People Management In A Post-Covid World

What’s on the mind of HR managers?

Since the beginning of the global Covid-19 pandemic, we have turned to scientists to help understand and adapt to life with this virus. Organizations have also turned to scientists - People Scientists – to understand more about the evolving human challenges related to our rapidly changing world of work.

At Culture Amp, we have carefully collected data from customers (more than 3,000 leading organizations globally), helping to piece together some of the key trends in employee experiences during Covid-19, but many organizations continue to ask us: “What are your customers doing to respond to these trends?” 

Below are three profound changes and challenges shaping HR and people management today, as identified in our latest study: ‘How companies are embracing a new future’.

Perhaps the most profound and enduring change from the pandemic has been the widespread adoption of remote work. Before the pandemic, 87% of companies had a small proportion of their employees working remotely. The data shows a dramatic shift has occurred, as companies transitioned from predominantly co-located workforces to dispersed workforces - with 75% of organizations now working completely remotely.

Looking forward, the remote workforce landscape does not look like it will return to pre-pandemic levels. We can expect a greater proportion of ongoing remote or hybrid work arrangements, with one-third of companies with no prior remote work pre-Covid planning to continue the new practice once restrictions ease. Of these companies with little prior experience in remote work, 35% will keep more than half of their employees working remotely, 39% will have less than half of their employees remote. Only 19% of these companies will return to the majority of in-person work. Notably, 20% of respondents overall signaled that their organizations have already reduced their real estate footprint in response to the shift to remote work.

Substantial resources and effort went into transitioning organizations and their teams to remote work. When viewed alongside performance findings - like 71% of participating companies are performing at or above pre-pandemic performance levels - there is encouraging evidence that remote working can and will be an effective and long-term choice for organizations.

As we near the end of the year, HR practitioners are wondering how to best adjust their performance and feedback strategies to accommodate company needs while being mindful of the challenges employees are facing. Concerns have focused on whether to proceed at all during this time, appropriate adjustments to adapt these processes, and determining the ideal cadence. 

The data shows many organizations intend to proceed with their performance reviews, with the majority (51%) set to keep their original performance goals, 7% increasing their performance goals for the period, and 32% reducing or simplifying their performance goals for 2020. In terms of the review process itself, 64% of businesses plan to retain their normal process, 22% will reduce or simplify the process, and only 9% of companies intend to delay their process until a later date.

Even with promising developments towards a Covid vaccine, it will likely take many months before Covid ceases its impact on businesses and their strategies. Many organizations are planning to proceed with their performance reviews remotely because they know how critical the performance review process is to both organization and the employee. Companies need to measure performance to inform their own operations, and performance feedback offers guideposts as employees work on their own development. 

The immediate challenge for organizations is to consider new models for conducting performance reviews remotely. Leaders will likely find it harder to monitor and coach distributed employees with traditional management skills, and so managers will need to learn new skills that balance proactive displays of trust and confidence in their employees while also providing more explicit job and task descriptions to avoid confusion. Since leaders will not be able to casually observe their teams - as they did in shared workspaces - they will need to seek feedback from coworkers to properly assess their team’s contributions.

The pandemic has required many changes of companies, placing greater demand than ever before on the expertise of Human Resources. Critical issues like strategic coordination, organizational culture, feedback, and performance strategies have put significant pressure on HR. Interestingly, 93% of HRs felt supported by their senior leaders to respond to the pandemic, but only 64% of HR leaders felt confident about measuring the effectiveness of the changes made during this period. 

Managing a fluctuating workforce presented another significant challenge, with 59% of organizations experiencing some change to headcount during the pandemic - 28% experiencing growth during this time and 30% reducing the size of their workforces. Notably, barely half of the HR leaders felt they had enough staff in their teams to address the required changes. These findings raise concerns over the ability of HR functions to handle ever-changing workloads in light of previous Culture Amp research in June 2020 which found that most (57%) HR professionals were already finding their stress levels unmanageable.

Today, the HR manager requires additional support and new tools to excel in a work environment that has been deeply transformed by the pandemic. In order to be effective change agents, HR must have a strategy that considers both short- and long-term needs with sufficient support, necessary resources, and cooperation from key parts of the organization. 

A well-equipped, well-informed and empowered HR team has the power to make judicious decisions and effectively implement them as they adapt their employee feedback strategy, performance management, headcount plans, and policies to support employees. Data plays a central role in helping HR practitioners to assess the impact of these changes, but also in cementing their track record of success, and in turn, helping HR teams to secure the resources necessary to make and implement thoughtful people decisions into the future. Without an effective feedback loop of this nature, HR may do good work now but may have to start again from scratch when the next major issue hits. 

Note: The complete Culture Amp report on ‘How companies are embracing a new future’ can be accessed here.