In brief: How the pandemic changed HR productivity, company culture and talent acquisition, and the practical ways HR teams adapted to remote working.
The unforeseen predicament in our era has caused a sudden turn of new challenges across the world. This outbreak has profoundly affected the global economy, putting many professionals out of jobs and businesses. Furthermore, this pandemic has derailed the hiring plans for employers spanning across industries such as Manufacturing, Hospitality, Automobile, Tourism, and Real estate, just to name a few.
On the other hand, in sectors like E-Commerce, Healthcare, and E-learning, we've witnessed an upsurge in hiring due to labour demand. Giants like Amazon and Walmart have definitely scaled to new heights during this pandemic.
Having said that, mid-sized IT companies definitely face innumerable challenges to survive and sail through the rough tides. It has undoubtedly embraced the new mantra, "Work from Home," but optimizing productivity in every department remains a steep hurdle to overcome.
Productivity
Let's first start with Talent Acquisition. This function is the critical bridge between the company and the outside world. The ongoing pandemic has served as a bottleneck for recruitment, and consequently, employers have resorted to hiring remotely. Recruiters who were apprehensive about this are now forced to use remote-hiring tools to conduct online interviews and assessments.
Frankly, the Human Resource department generally wasn't prepared for the current crisis and has limited resources for onboarding new employees remotely. We, recruiters, have grown accustomed to the "Human connection" aspect of the onboarding process, looking forward to the coffee-time conversations with the team, buddy talks, mentor-mentee programs, etc.
Company Culture
Now that companies have gone remote during the pandemic, we are experiencing newfound challenges with their distributed workforce. The goal of Human Resources has always been to attract, retain and grow their talent, and help foster company culture. But COVID-19 has impacted the company culture and also the HR Productivity significantly and has forced us to re-assess new alternative ways to stay motivated during these challenging times.
Talent Acquisition
From a recent survey conducted, researchers say that remote working does not decline productivity. They say that the remote environment has made them more productive because they're better able to craft an environment that works for them. Several factors are entangled: Power outages, disruption in the internet, weather changes, etc.
Another saddening aspect is that innovation has suffered quite a bit during this pandemic. Human Resource is the nucleus to any organization trying its level best to create online hackathons, devising a tech week where employees could build a prototype, bring it across to the table, etc.
Experimenting with new ideas, implementing and embracing the recent changes will definitely take us leaps and bounds. This period should be viewed as a great learning opportunity. Let's quickly adapt ourselves to this new environment and create several success stories together.
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