring in, the task of HR became more compelling & complex. However, post initial shock effect, gradually the HR functions stepped up to transform and re-set its priorities. How do leaders manage radical changes by redefining guidelines pertaining to people, process, technology and governance? CHALLENGES The spiralling effect of lockdown forced organizations to downsize the businesses, go in for cost cutting, minimise office expenditure, enforce salary cuts, manpower pruning, search for other streams of revenue, uninterrupted employee and customer engagement etc. These measures, coupled with restrictions imposed by MHA and State Govts gave birth to numerous challenges for the HR on ground in form of agility, creativity and flexibility in functions: Leadership deficit: Usually communication had been led by the Top Team but need of the hour urged downstream delegation. Voice of the regional leaders across the company assumed greater importance. Few days of policy paralysis at the top exposed vulnerability and leadership deficit. Crisis response: Crisis response fell into three categories – Communication, Remote Working and Reporting. Communication assumed vital dimension – coordinating responses across teams, business and geographies. Transforming lateral functioning into cross functioning between managers and teams became top priority. Command and control business continuity model needed to be aligned and to be in sync with geographies. Response to rapidly evolving situations: Need to re-organize company goals and their alignment among executives and managers. Safety protocols & mental health: Despite flow of information on social media, communication on safety protocols, hygiene practices, emergency numbers, list of hospitals, guidelines for quarantining and isolating had to be disseminated through company gateways. Need for mental health, resilience, family support, and dealing with uncertainty assumed bigger dimensions. Agility of sales team: Sales teams are still engaged in classical way of marketing despite client being in crisis mode, not quick to understand shifting concerns of the client. It is difficult to manage the mind-set of the marketing team. Mode of thinking of sales people needed a paradigm shift since not engaged with digital projects and not digging into client’s pain points. Poor communications with clients to exploit the new pipeline opportunities was also a gross deficit. Human centric approach to lay-offs: There’s really no avoiding the fact that layoffs are tough, both for the individuals who suddenly find themselves without a job and the organization they leave behind. Organizations tended to experience impaired reputation, reduced longterm performance and lower employee engagement on this context. In this pandemic-induced economic crisis, organizations faced the negative consequences of layoffs as they had to make difficult decisions to preserve the overall health of their businesses. Impact on HR practices & Re-setting the Priorities Work from home (WFH): Re-defining the policies to ensure that employees could work seamlessly and securely. WFH may impact decision-making structures because of the constraints of video meeting platforms. Smaller teams may be able to collaborate better and take decisions faster. Work places: As organizations get more comfortable with employees working remotely, the requirement for office space and fixed workstations may reduce drastically. However, policies had to be redefined for workplaces for functioning with minimal staff with required safety protocols. Infrastructure: Supporting the employees with infrastructure – like provisioning of laptops, data cards to ensure business continuity to facilitate WFH. The procurement of masks, hand washes, and sanitizers was critical even though supplies fell low in the market. Human connect: Amid a rapidly unfolding health crisis, employee safety became prime concern. Safety and social distancing compliance, and regular disinfection/ sanitization of premises have become an essential component of keeping employees safe. Motivation: Keeping employees engaged, motivated, safe and productive is vital to keep up the productivity graph. Motivation became a critical key responsibility areas (KRA). HR practices: Recruitment, on-boarding, and learning and development will remain impacted. Recruitment is likely to focus on tech-savvy talents who can perform better in a predominantly digital workplace. Processes for on-boarding new hires will have to change to become fully digital. Training and skilling will reconfigure for an online-only mode. Integrity and commitment: Standard attendance and leave policies will no longer work. Organizations will have to place a higher degree of trust in the integrity and commitment of employees working remotely. Technology adoption: Having larger remote workforces will push organizations to ramp up technology adoption and digitalization, enable dispersed operations, and collaborative functioning. EMPLOYEE ISSUES Employees who were displaced during the crisis found that the negative impact of being retrenched touched all aspects of their health, from their physical and mental well being, to their financial and social security. Major concerns of employees centered about their…
