The Integral Role of CHROs During Pandemic COVID-19 Outbreak

Chief HR officers play a crucial role at this time of crisis (pandemic COVID-19). The central theme surrounds employee wellbeing, business continuity, and performance.

Many areas of the world are encountering an expanding outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel coronavirus, COVID-19. On March 11, the World Health Organization branded COVID-19 as a pandemic.

To break the chain of COVID-19 spreading, schools, transport, services, organizations, and communities are experiencing closures worldwide. The essentials alone are available online and at defined places where they need to follow the strict guidelines. Mandatory company closures and requests for work-from-home have hit the workplaces.

At this juncture, Human resources personnel, especially the 🔗chief human resource officers (CHROs) have additional responsibilities to ensure employee safety, meet organizational priorities, and intact business continuity.

HR leaders are considering the organization’s capacity for work performance, current absenteeism, risks to both the workforce and the business, and authenticated data about COVID-19 from the centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the World Health Organization. This information would help HR leaders to devise a plan and achieve 🔗employee wellness, business continuity, and organizational priorities.

Many chief HR officers are worried to respond to the quickly changing crisis effectively. This article stresses on the suitable measures that would enable them to help employees’ safety without affecting productivity.

Here is a gathered list of strategies and policies followed by CHROs across the organizations in the world.

👉 Employee Wellness

Employee wellness top the lists. All organizations are assessing risks to their employees’ wellbeing at the physical and financial level. Chief HR officers are evaluating 🔗work-from-home strategies. Companies that don’t have specific WFH programs in place are deploying work from home and refining approaches. New teams called crisis management teams are built on the go.

Some of the mitigation efforts include –

Advocating compulsory remote work policies

· Closing on-site facilities like cafeterias, gyms, and other common areas

· Revising employee compensation and benefits policies

· Granting paid time off for

o symptomatic employees

o employees taking care of family members 🔗diagnosed with COVID-19

· extending 🔗sick leave or paid time off on a case-by-case basis

· providing employee assistance programs

· promoting stress management and other services

· providing dependent care benefits

· paying for time spent under quarantine

· advising employees on coronavirus awareness

· Issuing FAQ guides on COVID-19

👉 Business Continuity

🔗HR leaders are holding additional meetings to monitor business performance. Weekly meetings are turned to daily meetings. Short team huddles, video calls, team calls are on increase in an effort to sustain business functions.

Supervisors and immediate managers are frequently calling their subordinates to gather feedback on remote work and other strategies. Many have moved their operational facilities to unaffected locations. Several CHROs are –

· Monitoring supply chains, conducting a risk assessment, and operation impact

· Preparing for transportation and communication delays

· Approving additional budget or paid time off

· Optimizing employee pay-outs

· Communicating facilities for employees and clients as well

👉 Business Priorities and Performance

Many companies are actively involved in testing technological capabilities and facilitating employees for remote work. Some of the technological benefits provided for 🔗smooth business performance are-

· Updating emergency notification systems

· Providing office laptops, printers, and other portable equipment

· Setting up remote connections on employees’ personal computers

· Delegating by a trust

· Maintaining the trust of the clients

👉 Wrapping Up

HR leaders play a critical role at this sudden slump in 🔗work culture. A successful organization during this crisis should have people, processes, and technology with people in the center, technology and process supporting them. whilst, CHROs play a crucial role in administering, orchestrating, this entire process during transition, deployment, and settling down of employees’ culture from office-centric to distributed work environment.

This also creates new avenues for businesses to improve productivity and reduce inefficiency for employees without breaking the business as a usual chain (BAU), especially organizations that are people and process-intensive.