HR's Crucial Role in the Age of COVID-19
2020 has been a year of extraordinary challenges, a dangerous pandemic, highly contagious and affecting every country in the world within a few months of its gestation. Absent a vaccine, the only way to contain and beat COVID-19 has been through early detection, isolation, social distance, tracing of contacts and enhanced hygiene. Whilst Governments have introduced emergency fiscal and monetary palliatives, the world economy has taken a severe hit, and millions are jobless and millions more with reduced income.
In the Philippines, the whole of the island of Luzon and other specific areas have been subject to the Government mandated Enhanced Community Quarantine, resulting in limited social interaction and limited business transactions, temporary closure of some company operations, including a considerable number of SMEs, and financial hardship for wage earners and their families. Programs to subsidise the needs of employees have been developed, funded by Government bodies and by large corporations.
The Human Resources Department of these corporations have had a crucial role in creating new policies and work setups to respond to the current requirements of this challenging time.
Months have passed, we have all seen changes in consumer and business behaviours manifested in changes in demand and supply structures. Like every organisation, the best practices that we knew were suddenly put to test without warning
Our Journey
Allow us to share some of our experiences and see if the formula we have developed to ensure compliance, good practice and operations will be of interest and use. We realized that this was a journey. We created what we believe to be; three-phases for this journey.
Phase 1: Survive. Phase 2: Revive. Phase 3: Thrive.
At any point in time, our clients may be at different stages, sometimes like us, different parts of the business being at different stages at the same time!
Survive
As strict quarantine guidelines limit the mobility of employees and management and client interaction, there will have been a need for a ‘first response’ radical change in business operations and a review of the Business Continuity Plan. Much of this change is reliant on HR policy, procedures and implementation, cybersecurity and infrastructure readiness to enable the business to pivot and respond to the urgent demands of the current circumstance. Work at home protocols is, beneficial, as also video conferencing. Where on-site operations have been or will be permitted, social distance and worker safety, and safe workplaces are paramount. Risk assessments are essential. These activities must be compliant with existing labour law and must be compliant with IATF and DOLE requirements. Risk assessments are crucial, as is safe transportation for on-premise workers and access to medical staff and added security and data privacy protections.
Revive
As quarantine restrictions are eased, new HR policies and procedures will assist in maintaining compliance with existing labour laws and changing quarantine considerations, ongoing strict health and safety requirements and IATF and DOLE compliance. Social distance requirements will require office, factory and canteen re-design. There will be a need for close monitoring of employee's physical and mental health, the provision of health and wellness programs and review of employee medical benefit coverages that will help the employees become more productive whilst operating safely. Adopting flexible working arrangements are more likely, and there will be a need to harmonise this with the existing labour law. Engagement as a Service and Outsourcing will be more frequently adopted. Best practice will enable organisations to profitably adapt to the new environment. We see solid opportunities for increased productivity.
Thrive
This phase gets companies back to being on top of their own destiny, having dealt with the external difficulties and delays caused by COVID19. Besides continuing the good practice of compliance and workplace safety and compliance with all regulatory authorities. It is recommended that a new risk audit, and new HR risk audit and data privacy audit be undertaken. It is likely the "new normal " will differ from the "normal" that we knew. The requirement for workplace safety and employee health benefits will be mandated to ensure continuing pandemic resistance and the provision of wellness programs will be expected if not mandated.
Q2 HR Solutions prepared a Work Readiness Solutions for each of the three (3) Phases for our clients. These packages complement our comprehensive HR services, including people management, productivity, recruitment background investigations, organisational development, safety and health issues and additional HR services.