HR (Human Resources) is a vital department in companies and organizations responsible for managing the employees, starting from recruiting, then hiring, onboarding and training, and in the end, firing.
While the HR office manages functions like recruiting and payroll, it is also responsible for creating a positive and pleasant work environment.
Before the pandemic of 2020, people had discussions around questions like:
· Is sitting in the office essential to work better?
· Would it be better if employees worked remotely?
The lockdowns worldwide during pandemics put an end to such questions. It proved companies can survive and thrive by working from home.
HR role has changed
Almost 50% of HR professionals think their role has changed because of the pandemic. The majority of those say their job has become much more challenging.
HR is now playing a strategic role in dealing with sustainability concerns, and the capital challenges pandemic caused.
Reports claim that 70% of people rank work social relationships as valuable as getting their work done. Working from home minimizes social interactions.
All this leads to problems when sharing information. This is especially hard for the newbies because even the simple question becomes turmoil and creates difficult situations.
Daily tasks performed by HRs have gone through severe changes.
HR professionals had to guide their employees through the transition to a digital work environment and to deal with remote teams productivity. To work with remote development teams isn’t just a trend or the ‘future of work.’ It is the present and persistent reality.
HR professionals had to learn new skills and complete tasks they were not prepared to confront. Still, they had to learn how to be more productive and successful while working from home.
Virtual Recruiting
Many companies have already moved to virtual recruiting, but the pandemic forced all the other organizations to make this transition as fast as they could.
HR teams now manage the whole recruitment process from planning to selecting and hiring in a virtual environment.
Candidate experience has a significant influence on satisfaction and employer branding. Candidates who had a pleasant experience with a particular organization accept a job offer and refer others to your company.
Managing Remote Teams
Managing remote teams is a task many HR teams weren’t prepared for at the beginning of the pandemic, but that is exactly what happened to most of them. They had to learn how to manage remote teams when the support systems and the infrastructure weren’t there to support a smooth transition.
So to manage remote teams effectively, HR needs to:
· Put employee well-being in the first place.
· Reward people from the team.
· Balance visibility and flexibility.
· Stay connected.
· Create a happier workplace.
The happier employee is a better employee
Numerous research studies made the connection between employee happiness, engagement, and performance. How HR teams can make the best of the worst times is the right question.
The happier employee is more engaged. An engaged employee shows increased productivity and a lower rate of absenteeism from work.
A healthy work environment is what matters. A positive work culture improves personal well-being, encourages employee friendships. It also expands employee skills and resources through enhanced relationships with coworkers, increasing worker problem-solving abilities and creativity.
A sense of community at work is one of the most important things. Feeling that their fellow managers care about them helps employees be more resilient when facing challenges and stressful situations —both in their personal lives and at work.
A happy employee is less stressed. High stress leads to physiological and emotional problems that will probably result in higher employee absenteeism.
L&D leads to better employee engagement
If an employee has a sense of purpose at the job, he may experience a positive presence in the workplace every day.
The responsibility of HR is to create compelling role descriptions, which tell the employee what and why they are doing and how these roles fit into the organization’s overall plan. L&D also leads to better employee engagement.
What is L&D?
Have you heard of L&D before? L&D means learning and development and is a work process that develops employees’ skills to benefit both the company they work for and the individual.
The benefits of L&D are talent retention and attraction, improved employee performance, and higher employee engagement.
Upskilling your employees to meet your business’s demands and fill skills gaps can have an impact in other ways. Learning and development also position people to find out the latest in their fields, what’s trending, and how they can level up in their role to help move the business forward.
Organizations that focus on L&D can make an essential step in supporting company growth and higher employee engagement at the same time. According to a study, 80 percent of employees said that learning and development opportunities helped them feel more engaged at the workplace.
Video calling apps for more accessible communication
If you have a team you work with, you’ll probably need a video calling app, the one that will connect you all.
We have all heard of Zoom. Although it was launched in 2013, it has reached its peak during the pandemic, with around 300 million daily users.
Zoom is easy to use – all you need to do is download the Zoom installer and start the app. Anyone can join in the call with a single link, and you don’t have to create an account. As a platform, Zoom is supporting up to 1000 participants.
Google Hangouts is a communication app that allows you to start free video calls, send messages and join a conversation with a person or a group.
Google Hangouts requires a Google email address and a smart device to be used.
Google hangouts can include all your contacts with group chats – up to 150 people. It can also turn any group conversation into a video call – up to 10 people.
Chanty – its free version lets you have 1-on-1 audio calls, and group audio and video calls are also available in the business plan.
Chanty is supporting up to 30 participants on the group video call. It is also possible to do screen sharing while presenting. In addition, all files and messages are saved in the chat, and you can always come back to them.
Chanty is a powerful alternative to Slack and other collaboration platforms.
A platform for better managing mentorship programs
Have you already heard of Together Platform? It is a tool for enterprises to manage employee mentoring programs. With Together platform, you will be able to:
- Make the program your own.
- Customize skills and goals relevant to your program.
- White-label & brand your program.
- Write your content, or rewrite it from scratch.
- Watch your registrations roll in.
- Analyze your registration process.
- Send emails with the invitations tool.
- Set a deadline.
Explain complicated topics in seconds
Instead of spending too much time on chat and email, try to send instant screenshots and video messages with ScreenRec. You will save precious hours and get your point across faster.
ScreenRec is an excellent solution for developers, sales, designers, customer support, onboarding, business communication.
This is a fantastic way to explain complicated topics in seconds instead of losing hours. All you have to do is to capture your desktop and send the shareable link. Visuals are making messages more clear, and people better follow visual instructions to plain text.
By avoiding interruptions, team members can review messages you sent in their own time.
All-In-One tool for HR
Document management, employee onboarding, performance tracking, and more are all within ClickUp. This is an all-in-one tool for HR. You can build templates with employee requirements and individualized tasks to streamline training.
Using ClickUp, HR can create a centralized collection of company documents from handbooks to new remote working policies.
HR documentation software
The best way to transform HR teams to manage crucial documents is by using HR documentation software. With ProProfs, HR can search for information right away and track employees’ data from their day of joining. HR operations will become more simple when keeping documents well-organized, sorting and reviewing data.
This is a great tool for HR to provide instant access to information and improve their productivity.
Future of HR
HR will have to find ways to support their business leaders in restructuring during and after the pandemic.
HR will use artificial intelligence to recruit employees. Recruiters will implement AI to examine the voice and facial expressions of the applicant in more than a hundred different parameters. Businesses are looking to adopt flexible working arrangements, so re-establishing organizational culture is becoming a top priority for HR teams.HR will have to evolve across each element of the HR lifecycle to meet a new set of company’s and employee’s needs.
The HR Tech Weekly® 