Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, approximately 90% of our workforce was working remotely either completely or a few days a week.
We embraced the concept of remote work initially to support the ability to hire great talent regardless of location. We have since expanded to provide our team greater freedom to work in ways that increase their efficiency and effectiveness (both individually and as a team), while providing better work-life balance (especially for those employees where commuting was difficult). Remote working has evolved to be part of our culture and business model with the pervasive availability of high-speed broadband Internet, cloud-based applications — including unified communications & collaboration applications (chat, voice, video, content sharing) — and more powerful devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones).
With the social distancing and lockdown measures enacted by the government, Vyopta has easily moved to be 100% remote work with no impact to our business operation.
The HR remote toolkit should consist of a portal that provides access to the following:
HR should work with leadership to:
The key here is communication – HR must partner with IT to develop a process for each new hire. The process should clearly define the role of the individual, which in turn results in a template of the technologies needed by that individual to fulfill his or her job requirements. This would include the hardware and other tools needed, the software/applications packages for the role and the backend process, policies and approvals required to provision accounts and other permissions. Additionally, IT needs to employ management tools (such as device management systems) to ensure that the tools used by remote workers are up to date and operational 24×7 and to track service levels/incidents of cloud applications.
This requires flexibility and speed on the part of HR to learn and provide insight to the management team so that the organization can make decisions quickly. While you do not want to change the policies daily (people like consistency), you do want the ability to make changes as necessary. It is very important that as our business landscape changes (government regulations, customer demands, competitive pressures, crisis situations – like the coronavirus outbreak), the HR team needs to clearly communicate the remote work policies to ensure understanding.
Just as it is important that the HR team communicates to the workforce, it is also a critical policy that remote workers communicate effectively both internally and externally. This means that every remote worker should routinely check voicemails, forward office based phone calls to cell phones, hold meetings using video conferencing, use persistent chat messaging (including indication of status) for real time communication and collaboration, collaborate on documents using screen sharing or hosted document share, and VPN — if needed — to access secure company resources on the wide area network. HR should also suggest best practices for setting up the home workspace, eliminating distractions, ensuring privacy and confidentiality, appropriate attire and backgrounds for video conferencing, and how to stay connected to the organization.
It is important to get up to speed on ever-changing employment laws. If the HR team is large enough, the Benefits Compliance team would help the company keep abreast of the fast-changing legislative and regulatory developments. Having an employment attorney is crucial as some of these laws need more interpretation and most firms provide immediate notification of any changes to employment law.
The root of the solution is based on solid communication policies. While HR serves as the lynchpin to provide information to the employees, the HR team also is critical to receive concerns and questions from the workforce. HR can help manage and assist with concerns that employees may bring. We find that using modern unified communications and collaboration applications to be critical for establishing high availability for employees to reach out. Additionally, using video conferencing helps to provide a more human interaction where remote work may feel isolating. We suggest that HR (and management teams) create a cadence of short meetings to reach out and check on remote workers just to touch base, get feedback and potentially unearth any concerns.
Also, depending on the size of your HR department you should consider building a remote work task force to start dealing with the influx of potential issues that will arise given all the complexities. This is also a good time to revisit your core values and make sure they are aligned or possibly use this as an opportunity to revise. Maintaining a positive attitude toward remote working and showing a willingness to trust employees will be key to ensuring they are successful and productive. Focus on measuring results and reaching shared or personal objectives.
HR and the leadership team need to work together and be available to provide emotional support and to help reduce team stress. This type of communication is valuable. If available, an employee assistance program (EAP) is also a good resource for the team.
HR may not be the managers of the employees, but HR can be the “X” factor to help strengthen the culture and employee engagement and satisfaction, while monitoring the pulse of employee morale.
As part of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vyopta is currently offering a free trial to help IT teams support massive expansion in remote work.