The importance and the stress on WFH have gone up as has the need to ensure that the employees are better managed in a non-office environment.
- Infra availability and readiness
- Driving engagement from the employees
- Taking care of their mental health
- Ensuring productivity and upskilling
- Creating a feedback mechanism
- Alleviating issues and concerns that they might be facing
To begin with, moving to a work from home setup did not come easy for us, in Ahmedabad the teams had desktops and we had to move close to 500+ systems home in a days’ time to ensure no loss of productivity is there. Besides this to get the network and infra capabilities up were a challenge, wherein the HR team in conjunction with the IT and Risk team got all system and related capabilities in place.
Once people were in their home environment and safety, the first thing we did was we instituted a contest, an engagement module that would have the employees looking forward to action and excitement during the day. Christened “LK Buzzinga”, that too with an internal poll used to finalize the name, the contest has been a huge draw. With 9 interdepartmental, inter-functional teams pitted against each other. We have regular contests/avenues/competitions as a part of the bigger umbrella competition. Teams have been participating in contests such as Quiz, Crossword, Selfie contest, etc with Zeal and fervor, regular updates and emails are used to drive this strongly and push the teams to do more.
While we were doing this, we knew that a lot of people will have issues with a long period of lockdown, a lot of employees were living away from their families in PG accommodations or alone and talking to them and reaching out was paramount. We mapped people from within the HR team to every employee and instituted a reach outcall for every employee, besides this via the means of our EAP we were catering to incoming calls from employees as well. All this helped us to placate the nerves of our employees who were feeling the jitters of the lockdown and have them understand that we were standing toe to toe with them through this. As of now the HR team has reached out to 100% of the employees on a one on one basis and best catered to their problems and ensured mental well-being for them.
While working from home there are chances that the employees may slip up and while being away from the office environment, they may end up slipping on a few tasks or on output. We in HR ensured that the managers, were regularly in touch with the teams, calendarized calls for team meetings as well as for functional open houses so that all employee productivity-related issues can be managed. Skip level e-meetings were organized so that the employee understands the need for staying on top of his/her game. While we were ensuring on job productivity, it was clear that with work rate and output requirement not being at its peak there was a huge scope to drive upskilling. With inputs from the reporting manager as well as the employee, we ensured that all employees were picking up courses and certifications that would lead to long term benefits for them and the organization. These costs for these courses being covered by the organization itself.
Now, with an open door policy existing in the office and the HR team being constantly available the feedback and the chance to improve are provided for. But in a work from home setup, feedback and ensuring action on it becomes even more critical, the feeling of being lost can set in, and hence, we ensured that regular feedback calls are being done. The HR team, on its own, reached out to team leaders and the team down the line to ensure that their feedback and their queries are being taken care of. This has helped us establish offline credibility and effectiveness in the online space as well.
Besides this, the HR team has been in touch with employees and taking their feedback and improving upon things to ensure that the WFH experience for the employee is not compromised. Employee feedback surveys, employee bytes, and calls, etc have helped us close the gap and issues that they might be facing.
And now that we are seeing the spread of COVID is in check and there is a near horizon opportunity to kick start and get back to the working environment, HR in close consultation with the management is instituting an exit strategy in place. While continuous monitoring is in place, ensuring employee safety and ensuring workplace hygiene will be a key component of restarting operations. The role and the innate responsibility set of HR in this situation are ever-evolving.
This period which may very well become the new normal across organizations has had a huge transformative impact on how HR as a function has evolved and how it should move forward. The importance and the stress on WFH have gone up as has the need to ensure that the employees are better managed in a non-office environment. For HR teams to evolve and for them to be up-to-speed with the ever-changing environment this period serves as a great learning experience.
