People often mistake employer branding as an activity solely tied to attracting the best talent to meet growth trajectories, especially in a buoyant and thriving economy. This is partially correct. But it’s important to remember employer branding is built from the inside out.

When the pandemic struck, many organisations were put to the test having to quickly shift their focus introspectively. Leaders had to migrate and manage their employees remotely, working tirelessly towards looking after their internal workforce’s well-being and engagement.

“The way your organisation treats key stakeholders, from employees to candidates and consumers, is critical in determining your employer brand credibility now and into the future.”

Josh Bersin, renowned thought leader and educator of Josh Bersin Academy, believes, irrespective of organisational industry, everyone is going through the four-phase pandemic cycle of “react, respond, return and transform.”

Are we there yet?

The dust is starting to settle as many organisations reopen, recruit and onboard employees back into the workplace. This was evident in one of our recent webinars, Steering Talent through a Crisis, where leaders reflected on their trials and tribulations to date.

Employee engagement is more important than ever as companies navigate through the recovery phase of redefining and building their workplace. Many organisations have worked successfully in keeping employees connected, engaged and spirits high through the thick of the pandemic; fostering all levels of remote culture building exercises.

However, these efforts need to continue across, what might now be, a split work-from-home and in-office working environment.

Personalising the employee journey

The COVID crisis exposed organisations’ underbellies and represented a dire need to pay close attention to the employee lifecycle and take targeted, individualised action.

Leaders had to take deliberate action in understanding each valued employees’ unique psychological, emotional and financial requirements. Every person experienced the pandemic setback differently with many organisations quickly realising they needed to take an individual, tailored approach with every employee.

Various reports, polls and studies demonstrated people experience high levels of anxiety, stress and fatigue; many confirm health is still, presently, a major concern for them.

Mastering the employee life-cycle is ongoing work-in-progress, especially within a disrupted workplace, where the future is uncertain.

Hybrid work-from-home models

In many cases, there’s still some disconnection between employers’ workplace requirements and their shifted preferential needs. The transition into the workplace is “not all plain sailing”, as organisations test hybrid work-from-home and partial in-office working arrangements.

While employees are enjoying working remotely in their uninterrupted work-from-home environments, the desire to return to the office, employees and employers alike, persists.

Many people thrive on connecting in-person and enjoy the opportunity to hold scrum and project meetings, to continue building the team spirit they so sorely missed.

This being said, live webinar polls have confirmed an increasing number of employees are enjoying a hybrid working arrangement, where they can benefit and enjoy “the best of both worlds”.

Communication is topping agendas

Stakeholder communications across all operational levels are topping most workplace agendas, with many CEOs and leaders continuing with transparent and consistent town hall discussions with employees through this recovery phase.

Leaders continue with intimate and regular conversations with their team members, having to demonstrate trust, empathy and team collaboration.

Marketing and Communications have shifted a great deal of their attention from consumer marketing to internal communications about the well-being and safety of their employees.

It is imperative that conversations across all levels continue, especially while organisations have their workforce dispersed at home and on-site.

Reframing the workplace

The pandemic has resulted in many organisations having to reframe their staffing structures to future-proof themselves for our new world of work.

Certain roles are being terminated and others being newly created. Sadly, this gives rise to the possibility of further redundancies. Organisations now face the challenge of retaining employee engagement in the aftermath of redundancies.

Employees are being retrained and reskilled with organisations redeploying and realigning their talent to meet their future business objectives. Agility and resilience are now key focus areas for many organisations.

Ensure your organisation retains its focus on your internal talent, especially if you’re like other businesses undergoing big transformations during this recovery phase.

Employees, candidates and consumers continue to watch how companies are treating their stakeholders. This will determine your employer brand credibility now and into the future.

This African proverb couldn’t be more relevant:

“Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today!”

Celeste Sirin is the Managing Director of Employer Branding South Africa, a consultancy assisting companies to build and market their employer brands to attract, engage and retain talent. Having worked in the recruitment industry for many years, running her own recruitment marketing and response management agency, she has first-hand recruiter knowledge. 

Celeste’s mission is to define and drive the essence of employer branding and the fundamental importance of companies adopting it as a business imperative.

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“We have people working completely differently to how they worked in the past. What we need to do now is find ways to capitalise on and keep people working in ways that best suit their lives. That can mean a balance of time in the office, time at home, really understand what works for individuals.”

