Throughout the COVID crisis, HR professionals have consistently led the way forward. Even as businesses struggle to stay afloat, HR personnel have been required to redesign talent strategies and upkeep employee morale while still performing their core functions and HR processes.
As HR professionals, this baptism of fire has certainly raised a few questions. One of the most pertinent questions is – what is the next step for HR processes and managing the workforce?
Given that the global pandemic has irrevocably changed employee evaluations permanently, business leaders and managers too will need to adopt an entirely new mindset. From optimizing HR processes, and business operations to enhanced employee engagement, HR plays a huge role in this new normal.
Here are our views on 3 key issues that HR teams should ensure have been covered within their organizations.
With employees gradually returning to the office, information such as travel history and medical records will need to be kept and recorded for contact tracing purposes.
While a requirement, collecting and storing such data presents a major security risk. Sensitive data such as medical information is highly confidential and can lead to severe legal ramifications should a data breach occur.
Stolen data can be used for a variety of nefarious purposes including blackmail and harassment. Thus highlighting why HR professionals need to take the appropriate action to safeguard their employee’s data.
Modern HRM systems such as that from IQDynamics incorporate a wide-ranging set of security features. These include web application firewalls are specially designed to protect HR databases from being breached by hackers.
Collection of sensitive and confidential information from employees places a duty of care on HR professionals to ensure that this data is kept secure at all times. IQDynamics’ HRIS also comes with a self-serving employee portal, allowing employees to key confidential information directly into the system, reducing the risk of an information leak.
Related: See why IQDynamics’ HRIS is more than just an employee database
While the COVID crisis has resulted in a hiring freeze for most organizations. This is not the case across the board. In fact, it has become more crucial than ever for employers to up their hiring game.
With talented candidates on the search for new sources of employment, HR professionals can leverage this opportunity to snap up top talent and streamline their candidate selection HR processes. Instead of ignoring recruitment, managers need to focus on the long-term and ensure that talent management isn’t sidelined.
While recruitment strategies and organizational objectives may shift, organizations still can benefit from hiring talented employees.
From fresh new ideas to increased productivity, high-performing employees are well-motivated and possess the necessary skills to help an organization hit the ground running post-recovery.
IQDynamics features an integrated talent management system that allows managers to quickly post job advertisements whilst monitoring existing vacancies. This ensures that the most suitable candidates can be identified and contacted quickly for an improved candidate experience.
Related: Facilitate a smooth recruitment process, for internal and external parties, using HRiQ
With the 9 – 5 work culture being thrown out of the window, employers will need to rethink how employee performance is measured. As an increasing number of employees opt to work from home, traditional performance metrics are no longer relevant.
A more results-based approach will be needed to accurately assess employee performance. This is likely to trigger managers and supervisors to begin looking into other factors when determining key performance indicators.
Hence instead of requiring employees to work for a fixed amount of time every day, flexible work arrangements could become the new norm. For example, employees can choose to report to work early and leave as soon as their tasks for the day have been completed.
This encourages employees to function in as efficient a manner as possible and reduces the need for employees to intentionally pad out their working time. Besides reducing employee fatigue, flexible work arrangements reduce the time employees spend on-site thus reducing their risk exposure.
Related: HRiQ’s Time Attendance System’s ability to handle non-traditional work rosters
It is clear that the COVID pandemic has forced managers and business owners to drastically alter their ways of working. From flexible work arrangements to employee empowerment, 2020 is likely to be a revolutionary time for HR management. Hence, it is key to ensure that your organization is prepared and adaptable to these changes before 2021 begins. HRiQ’s full suite of HR and Talent modules have been designed to adapt and grow with enterprises to provide automation to tasks that are time-consuming. Interested to find out more? Contact us here!