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AXA

The Shifting Landscape of HR after the Pandemic

Olga Kravchenko

Olga Kravchenko

When the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic, it was an unprecedented crisis with severe economic consequences. Even health experts around the world were clueless as to how long the crisis will last and what the ‘new normal’ would look like. Organisations were questioning whether the ways of operating that have served them well in the past, will be fit for the future. Amid this storm, human resources were uniquely positioned to lead organisations by quickly providing employees with their response to the pandemic. While rolling out new guidelines for working and providing infrastructural and social support, HR endeavoured to keep employee spirits and productivity levels high during remote working in the lockdown. .

Now that the organisations are past the response phase, HR will now need to look ahead and make changes to policies, structures, and practices to align with the new way of working. It’s time for HR to reimagine not only its own future but also the future of their organisations.

Supporting Employees during the Pandemic

During the pandemic, the global HR industry was heavily disrupted. HR leaders had to review their current practices and very quickly adopt new ones. We at AXA put a lot of emphasis on protecting our employees during the lockdown by understanding what they wanted and incorporating it into our assistance programs. As per the feedback from our employees, our employee engagement in the course of the lockdown was the highest.

AXA also understood that while employees and managers were working remotely, they needed to learn and upskill themselves in the ‘new normal.’ Thus, we invested 70 million Euros and created comprehensive training programs and 100 percent of its employees participated in them. We heavily used the LinkedIn learning platform to help employees engage with the learning programs

In the beginning, a few employees were sceptical about technology’s role in work from home conditions. However, with time, employees realised the benefits of using technology.

Today, we are focusing on creating a new reality because we don’t believe that working 100 percent from home is the future. The future will be a ‘smart way of working,’ which will be a combination of teleworking, work from home and work from the office. Because how people spend their time working from home is very different while working from an office.

Challenges in the Market

I believe that the biggest challenge for organisations today is to adapt according to the situation very quickly. For large organisations, in a cost restricted and regulated environment, adapting can be very difficult. But, at AXA, we believe that change is the only constant and we have no choice but to transform.

Let’s say, today, we have defined our concept of a smart way of working, but we need to look at the current realities and we need to explore for the foreseeable future. Because people have different personalities, the smart way of working can raise some challenges too. While some would want to come to the office, others might need a strong reason to step outside the comfort of their homes and return to work.

“Today, we are focusing on creating a new reality because we don’t believe that working 100 percent from home is the future”

Apart from that, one of the questions organisations must ask themselves is what will be the application for technology? What should be the technological architecture? Will the technology provide us flexibility and align with the new reality? Organisations can either use one suite of solutions provided by a big vendor, which compromises the flexibility or follow emerging trends and implement easy plug and play technology. We’ve also had a lot of internal discussions about it. So, what the solution provider can suggest and how they react to the situation at hand must be factored in while choosing a vendor.

Disruptions and Transformations

Today, too many organisations in the market are looking into the technological landscape. They are asking themselves, what is the future? They are thinking if the strategies that served them in the past will work for them in the future? I also see that our peers are trying to work on the plans that existed before COVID-19 while others are trying to change their business models. If I look at the trends today, everyone is challenging the status quo.

There are a lot of emerging plug and play solutions in the market. These solutions are flexible and at the same time provide data insight. On one hand, there are a lot of startups with unique ideas, on the other; big players are trying to merge with other organisations to consolidate the market. Just as Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, big players are looking for mergers and acquisitions to provide more interesting and sophisticated solutions.

Piece of Advice for Aspiring HR Professionals

I would say be open to new things. Last year, a lot of organisations really proved that they stand for their employees by ensuring the health and safety of employees. Also, many organisations recognized their dependence on employees and adopted new solutions. So, HR professionals must be open to new trends, be ready to test and learn for change. It is a dynamic market, so experiment and enjoy. There’s definitely an adventure ahead of us

The articles from these contributors are based on their personal expertise and viewpoints, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their employers or affiliated organizations.
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