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For HR professionals, plotting a course through the next 12 months is vital. Ensuring employees are safe, connected, and productive will require constant attention and an understanding that operational rules have changed.

When COVID-19 emerged as a significant threat in early March, businesses around the world rushed to embrace remote working practices. Armed with laptops and mobile phones, many employees found themselves suddenly based in a home office or conducting video conferences from the kitchen table.

Creating a distributed working model

It’s clear, however, that workplaces won’t simply revert to operating the way they were prior to the pandemic. Distancing requirements and threats of future outbreaks mean a standard return to ‘the way things were’ may simply not be possible. Now is the time to determine what position and direction your business will take to harness the benefits that have emerged and to understand if the current employee culture can extend to a distributed team.  

As organisations set up employees at home and braced for a dip in productivity, something incredible emerged: a workforce that could remain productive while at home and within a global crisis. Certainly, there were some organisations where employees could not complete their role at home, however, the general knowledge worker has proven this theory defunct.

Pilot first

The near future is a perfect opportunity to pilot a distributed model of working. With [many] employees already at home organisations can take advantage of the current situation, which has the added benefit of reducing employees’ apprehension about returning to the office.

For most organisations, six months will be an adequate length of time to trial new working arrangements. Start by choosing a start date that aligns with the normal work state – perhaps now that children are returning to school and the immediate threats of community transfer have reduced. The duration of the pilot should reflect business cycles. It should also be long enough to show a trend over time, but short enough to prevent social norms from developing which make changes harder to implement.

Measure what’s important

Like any pilot program, metrics of success must be determined. The two that stand out as the most valuable are productivity and engagement.

Engagement metrics should include the key areas of relationships with managers and peers, wellness, happiness, and alignment with the business. Engagement can be overlooked for productivity or cost metrics, but they will play a vital role in the ongoing success of your model.

Create a dashboard that clearly communicates the ongoing results. This way if productivity or engagement does vary, managers and employees have the opportunity to respond and help make suggestions on what to iterate.

The social aspect of the workplace must also be remembered; the informal links that bind people to an organisation must be maintained to ensure that connection remains. Consider having your office support employees become virtual culture champions, driving initiatives throughout the organisation to foster those lasting bonds.

Be deliberate

The current working environment is successful due to the behaviours and rituals that organisations built pre-pandemic. They will only sustain for a certain period, so be wary of resting on past success.

In your pilot include the use of employee change groups and steering committees to help keep the pilot on track. Design guidelines that outline the environment employees should work in, the behaviours you want to see demonstrated, and how managers should interact with their team. These will help create guard rails to impact behaviour.

Be deliberate in your positioning and don’t suddenly change what your organisation deems to be important. Many companies run very successful fully-remote teams – when you create your pilot, understand where you want to fit on the scale. Will you be fully remote? Will you have an individual-outcome focus? Or will you be team-outcome focused? Do you plan to bring employees or teams into the office for face-to-face time?

Remote working was steadily on the rise before COVID-19, but the pandemic certainly pushed those that were unsure straight into the deep end. HR professionals have a unique opportunity to design and drive a pilot that could transform the way their business operates. As long as you are deliberate about your approach a distributed working model can be a sustainable and beneficial model for businesses and their employees.

Source 

Where to from here for HR? A distributed working model

HCA Mag 

Jacqueline Anderson, HR Director, Nintex

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The pandemic has forced the world’s largest work from home experiment, with many employees experiencing remote working for the first time. In this time of uncertainty, it is more important than ever for HR professionals to lead the charge in keeping employees engaged, informed and supported. 

Research shows that business leaders and managers have a critical role to play in employee engagement, with 80 per cent of HR professionals linking trust in leaders to engagement. Keeping teams engaged as we navigate this new way of working should be at the top of every organisation’s agenda. Employees working remotely will be relying on their business leaders and managers to provide security and stability, and to keep them focused on the organisation’s most critical priorities. 

Here are three tips to ensure employees feel engaged and connected to your business as they work remotely.

Maintain clear and regular communications between leaders and teams

A recent study shows three in four people globally are worried about ‘fake news’ and the spread of false information relating to COVID-19. Employees increasingly rely on their employers for trustworthy guidance and information. 63 per cent of global employees believe information they receive from their employers after one or two exposures to the information, compared to 58 per cent from government and 51 per cent from media. 

