Impact of Covid-19 on HR-Tech Industry

Corona virus has impacted all the industries. For some it turned out be a boon and for some it turned out to be a sin. Talking about HR tech industry, it has given a space to the organizations who don’t believe HR tech to be essential to rethink over their working and realign their activities according to such conditions.

CEO and chairman of the HR-Tech conference, Steve Boese said, "When new employment data will be released, Covid-19 might be the most destructive event in our lifetimes which will end up eating millions of jobs”.

HR leaders have an important role to play in these kinds of situations. Employers are putting in every possible effort to reduce the impact of corona virus on the workforce. Revamping the organization's structure to adapt and sail through such tough times is the key to success in situations like todays. Covid-19 has given them the arena to test whether their HR-tech tools help them to carry out the operations smoothly even in adverse situations like these or not. Employers are finding innovative ways to be collaborative and engaging through various channels of communication. It’s important to keep communication two-way and build on the existing culture.

Communication tools have flourished very much so as to keep business continuity in the remote conditions and to develop new processes to conduct the activities and ensuring that employees are on the same page and well informed about each step of the way.

It is very important to keep the employees engaged and satisfied. Various forms of engagements are used to address this. A lot of frequent online meetings are being conducted by the top leadership to keep the employees motivated and guide them through this tough time, leveraging digital tools, re-emphasizing on culture, virtual development/training are a few of the things being used to keep employees engaged.

Due to Covid19, organizations are facing certain problems which have led them to think over employing technology to manage the organizations well during emergencies.

• Difficulty in coordination among teams, business units and geographies: Communications between same units is still decent, but cross-functional communication is very difficult. Generally, companies are not structured in a way to share responses and feedback across regions easily and in remote conditions, it becomes even more difficult to operate and keep everything updated.
• Lack of agility to respond to fast changing conditions: A lot of approvals and permissions are required to take a final call and because of communication barriers, it becomes a very difficult task to take action instantly. It takes a lot of time to re-structure and align policies, strategies among employees in the remote working setup.
• Communication is not as effective as it can be: The complete communication process is taking a lot of time. Messages from top leaders to workers in the hierarchy get distorted easily in the remote working conditions which creates chaos and confusion in the organization.
• The responsibility and the power to find the solutions of these problems and to conduct operations smoothly lie directly on the shoulders of HR professionals.

Covid19 has posed a lot of challenges, but has given fruitful learnings to HRs to manage organizations in such times in future.

• They need to focus on people first rather than the economics in the organization
• The need to create a real-time data tracking to identify the loopholes so that instant actions can be taken.
• They need to focus on training employees to work from home smoothly in times of emergency.
• They have to keep the communication lines open and multidirectional.
• Quickly assess which roles are getting outdated and start aligning people towards new roles so to make the organizational dynamic.

The Covid19 has led to a lot changes in the working of organizations. A few of them are:

• A Major shift in the preferences includes the shift in the focus area. Earlier the employees were focused on producing & engagement, but due to covid-19 the focus has shifted to response, diagnosis and feedback.
• HR functions have shifted from domain-specific areas to Cross domain areas.
• Earlier, companies used to analyze the data periodically, now companies have realized to need do it on a real time basis.

Employers are doing everything to keep things normal. The following activities are conducted to normalize the situation.

• Organizing virtual coffee breaks to help employees socialize more to eradicate the loneliness.
• Trying to keep the communication lines open and multidirectional.
• Helping employees to maintain their physical and mental health in the remote setup also.
• Formed a crisis management team which looks after mis happenings in the organization.

Around

of the HR professionals said that the corona virus has allowed them to understand the importance and effectiveness of HR strategies and HR-Tech tools being used in the organization.

The importance of HR technology has never been so paramount. Its true value has come to the fore in these tough times. Employers are acknowledging the fact that technology can actually help them in times like corona virus.

In the coming future, a lot of organizations would be considering “work from home” as an integral part of the working culture. Equipping employees with digital tools, video conferencing facilities and apart from corporate learnings, access to enough content which keeps employees satisfied and engaged, would be the topmost priority of all the organizations.