Traditional ideas and assumptions about the value of remote work have always been in question. But all too often, pressing imperatives of the day had organizational leaders force HR to sideline the conversation indefinitely.

Little did we know that it would take a global pandemic to turn this line of thinking into an action plan for ensuring business continuity. Leaders are now collaborating to propose, evaluate and communicate work-from-home (WFH) policies that keep employees safe, empowered and productive.

Before the infection rate of COVID-19 reached pandemic levels, 29% of midsize companies increased or added flexible work practices, according to Oxford Economics.* Now, as measures for social distancing, sheltering in and nonessential business closures become widely adopted worldwide, these numbers are rising exponentially while companies try to keep their proverbial doors open.

When protecting employees helps ensure the survival of the business

Unfortunately, such a significant change doesn’t happen without some bumps along the way. The pressures of homeschooling children, accommodating a spouse’s schedule and attending to business needs can make life seem chaotic. From collaborating with colleagues to adopting routines that drive productivity, the workforce may find that they cannot maintain the same experience of being in the office at home. Meanwhile, employees who live alone may feel lonely and burned out after working too much out of boredom.

HR leaders can address these counter-productive realities by building a collaborative workforce community, continuing talent development and training and keeping employees up to date on plans and expectations by using the following four-step strategy.

1. Respond

First and foremost, HR can help business leaders address the immediate challenges that the crisis presents to employees. This urgent and critical move requires access to real-time data across the company to easily find where workers are located and enact preventive measures to protect their health and mental well-being. Additionally, teams need to ensure that WFH policies balance the expectation of the organization as well as fulfill the needs of the workforce. Employees need to be engaged in honest communication about their WFH experience to limit unnecessary anxiety and minimize negative impacts on productivity. This can be done by providing anonymous feedback regarding the employees experiences.

2. Lean in

Since many companies are creating WFH policies on the fly and refining it as needs arise, the near-term strategy should support the physical, emotional, mental and financial well-being of the overall workforce, including contingent and part-time employees. HR should encourage people managers to have frequent check-in meetings with their teams, ask people how they are doing and listen with empathy to build trust and psychological safety.

Maintaining an open line of communication and fostering a sense of community are paramount to maximizing productivity now and ensuring that the business continues to move forward when a recovery begins. For example, collaboration tools, such as , can be used to check workforce well-being with a real-time mobile experience. Leaders can ask individual employees about their safety, whether they have the right resources and information to get work done, and if they feel productive and successful.

3. Equip

Many industries are witnessing massive layoffs and furloughs. Times like this bring with it job losses, restructuring and many other difficult financial and human decisions. Leaders can help ease a much-needed transition by devising and executing training plans that upskill and retool employees to keep them employed in a new role or another area of the business. Cutting-edge technology, like , can help find opportunities for the displaced workforce.

With predictive analytics, HR teams can run simulations to model multiple workforce staffing scenarios. They can adjust organizational strategies based on how and where the pandemic evolves, which can shift requirements for headcount expansion or contraction as well as the economic impact of demand-and-supply changes.

4. Become resilient and elastic

Coming out of today’s crisis will inevitably create a “next normal,” leaving behind any sense of “business as normal” forever. Some employees may come back to the office full time. Others may choose to work remotely 100% of the time. A few may decide to split their time between the two options. Companies with a global presence will require operating models that are orchestrated centrally and executed locally to effectively respond to present day challenges at the local, city, or country level.

Today, it’s COVID-19. Tomorrow, it could be a crisis stemming from global warming. No matter what happens, a contingency plan that impacts people must be elastic enough to adjust to the demands of the crisis and strong enough to minimize business disruption.

This reality will inevitably inspire innovative policies and communication plans to address a world of new habits that will likely be adopted to prevent a recurrence of the pandemic and prepare for a future crisis. Additionally, changes in the employee experience should align with regulatory requirements, competitive risks and emerging opportunities and reinforce the company’s thoughts, beliefs and goals.

How our leaders handle today’s crisis matters in the long term

Forward-thinking leaders and HR specialsts will unquestionably remain on the frontline of a business’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of them are already working long hours. In this particular crisis, HR becomes the war heroes for most companies. With the right tools and skills, we can demonstrate the flexibility, creativity and empathy needed to ensure the workforce is ready for anything during times of volatility as well as prosperity and growth.

The post Beyond Today’s Crisis: How HR Shifts The Culture Of Midsize Businesses To The “Next Normalâ€� appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.

While we are all grappling with a very different world right now, in time business and consumer confidence will return, bolstering transformation and ultimately driving growth. Many people are referring to the perfect storm; I see huge potential related to the outcomes of disruption. A force majeure like COVID-19 can be every bit as transformative as a financial crisis or other world events that have had global significance through the ages. Enterprises are rethinking their business models, their supply chains and changing their approaches to security, business continuity, and remote work. Governments are rallying their resources to get insights into the effects of the crisis and to get on top of the catastrophe.

There’s never been a better opportunity to help our customers deliver unique insights, and ensure agility, control and the ability to execute – not just now, but also post-crisis. People will need to work, and agile, transformative businesses will flourish. Companies that effectively navigate disruptions often succeed because they invest in their core customer segments early and anticipate behaviours.

So how can a company like 51·çÁ÷become part of the global solution to the pandemic? For a start, we’re offering a slew of free technology tools and platforms to customers (and anyone else) to help them not only deal with pandemic-related issues but anticipate what sorts of opportunities the crisis will open up:

We’re helping companies redesign their supply chains, and find new sources of supply when existing supply chains are disrupted. We’re opening access to the network, so any buyer can post their immediate sourcing needs, and any supplier can respond to show they can deliver. It’s free to post, free to respond. Using this network, one 51·çÁ÷customer that is building a new hospital in the US was able to find a supplier with 500 hospital beds in less than 30 minutes.

We’re helping managers check in with their employees. The world went virtual overnight, and any company that hopes to continue operating anywhere near normal levels will need to make sure their workers are okay, safe and healthy – and this doesn’t end in the first week they’re home. We’ve seen a spike in the usage of our free , which enables companies to detect the sentiment of their employees since the crisis began. The mental health of their employees has to be on the mind of companies.

In Italy, our presales team developed a Coronavirus dashboard and offered it for free to customers, partners, our communities. The dashboard allows users to analyse the contagion spread in depth, compared to that one included in the Johns Hopkins CSSE dashboard.

We’re supporting the next generation of professionals and users with our best-in-class digital learning, by offering students and subject-matter experts safe and healthy learning environments to continue their education virtually. We’re offering them free access to select learning journeys for students at one of the 3,800 member universities of the 51·çÁ÷University Alliances program, online courses allowing young learners to explore technology, as well as the massive open online courses (MOOCs) available on the open51·çÁ÷platform.

Many businesses are taking advantage of the ‘locate’ feature within software to track employees stranded overseas. While business travel has abruptly ended, other business expenses tracked by 51·çÁ÷Concur offerings confirm that activity in China is picking up a little.

Together with EY and Qualtrics, we’re helping governments around the world who are struggling to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes capturing and monitoring community concerns, tracking and reporting on the progression of the virus, providing accurate information on transmission and cure, directing people to the right resources for help, and communicating effectively with their citizens in a time of lockdown.

Our vision to help the world run better and improve people’s lives has never been more important than in this current moment. We remain focused on our people, our customers, and our communities. Together, we will persevere.

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