The Coronavirus epidemic has caused lasting changes in our lives. The physical and psychological health of individuals, businesses and whole social orders is under danger, significantly changing the needs of businesses and human resources. It is therefore necessary to rethink human resources’ objectives during and post-Covid-19 to thrive in the future and present.

Emotional Management is increasingly necessary during crisis periods. Employees should be helped with healing from the emotional cost of this crisis. Even though it is difficult to foresee the degrees of harm each employee may have been subjected to, correlations with the 2008 subprime crisis can be made to get a perspective.

Because of limited resources, the goal will be to prioritize essentials therefore eventually leading to several lay-offs when it comes to employees or projects. Workers staying after mass cutbacks may have grievances, including survivor guilt which should be tended to lest it translates to unproductive outcomes. Transparent trickling down of information regarding how the crisis is evolving or affecting the business is necessary to eliminate doubt. Additionally, creating an intranet platform for employees to connect on should be encouraged. Overall, these efforts will improve sentiments of solidarity and establish team-spirit.

With this new crisis, employees’ lives have changed which could affect their usual schedule, including taking care of their children’home-school. Unless absolutely impossible, coming up with a flexible and adaptable work timeline can be valuable and allow for more productivity. The team could negotiate a “core-group meeting” schedule if teamwork is necessary for a project.

Progressively, HR should realign the workforce on recuperation and development post-corona. HR should pay more attention to revaluate conventional rules regarding personnel procurement, performance improvement, salary procedures and incentives. It is necessary to give more importance to nurturing the business than on protocols, and administration. Studies show that companies with higher employee engagement has higher productivity, therefore investing in improving Human Resources has high profitability. Leaders and HR representatives should be able to effectively calibrate employee necessities with financial ones. Orienting and training employees on how to work remotely and its process can potentially increase productivity, as many individuals report working better from home.

No matter how devastating it may be, the crisis can teach us many things. By carefully analyzing what procedures were successful in the workplace, businesses can improve their future contingency and recovery plans (I will link article once it’s posted). HR professionals can involve the input and feed-back from employees to diversify the companies’ crisis management plan.  Therefore, curating an inclusive and effective plan of action that takes into account the Human Resources’ Objectives During and Post-Covid-19 will quicken recovery after critical periods.

REFERENCES:

1. The Impact Of The Coronavirus On HR And The New Normal Of Work, Mar 31, 2020, Forbes
2. Workplace Guidance for COVID-19, March 31, 2020, HumanResources.umn