In December of 2019, I found myself in the audience of a presentation from Dr. Banerjee, one of the three recipients of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics. His presentation focused on the economic impact of breaking down greater societal questions to smaller actionable pieces and the resulting benefits on global issues such as poverty.
The year 2020 found humanity asking a similar question yet again. How does the world extinguish a global health pandemic affecting 185-plus countries and regions, while minimizing its impact on economies, businesses and employees alike? It is now clear that these global issues will require a unified response from Main Street to Wall Street. How we reach toward employees, clients and the organizational bottom line will greatly inform history and how future generations perceive the “Great Lockdown.”
While business leaders reassess the new reality, HR teams will now have the rare opportunity to fully immerse into business continuity practices, as well as anchor and boost employee morale. While the following practices may at first feel like a stress test on flexible working arrangements, I believe their implementation will provide value and positively impact organizational resilience and agility.
1. Team culture will be redefined through increased interdependence, employee self-reliance and self-moderation.
This temporary collective shift to remote work leads employee productivity to naturally lean toward individual contribution, and team collaborations to rely on interdependence. Adjustments toward attention management will be prized over time management, and organizational trust will prevail through ethical leadership. HR should partner closely with all levels of management and focus on employee motivation and development, as well as training focused on maintaining a positive and engaging team culture.
2. The change will lead to a boost of innovation and refined entrepreneurial qualities at every level of the organization.
Sudden changes to work location and team structure will enable employees to rethink how their working time and productivity impacts the greater picture. A higher level of control of the employee's own time and simply working from home will increase productivity. Because not all HR best practices have evolved with a remote work mindset, the HR team will need to quickly realign, leading to regular follow-ups and check-ins with teams and assist with the identification and removal of barriers resulting from the change.
3. A back-to-basics mindset: Identify communication barriers, and adjust to meet the need.
Under the right circumstances, uncertainty can quickly result in anxiety and panic within teams. Imbalance in information flow, resulting from a rapid shift of workplace, coupled with the change in work responsibilities is understandably overwhelming. However, grit and the ability to think past the immediate threats can help level concerns. Regularly scheduled weekly all-staff presentations with updates on current events and creation of a strategic plan will help connect employees toward a shared mission and instill trust toward leadership. The information should be clear, concise and shared in a kind manner. HR can help close information gaps through pulse surveys and check-ins and provide additional support to leadership by creating follow-up training.
4. Increased scrutiny on business processes leads to breakthrough continuous improvement.
In resilient organizations, the business infrastructure, supply chains and practices have built-in redundancies and backups. However, until recently, global pandemics were not exactly on the agenda of all-staff meetings or earning calls. Therefore, challenging times often provide clarity around the 80/20 rule, where 80% of inefficiencies often arise from 20% of business practices. During a crisis, management needs to quickly refine outdated practices and business continuity, and introduce new minimum viable products and services, with an opportunity to refine over time.
Smaller businesses where business continuity plans and resilience management are not an option should focus on external support or opt for insurance covering hardships. Here, employees who are both able to adapt and have grit continue to directly impact the future of the business by partnering with leadership in pivoting their offerings to meet the market. Last but not least, the HR function in these teams follows suit by partnering with managers and leaders on reviewing their succession plans for high-impact positions with the organization.
I am reminded of a quote attributed to Warren Buffett: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.” While fully recognizing the challenges ahead of us, it is important to remember that organizational resilience and compassion complement each other. Supporting your employees during such troubling times can be accomplished by breaking down the larger challenges to smaller direct pieces.
