One Unprecedented Year For Everyone Including Human Resources

What employees are missing and yearning for the most

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the first large-scale Covid stay-at-home orders. The milestone is significant as it provides an opportunity for HR professionals to look back as well as forward in order to best serve employees/organizations entering a new pandemic phase.
 

HR professionals across industries have faced unprecedented challenges and questions during the last 12 months, including:
 

This last item involves thinking-through tough strategies that can assist with effectively integrating and or 're-onboarding' your team members.
 
Such 're-onboarding' includes being cognizant that some of your people might be cautious, reluctant or worried about coming back. Accordingly, in many cases, our clients are planning communications or evaluating training intended to reassure staff that management is doing everything it reasonably can in terms of safety-related protocols.
 
Some HR clients are also identifying and offering employees “pre-views” of upcoming projects that benefit from in-person collaboration, or showcasing recent workspace enhancements. As an example, one design client is sending-out interior office maps to all soon-to-return employees highlighting improvements and “right of way” hallway rules that ensure distancing. - Their plan incorporates a set of employee-designed and highly stylized directional posters. One representative sign states: “Stop Here (in our renovated employee snack bar) For a Socially Distanced Chat.”
 
The key is to communicate with employees with messaging that is clear, but at the same time, positive, attractive and resonant.
 
Other of our HR clients are already priming its managers to be both empathetic as well as more vigilant in ensuring that socializing between those who have not seen one-another in months (and want to make-up for lost time together) doesn’t pull staff too far away from work obligations.
 
Finally, HR professionals are taking cues from the latest data regarding what team members have missed most about the pre-Covid times and their hopes for the future at work.
 
In that regard, the attached infographic was developed from data we recently collected from over 500 sessions participants representing companies of all sizes. It illustrates what employees are specifically missing and yearning for most at the one-year mark and what the pandemic has changed about their future work-life expectations: 

 
Given some of these results, and beyond the strategies described above, we also recommend that HR representatives and leaders plan for re-training of managers regarding all on-site policies and protocols. Be purposeful about giving them specific tools and opportunities for this new age of working, such as remote interviewing skills guidance and training on how to manage a hybrid workforce (folks splitting time between home and the office). 
 
One client, for example, is planning to encourage managers to ask those “zooming”-in to any meeting that also includes live participants to be the first to speak, where feasible. Doing so helps ensure that remote folks have an equal voice. Another client - in the insurance space - is already planning to set aside several “in-office team days” per month — thereby allowing for periodic team cohesion as well as for individual work-location flexibility all the remaining days. 

Philippe Weiss. J.D. is the President of Seyfarth at Work and WorkRight Solutions. Philippe collaborates with executives and business owners to help them achieve compliance, workplace, and individual career success via dynamic, practical strategies and solutions. Visit www.seyfarth.com  Connect Philippe Weiss