New possibilities arising from the COVID-19 crisis

Part 3 Rather than shrinking from, or preparing to fight, the oncoming storm of change, organisations should draw energy from it.

In the context of COVID-19, leading organisations will leverage the opportunity to return to work by designing the future of work, employing the lessons, practices, and goodwill they built during their accelerated crisis response.

In the previous article, from this series of three, we looked at the potential of an organisation that is designed and organised to maximise what humans are capable of thinking, creating, and doing in a world of machines. We wrap up the series with a focus on perspective – continuing our view on how to start the process of returning to work by leveraging the 2020 human capital trends – a set of reflections, recommendations, and frameworks which we believe are more critical than ever as organisations head toward recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. actions on the front line, such as raising minimum wages for essential workers8 or cutting executive compensation to prioritise keeping people employed.9

New possibilities: As they stage the return to work, organisations should ask themselves what principles serve as the foundation for their compensation philosophy, programs, and policies. When evaluating those principles, the conversation should not be limited to market value, but should also account for human value in the form of purpose, fairness, transparency, growth, and collaboration.

New possibilities: As they stage the return to work, organisations should take advantage of the power of technology to collect workforce insights by pulling together the key questions that they need to be asking to gain the real-time workforce insights they need. This is the time for organisations to challenge whether they’ve been asking the right questions all along and whether they have the governance and processes in place to enable them to use the data to truly sense what is happening across the organisation and workforce.

Ethics and the future of work: From “could we” to “how should we”

The COVID-19 shift: COVID-19 brought ethical issues around employment to the forefront that many may previously have viewed as ivory-tower concerns, putting a spotlight on the impact of organisational decisions on workers’ lives every day. These ethical implications extend to many segments of the workforce, but were particularly evident in the experience of the alternative workforce, some of whom faced decreased demand and related financial concerns, or increased demand and related safety concerns. An April 2020 survey found that 70 percent of gig workers were not satisfied with the support they received from their employers during the pandemic.10 New possibilities: As they stage the return to work, organisations need to ask themselves critical questions to help them prepare for the perceived and actual ethical impacts of business decisions. They should also be monitoring government response, as this too will continue to evolve coming out of the crisis. This consideration is especially important as it relates to organisations’ use and treatment of the alternative workforce, particularly in industries that rely heavily on the gig economy.

A memo to HR: Expand focus and extend influence The COVID-19 shift:

Perspective: An organisation that encourages and embraces a future orientation, asking not just how to optimise for today, but also how to create value tomorrow

COVID-19 put the spotlight on the CHRO and the HR organisation, just as the 2008–2009 recession did for the CFO and finance function. In the past few months, we have seen a greater appreciation for the breadth of what HR does and can do: It has been essential in everything from monitoring workforce sentiment, to establishing connections between organisational leaders, workers, and teams, to integrating well-being into work and reimagining how, where, and what work gets done.

New possibilities: Emerging from this crisis, organisations should ask themselves if HR is positioned to make the impact they can and should be making across the enterprise. HR should take a leading role in helping the organisation and the workforce adapt to changing organisational and business requirements. The question organisations must ask themselves is whether HR has a broad enough focus to extend their influence in the areas where they need to play to help position the organisation to both recover and thrive over the next decade.

For more information, please visit www.deloitte.com/mt/humancapital