How can HR folk tackle the COVID-19 wave?

The worldwide pandemic – Coronavirus disease aka COVID-2019 has captured a lot of headlines in today’s date. The virus has shaken almost every country and people living there. Citizens have been asked to stay quarantine and situations like strict lockdown and curfew have been brought up.

The untoward outbreak affected a lot of industries in country and undoubtedly HR was one of them. The HR folks got some good set of challenges during the period.

Since companies and workforce were forced to work from home without any prior preparation, at HR department raised challenges like remote workforce management, employee engagement, productivity measures of remote employees, attendance management, and onboarding of remote workers.

Let’s not waste a second and learn ways HR folks are tackling the COVID-19 wave on their business:

How to manage remote employees?

Well, managing people remotely could be the trickiest part for the HR department. You need to be a good leader to make this happen. Without proper leadership skills in TM (Team manager), team members may demotivate and therefore get isolated.

The HR manager here needs to revamp its working hours. conditions have changed. So, do working hours. HR has to practice flexible working hours to get the right fit. Tools like self-service portal can help you track their worked hours on daily basis. HR needs to only ensure regular punching of employees. With accurate attendance tracking, payroll management is not an issue.

How to ensure remote workforce engagement?

Here comes the crux part of remote employee management – employee engagement! Keeping a not and developing employee experience throughout is important to not fall in unwanted challenges like losing your employees amid lockdown.

So, how do you ensure? Communicate frequently. Keep them involves with deliverables and activities. Dedicated cloud HR software comes up with modules like ESS portal which keeps employees connected with regular updates and reminders. Employees can anytime logon and check HR details, leave details, request leaves through phone, etc. with the provided portal.

HR managers can advice TL to keep checking on them through conference or video calls (may be weekly?). Such measures eliminate the chances of employees getting cut off.

How would you know whether they are productive or not?

This must be a doubt for most of you out there! Attendance management, employee engagement and leave management have been checked. What about the productivity index? How will an HR or the TL (Team lead) ensure that the employees are actually working or not? A timesheet can help you in. Timesheet management can help a manger track work details and hours spent on work easily. Employees can themselves feed the details through mobile phone itself.

Online leave management and timesheet management can help you in this area. Adopting one is not so difficult in today’s date. a lot of cloud based HRMS solution comes up with these integrated modules.

Successful onboarding of remote employees-

Till now you have learnt managing an existing workforce remotely. But what if you need to onboard a new employee/ s remotely? Making the recruits familiar about the team and indulging into company culture seems easier when at office. HR manager has a set of measures to be followed while successful onboarding at office.

Now, with remote onboarding, HR need to tailor them for effectiveness. First step is creating a final checklist with right measures to be taken to not miss any important step. Checklist must look like this – employee handbook > daily deliverables explained > ESS portal onboarding. Also, intuitive online training management system can help lower difficulties at onboarding.

In the lesson?

With right tools at base, remote workforce management is no pain. COVID-19 is just like an escalator to the remote working. Even after the pandemic is curbed, remote working is to be continued for many corners. In fact, work from home is here to STAY!

Utilize the learning today. Make your management compatible with the nearing future and employee requirements to stay alive in the game! Hope it helps.

Thanks for reading!