In addition to fulfilling people’s need for credible information, maintaining clear and consistent communications with employees can go a long way towards ensuring they feel supported and connected to your organisation’s culture.

In times of change and uncertainty, checking in with your people once or twice a day is a great start. Check-ins can take different forms, such as direct messages, emails or video chats, but aim to have at least one connection a day via video. The benefit of video conferencing is that you have both verbal and non-verbal opportunities to communicate with your colleagues – and it’s as close to an in-person interaction as you can get. These video catch ups don’t have to be formal: personal check-ins are just as important as structured meetings, and can help strengthen the ties between team members in what can be an isolating time. 

Leaders have a vital role to play in managing remote teams, and HR teams should support them as they look to navigate this complex transition. Remember that this new way of working is likely new to leaders as well, and they will look to HR teams for support and guidance on how they can keep team members engaged. Aside from daily check-ins at a team-level, consider weekly virtual all-company updates to keep people connected to the organisation and informed on the latest developments. 

Keep learning and development on your radar

With many businesses focused on moving forward in the wake of COVID-19, things like learning, development and performance management tend to get deprioritised. But learning and development initiatives are effective ways of keeping employees engaged and connected to their organisation.  Providing learning opportunities and setting up regular development conversations with managers will help employees feel valued and reassured that they can continue to develop and grow within your organisation.  

Consider learning apps that can be accessed on mobile and web, so employees can proactively stay on top of their own learning and development remotely. You can push out new learning and upskilling opportunities so employees can continue their career development even from home. Share links to online learning modules on a regular basis so employees are aware of the avenues available for them to improve their skills or learn new ones relevant now and into the future. 

Make flexible onboarding seamless for new starters

This is an unprecedented time for all of us, but it can be even more daunting for new starters. Joining a new workplace remotely means that new hires do not have the opportunity to connect in-person with colleagues, develop relationships easily or understand the dynamics of their new workplace.

As new starters navigate this situation, it’s important to ensure their onboarding experience is as seamless and positive as it can be. Effectively onboarding new starters virtually is key for them to prepare for their first few weeks remotely. Consider sharing pre-onboarding activities in the week before new joiners are due to start so they can prepare themselves for the journey ahead.

The first day of any new job is challenging, but you can help make sure it goes smoothly. Develop a schedule for their first week that ensures they are introduced to the right people and teams to start building relationships. New hires can feel lost during their first week in a role and not sure of what to do next. Sharing a schedule will help them navigate their first week without having to rely too heavily on their managers and team for direction.  

The onboarding experience should also set clear expectations. This is unchartered territory, and they will likely have a number of questions about how COVID-19 will impact their role and the businesses’ expectations of them. Engage with them frequently so you can provide guidance and manage expectations in real-time. This type of proactive support will show new hires you value and take care of your people, even in challenging situations. 

This pandemic will not last forever, and how you support employees through the coming weeks and months will have a big impact on their perceptions of, and loyalty towards your organisation in the future. Implementing these simple tips to keep your team engaged will pay off in the long run. 

As the Head of HR at PageUp, Chelsie Hastings draws on over a decade of experience in strategic talent management across a range of leading organisations.

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As Bloomberg reports, “While factories, shops, hotels and restaurants are warning about plunging foot traffic that is transforming city centers into ghost towns, behind the closed doors of apartments and suburban homes, thousands of businesses are trying to figure out how to stay operational in a virtual world.” 

“It’s a good opportunity for us to test working from home at scale,” said Alvin Foo, managing director of Reprise Digital, a Shanghai ad agency with 400 people that’s part of Interpublic Group. “Obviously, not easy for a creative ad agency that brainstorms a lot in person.” It’s going to mean a lot of video chats and phone calls, he said” 

The number of people working from home is growing “into armies”. Many people in China are still on holidays for the Lunar New Year. 

With Chinese companies beginning to restart operations, it will likely result in the world’s largest work-from-home experiment. 

More people will be trying to organise client and team meetings via video conferencing, chat and other software platforms. 

“The vanguards for the new model of scattered employees are the Chinese financial centers of Hong Kong and Shanghai, cities with central business districts that rely on hundreds of thousands of office workers in finance, logistics, insurance, law and other white-collar jobs.” 

