HR's Role In Overcoming Challenges Caused By The Covid-19 Pandemic

Figure 1: HR challenges

HRM refers to how employees are hired, managed, and developed in businesses. COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on it, posing considerable issues for managers and HRM specialists. The Covid-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges to organizations worldwide, requiring them to adapt quickly to new circumstances and ensure the safety and well-being of their employees. Human Resources (HR) departments played a crucial role in supporting organizations during this time and worked to overcome various challenges (Hamouche, 2021).

HR challenges faced during covid 19

Here are some of the biggest HR challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Adapting to Shifting Hiring Priorities

The early days of the pandemic brought forth layoffs in some companies and industries around the globe, resulting in dramatically reduced or eliminated working hours. In addition to layoffs, many companies implemented hiring freezes and placed HR initiatives on hold as a cost-saving drive, leaving many HR professionals at a loss for what comes next. In many companies, a freeze was imposed on hiring, and in the event an employee left, in many positions, no replacement was made, but the existing employees were given that role either fully or distributed amongst a team. Hence, in some cases, managing employees who were stretched in their job roles was also a challenge encountered. Given the scenario of hiring, even an interview is not conducted in most cases as a physical interview but has changed to a virtual interview, which at times makes it difficult to judge, and there could be logistical issues as well that could come up, which in itself is a challenge.

2. Engaging Remote Teams

Employee engagement is at the heart of building a company culture and reducing employee turnover. It's always challenging for HR professionals to walk the line between advocating for employees and staying within the confines of the company's mission. Now, many HR professionals must walk that path while dealing with a remote work team. Not only are employees transitioning to a remote workforce, but they're doing so without any transition plan in place. Regardless of how the pandemic unfolds, many employers have decided to move forward with a remote work model. This means reaching out to HR to actively involve employees in their careers. HR is tasked with creating new policies for communication, checks, measuring success, and setting goals. This overhaul comes with the added challenge of training in a remote setting.

3. Managing Employee Communications

Internal communication is an ongoing challenge for many businesses. This problem had to be combined with an unpredictable situation that changed from one week to the next. With so much uncertainty, communication arrangements for this week may not apply to the next. The best HR can do is to take a human approach, demonstrating empathy and transparency. “Work from home” policies, equipment usage, and logistics policies had to be drafted and implemented as the remote working model took effect overnight.

4. Answering Tough Questions

The difficult choices involved in human resource management are one of its drawbacks. Due to the pandemic's financial strain and uncertainty, several businesses have been able to reduce their workforces and lay off workers. In terms of HR, this includes figuring out the threshold, how many workers the business can support, and which positions are most important to keep. Additionally, dealing with the nation's labor regulations and ensuring that businesses are acting ethically may be difficult for HR professionals to strike the best possible balance between the needs of the employer and the interests of the employee.

5. Maintaining the Office Culture

One thing has become obvious as the contemporary workforce develops: success depends on a clearly defined company culture. It serves as the foundation for an organization's identity and gives workers a common cause. But in times of adversity, culture frequently changes. Decisions are made in the moment. As new ideas are implemented, secondary issues like your typical workplace culture sometimes take a back seat, which is natural given the environment we find ourselves in. Furthermore, practically everything else takes a backseat to maintaining financial security. There aren't many technical options available for maintaining uniform communication and staff engagement (Fonseka, 2021).

Conclusion

When managing its employees, any organization, regardless of industry or size, is sure to run into difficulties. The volume and type of difficulties encountered by human resources professionals continue to grow as firms place more emphasis on enhancing the employee experience and culture. Digital upheavals, workplace culture transformations, economic changes, changes in the political environment, etc. can all lead to several HR difficulties. As an illustration, the year 2020 presented a significant challenge for HR departments to develop, manage, and lead effective remote workforces for businesses to continue operating successfully despite the epidemic.

References

• Hamouche, S., 2021. Human resource management and the COVID-19 crisis: implications, challenges, opportunities, and future organizational directions. Journal of Management & Organizations, 4(3), p. 47.

• Fonseka, N., 2021. THE BIGGEST HR CHALLENGES FACED DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, Colombo: Business Management Digest.