The novel coronavirus is a worldwide threat, moving so much faster and impacting so many lives. With the far-reaching spread of coronavirus, fear and anxiety are growing among people. Though this fear is understandable, organizations should not allow this fear to dictate their reaction to the stressful situation in a way that undermines employee morale, productivity, health, and wellness.

During this time of major disruption and uncertainty, the role of HR is imperative. They are vital in helping leaders oversee their remote workforces and evolving return-to-work plans for when the situation normalizes. They are ensuring that anxiety-ridden employees stay informed about what is happening within the company and updates on resources — financial and medical. Let us dig deep into the role of HR in the times of the current crisis and going forward.

1. Guide on Cost-Cutting Measures

While the role of HR in suggesting and guiding the company on cost management measures is more crucial than ever, they must ensure that it does not leave a negative impact on the employees. In the times of financial crunch like the one the world is witnessing, the typical approach of many companies is workforce optimization. The onus lies on HR to ensure that leaders are prudent while making such big-bet decisions. It is essential for them to build awareness that while it might be easy to take decisions on lay off, it is a motivated and resilient team that will help businesses bounce back. Hence working on innovative methods of maintaining costs and liquidity might be a more prudent and sustainable approach. Playing a role much broader than ever, HR must address the anxiety, mental well-being of employees over potential layoffs and salary cuts.

Having absolute clarity on intent and priority, HR must help business leaders in making high stake decisions, keeping long term purpose and direction in mind. It is important to ensure that hasty decisions that leaders make in the short run do not loom large over the long term as the crisis unfolds. In addition to lending assistance, HR shall also leverage the situation as an opportunity to prepare for future shortcomings, if any.

2. Help Leaders Drive Empathetic and Transparent Communication

The unprecedented times which are driving organizations towards big-bet decisions call for empathetic behavior, effective and transparent communication on the part of the leader. As fear rides high and job security lies at stake, strong leadership has never been so important. HR Leaders understand the significance of taking decisive action and communicating effectively in a situation when both employees, as well as the company, is grappling to minimise the impact of the threatening virus. They must guide the leaders to stay in touch with the workforce, communicate every decision, big or small. HR must ensure that leaders always stay on loop through effective communication, taking the employees into confidence that all are in this together. Also, the most powerful thing any organisation can do in a crisis, for its employees, is to show empathy, be human and available. Leaders must be available across multiple communication platforms and be transparent about the state of the business.

3. Drive Leaders Toward Good Cost

With work from home being the new normal and no contact with the outside world, this is the best time to invest in upskilling. It is up to HR to drive the organisation towards employee learning, upskilling and reskilling to ensure they are ready to hit the ground as business life gets back to normal and economy reboots. It is the right time to invest in a robust health and wellness policy and awareness. It is the time to start planning for your Learning and Development calendar and leverage the situation as an opportunity to update your employees’ skillset. Rather than hiring different people for different skills when normal lives resume, it is better to build those skills in already existing employees. It will also result in cost saving in long term. There are good costs and bad costs. Investing in your people is an investment for a better future.

4. Revisit Policies that Enable Work from Home

The virus outbreak has compelled HR Leaders across companies to revisit their work from home policies and practices, even the ones which did not have any such policy in place. Work from home is not only an effective way to mitigate the risk of virus spread, but it also enables employees to continue to devote time to the company’s business without interruptions. There are some companies who are reporting increased overall productivity during remote work. Well, that does not happen by luck. It is the result of the right policy in place. Re-defining and revising work from home practices will become a regular work and way of life for HR leaders even after the lockdown as organisations are now better aware to be prepared about crisis and emergencies. In fact, leverage the savings arising out of work from home. International travel, infrastructure cost, overheads costs will be minimised helping organisation with liquidity.

5. Become Custodian of OrganisationalCulture

Organisational culture keeps the entire workforce bonded with the company and it’s purpose. In these challenging times, making that purpose drive business continuity is key. While the teams remain fragmented with less contact between each other, the times are crucial as well as challenging for HR. They must ensure that work from home does not hamper the organisational productivity and the entire organisation from manager and leaders to teams are aligned to a company culture they want to sustain in the long run. HR needs to become the custodian of employee culture, ensuring business as usual and nobody succumbs to the challenges of today. Company culture is reflected through policies, communication, psychological safety and learning opportunities we provide to employees at this stage.

6. Build Employer Brand

It is not only important to stay in touch with employees but also customers and other stakeholders. HR has a key role to play in ensuring that company moves towards building a strong and genuine employer brand image. As meetings, conferences, events and also, many business operations have come to a halt, it is imperative to keep updating the world about your initiatives. It is the time to collaborate with marketing and communications team to let the world know of organisation’s initiatives to maintain employment, employee security, partner security and CSR activities to serve humanity. At the same time, build a strong partner/ vendor relationship by helping them out in these challenging times. It is in such challenging times that employers of choice truly emerge.

Summing It All Up

While it is an individual’s responsibility to take self-care and care of their family with proper health precautions, it is important for organisations to handle situations like coronavirus with empathy, take care of its people and help them tide over this challenging period. HR today plays a pivotal role in ensuring that their organisations emerge from this crisis stronger than before, while taking their people along. The onus is on them to remind business that people are the only asset that appreciate with time. Also, it is easy to be generous and kind when times are good. It is when you are generous and kind during crisis that true character is revealed.

Role of HR Today and in New Reality