“One Hong Kong banker said he’s going to extend an overseas vacation, as he can work from anywhere with a laptop and a phone. Others say they are using the time typically spent wining and dining clients to clear their backlog of travel expenses. One said he’s shifted focus to deals in Southeast Asia.” 

“No one is taking meetings, my schedule is pretty empty,” said Jeffrey Broer, a venture adviser in Hong Kong. “One person emailed me: ‘Shall we meet somewhere in February?’”

Concerns for employees 

The rapidly changing impact of the virus is prompting daily changes in corporate directives. 

“Tiko Mamuchashvili, a senior event planner at the Hyatt hotel in Beijing who was supposed to return to work on Friday, was initially told her vacation would be extended until Feb. 3. Then she received a notification to work from home for two additional days. A few days later, the directive was extended until Feb. 10. She has to notify her department each morning about her whereabouts and report whether she is running a temperature.” 

“Usually going back to work from holidays feels a little weird, but working from home this time with such short notice feels even more unusual,” she said. With hotel event cancellations rolling in on a daily basis, “basically, all I can do is answer emails,” she said.

In another report, the coronavirus is infecting the global economy, “An interconnected global economy is feeling the strain of China’s viral outbreak — and the potential $160 billion hit in lost growth that may be on the way.” 

Some managers fear empty offices will decrease productivity. But the opposite may be true. 

“A 2015 study from Stanford University in California found that productivity among call-center employees at Chinese travel agency Ctrip went up by 13% when they worked from home due to fewer breaks and more comfortable work environments.” 

The virus may test this theory on a wider scale. 

Impact on shared workspaces 

Shared workspaces increase in large Chinese cities with huge increases in property rent and tech startups. 

One director of a shared workspace stated times are tough, as it is almost impossible for him and others to work from home, as they rely on customers working in close quarters. 

“The core of workspace is community, people coming together. It’s difficult to replace that interaction and connection online,” he said.

“For many companies, instructing office workers to stay home only solves part of the problem. Many rely on factories, logistics companies and retail outlets that face their own disruptions.

For phone-case maker Casetify, 2020 was supposed to be the best year yet. Headcount at the Hong Kong-based company had surpassed 150 by the end of December, and it was aiming to double sales this year.” 

The spread of the virus from Wuhan caused factories in China to shut. New outlets are shut, negatively impacting sales. 

“Casetify has 30 days of extra stock, but Ng says there’s no plan B if the factories don’t reopen soon, a plight shared by thousands of other businesses in China and around the world.

Even for those who can do business by internet and phone, the virus means there may not be much business to do.” 

Business on hold

Bankers say deals are on hold. Transactions in January were half what they were the year before (Bloomberg). 

“The worst is yet to come,” said Nomura analyst Ting Lu in a research note. “We reckon the coronavirus could deal a more severe blow to China’s economy in the near term, relative to SARS in 2003.”

Statistics suggest the new coronavirus isn’t as lethal as SARS, but it has infected many more people, and its rapid transference rate is spreading fear. 

“A big part of the expected blow to the economy during the current outbreak is likely to come from changes in “human psychology,” according to Warwick McKibbon, professor of economics at the Australian National University in Canberra.” 

“He said SARS cost the global economy $40 billion and predicts the hit from coronavirus will reach three or four times that amount. “Panic is what seems to be the biggest drain on the economy, rather than deaths,” he said.” 

With many factories, businesses and outlets closed, and with workers staying home, many Chinese service industries are suffering. 

“The sector is much bigger than it was during the SARS outbreak, accounting for 53% of the economy, up from 41% in 2002. But without customers, many businesses are in limbo.” 

Some businesses have turned to the internet to keep customers loyal, hoping to weather the epidemic.

Not working out

“Shanghai gym owner Fenix Chen had intended to close his gym Hi Funny for three days for the Spring festival. He delayed reopening until Feb. 10, in line with the city’s recommendation.” 

“Most people in Shanghai are basically staying at home, avoiding public places,” he said. “The fear from the virus outbreak will have a lasting impact on our business.”

“So Chen is encouraging clients to exercise at home and posting instructional videos online. “If they do continue this habit, that’s also important for our business after the virus blows over,” he said.” 

Source 

Coronavirus forces world’s largest work-from-home experiment

Bloomberg

The Coronavirus Is Infecting the Global Economy. Here’s How.

Bloomberg

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