Digitally plugged but yet unplugged

People are living ever more lonely lives in an ever-connected world.

More than one-third of the world's population is now in lockdown as the world battles the coronavirus pandemic. Life will not return to normal soon – the world has changed and many of these changes will become permanent. Human-to-human interaction is restricted, it could be second nature to recoil from shaking hands while greeting one another, even the Indian urban elites will be seen folding their hands in ‘Namaste’ or shaking a leg. How long will it take before folks are comfortable inviting family and friends at home or renting their house to strangers over the weekend?

Our workplace has transformed too. Human- resource heads need to rethink the workplace with alternative workforce models. A crisis of this scale can reorder the workplace in dramatic ways – work from home has become a necessity.

Digital is Imperative

Remote Work is Real and here to stay. For the HR teams the time for change is clearly ripening. To keep up with this continuously evolving workplace, they not only need to invent new ideas and products to engage their workforce, but also reinvent themselves over and over again. HR teams have been talking about digital transformation. Now is the time to “get it going – and fast”. They need to organize themselves with the new work policy, be the role models, reskill their internal teams, embrace digital workplace with ultra-agility, and make their digital workplace thrive.

Resilience and Reset

People across the world are reinventing ways to connect- with everyone always digitally plugged, they now value physical human interaction – digital is not necessarily and always better than plain-old human interaction.

HR now needs to design work-from home polices, making individual jobs and roles meaningful, productive, and enjoyable online. They need try to imbibe new values and build cultures of creativity and generosity in teams. Trust has emerged as a virtue to value along with good listening skills, compassion and empathy. Should leaders take the opportunity to give their employees more control over their schedules? Should they reflect on what they have learned from enforced experiments around home working? The idea of leveraging human interaction in combination with digital is vital.

HR teams are now evaluating candidates on not just skills and competency and job-fitness but how passionate they are about their work? If employees are given a choice of doing their work without any restrictions or responsibilities attached, what would they choose? Millennials are already demanding employee empowerment and flexible work hours. Darwin theory of evolution states that natural selection also favours a sense of flexibility - it's not always the strongest (and fittest) species that survives; it's the most adaptable.

But first they need to reset themselves – they now are the front-line healers in the company, our heroes. They need to keep employees safe and healthy, maintain their moral, oversee (an unplanned) remote-working experience, and plan whom to layoff and how, as companies decide to retrench.

So, start to redesign from scratch.

Right People Matter

Organizations have realized the power of people in helping solve problems – the right people are your most important asset. Today, the world is saluting the frontlines against coronavirus - doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, caregivers, utility workers, and stores that are providing essential services.

When this all gets over, our HR teams will put ‘people first’ more than ever – but this time the traits they seek would not be listed in their antiquated pile of JDs, the role of “distributed but coordinated” teams is important to act promptly and build resilience. Will it become harder for talent acquisition teams to find talent, one that is not just the perfect-fit for the job role, but also has good listening skills, is empathetic, a problem-solver, curious to adapt to the evolving workplace, and more. With constrained hiring budgets, will the HR teams have the luxury of time and tools to evaluate all this? Will they be able to prepare their teams to quickly respond to a black swan event?

Leadership matters - chief people officers and HR heads are now the captain of the ship. They will have to take difficult decisions – there will be layoffs, pay cuts, and organizational restructuring with new work models with alternative workforce – remote work, independent work, gig economy with short term engagements, and temporary contracts will now be mainstream. Going forward, they need to embed “resilience” in all their programs, designs, and people.

A decade ago, the boardrooms turned to the finance chiefs, when the financial crises rocked the world, today they are looking towards the chief people officer who can make or break a company. This storm shall pass. But the choices we make will have long term implications.

HR heads need to embrace digital and do so with prudence. EasyTalent is a video interview platform with built-in battery of skill, psychometric, and digital competency assessments (which can be proctored). To hire right, HR teams will also need to evaluate the curiosity and ‘ability to learn’ skills of the candidates, expect them to perform optimally and yet stay invested in the company for the long-term – even during disruption.

Will the HR teams be able to acquire and more importantly retain the best people?