The Shifting Landscape Of Hr After The Pandemic

Olga Kravchenko, Group HR COO, AXA [EPA: CS]

When the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic, it was an unprecedented crisis with severe economic consequences. Even health experts around the world were clueless as to how long the crisis will last and what the ‘new normal’ would look like. Organisations were questioning whether the old ways of operating will be fit for the future. Amidst this storm, many businesses’ HR department quickly measured up and helped employees understand the situation related to the pandemic in a better way. While rolling out new guidelines for remote working, HR did their best to keep employee spirits and productivity levels high during shelter-in-place.

Now, as the initial dust settles, HR leaders are required to look ahead and make changes to the policies, structures, and practices to align with the new way of working. It’s time for HR to reimagine not only its own future but also the future of their organisations.

Keeping the Employees at the Centre

During the pandemic, the global HR industry was heavily disrupted. HR leaders had to review their current practices and very quickly adopt new ones. We at AXA put a lot of emphasis on protecting our employees during the lockdown by understanding what they wanted and incorporating it into our assistance programs. As per the feedback from our employees, our employee engagement amid the lockdown was the highest.

AXA also realised that while employees and managers were working remotely, they needed to learn and upskill themselves in the ‘new normal.’ Thus, we invested 70 million Euros during 2020 and created a comprehensive training programme, and we witnessed 100 percent participation. We heavily used the LinkedIn learning platform to help employees engage with the learning programs.

Today, we are focusing on creating a new reality because we don’t believe that working 100 percent from home is the future. Besides, we also believe change is the only constant, and we have no choice but to transform. And we take transformation very seriously. The future will be a ‘smart way of working,’ a combination of work from home and work from the office. Because how people spend their time working from home is very different while working from an office. Therefore, we have defined the concept of a ‘SMART way of working.’ But we need to look beyond it and explore new possibilities for the foreseeable future as well. We need to take different personalities of different people into account and understand that the SMART way of working can raise some challenges in the future. Because, while some would want to come to the office, others might need a strong reason to step outside the comfort of their homes and return to work.

Selecting the Right Technology Vendor

One of the biggest challenges that organisations face today is adapting quickly according to the situation. For large organisations, conforming to the situation quickly can be very difficult due to the cost restriction and regulated environment. But there are a lot of emerging plug and play HRMS solutions in the market. These solutions are flexible and, at the same time, provide data insight. And, today, data has a lot of significance because organisations have adopted the ‘test and learn’ approach. So, organisations must choose a solution that can leverage data and provide powerful insights.

"Today, we are focusing on creating a new reality because we don’t believe that working 100 percent from home is the future"

Apart from that, organisations must ask themselves— what will be the application for the solution? What should be the technological architecture? Will the technology provide us flexibility and align with the new reality? By zeroing on the possibilities, organisations can then either use a single suite of solutions provided by a big vendor, which compromises the flexibility or follow emerging trends and implement easy plug and play technology. We’ve also had a lot of internal discussions about it. So, what the solution provider can suggest and how they react to the situation at hand must be factored in while choosing a solutions vendor.

We also believe that picking a solution has some added challenges. On the one hand, there are a lot of startups bringing unique ideas forward; on the other, big players are trying to merge with other organisations to consolidate the market. Just as Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, big players are looking for mergers and acquisitions to provide more interesting and sophisticated solutions.

Additionally, organisations are analysing the policies and practices they have in place. They are thinking if the strategies that served them in the past will work for them in the future. I also see that our peers are trying to work on the plans that existed before COVID-19, while others are trying to change their business models. If I look at the trends today, everyone is challenging the status quo.

A Piece of Advice for Aspiring HR Professionals

As unexpected as last year was, I would suggest HR professionals be open to new things. During the pandemic, a lot of organisations strengthened the relationship with the employees by ensuring they were both physically and mentally fit as well as safe. Moreover, many organisations recognised their dependence on employees and adopted new solutions. HR professionals, therefore, must be open to new trends and be ready to test and learn for change. After all, it is a dynamic market, so experiment and enjoy. It will definitely be an adventure ahead for HR executives. So, enjoy

Microsoft