A recent survey by the Society of Human Resource Management reports that 86 percent of leaders feel confident in their ability to keep employees and customers safe in the face of the omicron variant. This does not mean they do not have significant concerns, but they know how to contend with this difficult situation. This is the plus side of the pandemic: it taught us to be innovative and resilient.
As we move into a new year filled with a multitude of challenges, it’s important to take stock of how we can take advantage of what the pandemic taught us to do and how we can leverage this moving forward:
Learning and using new software quickly – remember how quickly virtual meetings and training took off. Now virtual meeting software seems like something you have always used. It and other software are more accessible to more of your employees as learning how to use one software brand seems to translate into having more confidence to try out what a platform has to offer.
Understanding and following new procedures – the number of laws passed during the pandemic and the regulations that followed were dizzying. Employers and legal advisors had a lot to make sense of, and they had to do it quickly. And they did. HR managers and leaders became adept at understanding the latest local public health order, gathering information, and creating policies and procedures to put the requirements into action.
Organizing information – to follow the public health orders, employers had to track information across locations about employees working in different environments. Employers and employees mobilized to sanitize, screen, and control environments to keep people safe.
Strengthening management skills- many managers accustomed to having employees in the office began managing remotely, and others managed more work without a full complement of staff. Employers that wanted to keep high-performing employees listened to their needs and created a culture that attracted employees during a time of intense transition.
Cross-training employees – employers and employees worked outside their normal areas and routines to make the workplace safe, serve customers and clients when other employees were not available, and put new skills into action. Many employees learned a lot about themselves and what they had to offer.
Employers Council staff worked tirelessly to assist employers during the early days of the pandemic and beyond, quickly creating a variety of resources to assist members online and on the phone. We continue to do this as new variants and requirements continue to proliferate. Members may want to develop the habit of looking at our online resources and joining our community on our website to easily enhance their policies and procedures. We continue to work with members as they face new legal and organizational challenges.
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