Maintaining employee engagement, monitoring work performance, and effectively managing human resources are challenges facing leaders during and after the Covid-19 crisis.
During the complex Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing measures were implemented to minimize risks to society and the economy. Businesses had to promptly implement social distancing policies and remote working models to protect the health of their employees and their families. The challenge for leaders in this context was how to maintain the engagement of all members of the organization, effectively monitor work performance during short-term social distancing, and adapt and effectively manage human resources in the face of the changing impacts of the crisis and in the longer term.
ADDRESSING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES DURING AND AFTER THE COVID PANDEMIC
1. LEADERS AND MANAGERS PLAY A CRUCIAL ROLE IN INSPIRING EMPLOYEES
Pressure, stress, and lack of motivation are common problems faced by employees due to a lack of social interaction and encouragement from their surroundings. This can lead to decreased morale and motivation, causing delays in work activities. Furthermore, limited collaboration among team members leads to a decline in team cohesion and teamwork, consequently reducing creative thinking.
To mitigate negative employee morale, leaders need to rebuild an intangible, supportive environment. First and foremost is the direct connection between leaders and employees through active engagement and engagement with staff and departments. Alongside managing employees through task assignment and supervision, leaders need to convey messages that create a shared purpose, fostering sharing and inspiring motivation at all levels of the organization. This compensates for any lack of social interaction, making employees feel responsible and purposeful in contributing to the organization's recovery during this difficult crisis period, when the future is uncertain. From there, employees will be motivated to find suitable ways of working and strive for the best possible results.
Next is connecting and fostering teamwork among groups to actively work on assigned tasks, solve organizational problems, and execute projects remotely. During the work process, managers play a supportive role, regularly checking in with each team to resolve emerging issues and address concerns. This is also a time for leaders and managers to communicate, reaffirm, and clarify their strategic perspectives, helping teams review and adjust implementation initiatives in a timely manner. Furthermore, policies can be clarified and made more coherent, allowing teams to easily make decisions and execute tasks quickly.
Besides these factors, to inspire creativity and adaptability within the organization, leaders and managers need to actively lead, proactively learn from market changes and innovations, and seize opportunities. Simultaneously, they should strengthen and allow innovative thinking, implementation, and experimentation within the organization to ensure sustainable adaptation and create new value for the team and stakeholders.
2. MODEL AND METHOD OF OPERATION TOWARDS FLEXIBLE TRANSITION
The multi-layered hierarchical structure of a business, when applied during social distancing, leads to increased management difficulties for leaders and longer decision approval times for employees. During this period, to operate more flexibly, businesses can shift to an Agile model. Applying this model, businesses will reallocate their workforce into small teams to solve and execute a common task, with each position having a clearly defined role. Internal teams agree on the overall working methods, priority tasks, communication systems, information control, evaluation, and reporting of results. Establishing teams for each task, along with specific management methods, helps them work more cohesively, collaborating to make decisions quickly. The allocation of skills and personnel should be continuous to ensure their abilities are applied to appropriate tasks and that they are given opportunities to challenge themselves and hone their skills with more significant tasks over time.
Working remotely allows for the formation of teams with compatible capabilities to collectively accomplish specific tasks and goals, transcending geographical boundaries and departmental limitations. Recognizing this advantage, leaders and managers can more dynamically coordinate their workforce according to tasks and projects, forming cross-departmental, cross-organizational, and cross-geographical teams. This provides an opportunity to gather more comprehensive perspectives and critical feedback from individuals with diverse backgrounds and cultures, fostering creativity, innovation, and mutual learning to generate new ideas.
3. TRAINING THE TEAM, CONTINUOUSLY UPDATING NECESSARY KNOWLEDGE, AND PREPARING FOR LONG-TERM SUSTAINABILITY
During this crisis, with uncertain future prospects and ongoing social distancing policies, businesses need to train employees in the necessary skills and methods for using tools to maintain remote work, interact effectively within teams and organizations to maintain continuous connection and engagement, in addition to providing employees with the necessary software, equipment, and tools to support them in working remotely.
Looking further ahead, to prepare for long-term sustainability, businesses need to train their employees in new, relevant skills to meet future needs and adapt to changing customer demands. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization and automation, making new digital skills increasingly essential for businesses. Businesses will need to reconsider and predict the necessary skills for future scenarios to prepare a workforce that is always ready to adapt to any situation.
In this process, raising employee awareness of the importance of these new skills is crucial, making them a priority for their skill development, encouraging them to proactively and independently learn. Furthermore, these newly acquired skills must also align with changes in customer behavior and needs, as customer expectations, demands, and the ways in which they engage with businesses have changed. The impacts of the crisis have significantly altered consumer habits.
4. CLEAR AND EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION METHODS
Social distancing demands effective, clear, and concise communication methods. Communication should not be one-way, solely from the leadership's perspective—to convey information, inspire, empower, and assign tasks to subordinates—but rather a two-way process, from subordinates to their superiors. Positive communication from both sides will help both parties better understand each other's expectations, outcomes, and obstacles, allowing for a more holistic, multi-dimensional, and realistic perspective on the issue between the strategic idea generator and the task implementer.
To minimize misunderstandings and confusion in communication, information should be conveyed simply, concisely, clearly, and directly to the point, helping recipients understand what they need to do. However, the importance of a positive message should not be underestimated to maintain work enthusiasm and focus on employee safety and health. Furthermore, information needs to be exchanged accurately and promptly so that employees and their teams can allocate their time effectively. Clear, concise, and frequent communication helps maintain cohesion between the two parties, increasing trust in information sharing and connection. This also helps to blur social boundaries, maintain a positive attitude, and reinforce purpose for individuals during isolation.
Furthermore, to ensure effective external communication, especially with customers, businesses need to establish transparent policies throughout the communication process between employees and customers at touchpoints. Clear policies support employees in making quick decisions regarding product and service delivery, while also ensuring customers feel their needs are met promptly by the company's workforce.
5. EFFECTIVE WORK MANAGEMENT AND SUPERVISION
Managing and monitoring work progress and efficiency must be continuously maintained to quickly identify obstacles to work execution, and to develop plans and solutions to support employees in a timely manner. Simultaneously, it ensures the progress and productivity of employees based on established criteria and KPIs.
Managers play a supporting role in helping employees set goals, design, implement, and evaluate work. Employee support solutions can be tailored to individual needs, ranging from building digital infrastructure, providing and improving applications, tools, and software to support processes, to implementing appropriate reward policies and motivating employees.
For effective and accurate management, internal business operations can utilize a system of support tools. An effective PMS (Project Management System) will include comprehensive information on:
– Leadership strategy and mindset
– Policies and approval, issuance, and communication processes
– Training programs
– Information technology systems for monitoring, reporting, and forecasting
6. LONG-TERM VISION
The Covid-19 crisis was a period when businesses reassessed their operational status and made necessary transformations to maintain operations and create momentum for growth.
Looking further into the future, changing habits and needs are becoming more clearly defined in a digital direction, stemming from the impact of the pandemic, which is creating a new normal. In this context, businesses need to prepare and develop a workforce with the necessary skills to be ready for a future of digitalization, automation, and digital transformation. Employee experiences are also being recreated and redesigned by controlling and using digital and automated tools, processes, and systems with the support of data.
Besides newly acquired skills and a renewed work experience, a flexible digital transformation culture will help businesses enhance the proactive role of their workforce in applying innovation and experimenting to improve business operations. Changes in mindset, capabilities, experience, and a culture of innovation are the foundation for the success of the entire organization in its digital transformation efforts.
Source: digital.fpt
