COVID-19 pandemic has possibly changed forever the way workplaces will operate in the future. Scientists and infectious diseases experts are advising us to be ready to live with the coronavirus in our lives, maybe for years to come. But things must go on; industries need to restart, offices need to open, there are only so many days that we can go in this make-shift working style and workplaces.
LEARN ABOUT: Service Recovery
A recent study of HR Managers by Gartner shows that 88% of organizations have their employees working and self-isolating from home.
We are going to look at 3 key features in this blog article. Let’s dive right in.
Prioritize
This is one crazy hand we’ve been dealt, but we must power through. You need to plan your priorities and act accordingly.
Employee wellbeing first
Focus first on ensuring the wellbeing of your employees first, both physical and mental. This situation is entirely new for almost all organizations, but keeping our mental peace is key to keep functioning smoothly.
Communicating smoothly
Smooth, transparent, and constant communication is key to getting through this. Make sure all your employees have access to the necessary tools to communicate with each other. Establish new channels of team communication such as Slack, Skype, etc.
Ensuring business continuity
This will happen when all of your employees have the necessary tools to be productive and efficient. Check-in on them to see what they need and what could make their work easy.
Managing costs
Organizations may save on physical costs since employees have gone remote, but the question about keeping all employees on board arises. Leaders need to carefully analyze and resolve this issue.
Plan for recovery
When we resume work, it will never go back exactly to the way things were. Your people and business strategy will need some modifications, and you best be ready with one.
Monitor
It is imperative that you frequently check-in on your employees, not only to see how they are doing, but also to see if you are providing them with adequate support, and are they being as productive as always. How do you monitor all of this? From our own experiences of this situation, we developed a survey template and a tool to conduct periodic checks with our employees. You can use these in your organization, too; details are as below.
Remote employee health check-in
The survey template that we created delves into 3 key areas:
- Team support
- Tools
- Communication
Questions in these sections are designed in a way to gauge if all employee needs are being met. This survey can be conducted weekly or fortnightly to track and measure progress. The surrey analysis tool presents you with a heat map that lets you know which areas need looking into and which areas are doing fine. You can track these changes across teams and locations. We recently conducted a webinar on the same; you can view the recording on our website. This is a free-to-use online survey template, so, if you want to run the assessment, just write to us on [email protected]
Pulse queue
With Pulse Queue, the management team, supervisors, and HODs can inquire about their teams’ productivity and wellbeing by sending a question every week. They can also queue questions for the subsequent weeks. As with any pulse survey, this study is dedicated to finding one important – employee wellbeing. You can gather various statistics around Pulse Queue, such as the number of responses, segmentation, week-on-week comparison, etc.
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Improvise
This new change in work-style and business operations is here to stay. So how do employers and employees get used to it? What can we do to smooth things over? We’ve compiled a list of things that have worked for us and wanted to share with you.
Set up a WFH policy
Setting up fair and transparent rules and guidelines about WFH will clear any confusion or doubts employees may have. These need to be consistent for all employees, and they need to adhere to it. Managers should inquire if employees are having any challenges telecommuting, and they should resolve them.
Updates – give and take
The management team has to constantly update employees with new processes, decisions, structural changes, etc. Employees are worried about their jobs, their loved ones, and uncertainty in the markets; management can help them breathe easy with regular updates.
It should be the same for managers and employees; there should be status updates about assignments, deadlines, etc.
Revamp your onboarding and offboarding processes
Virtual onboarding is the new norm. Organizations haven’t stopped hiring, and people are pursuing new opportunities. How can you best onboard new employees virtually? How can it be as effective as your old process? Find answers to these questions, and you should be good.
When it comes to offboarding, things may get tricky with various obligations, formalities, and such. It can still be done in a way that is smooth and effective. Figure this out as we go.
This is what we are doing internally, and it’s working for us. What’s working for you? We would love to hear from you.
