Summary

Mar 31, 2020,04:25pm EDT

The Impact Of The Coronavirus On HR And The New Normal Of

Work. Jeanne Meister Contributor. Leadership Strategy. I write about Trends Shaping The Future of Work

The New Normal of Work

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For the past decade I have been writing and speaking about the disruptions in the way we work,

learn and communicate. In my article, Humans, Gigs and Robots Are The New Blended

Workforce, I saw an increase in full time workers working side by side with gig workers and bots

or digital assistants. I went on to say: the pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never

be this slow again! What I did not envision is we would be working exclusively from our homes

while juggling home schooling and trying to figure out how to conduct three Zoom sessions at

the same time: one for our own meeting, one for our spouse or partner’s meeting, and one for

our child learning at home!

The Covid-19 coronavirus is becoming the accelerator for one of the greatest

workplace transformations of our lifetime. How we work, exercise, shop, learn,

communicate, and of course, where we work, will be changed forever!

The term VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) first appeared in the media

in 1987 by the Army War College. It has taken just a few weeks for the Covid-19 coronavirus to

shut down most restaurants, bars, shops, and gyms, as well as mandate or encourage 88% of

workers to work from home, regardless of whether or not they are showing symptoms of

coronavirus (according to Gartner), trigger hiring freezes, and, as of last week, a record of 3.3

million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits.

But the larger question is: how will this massive transformation impact the workplace, you, your

team, and your organization? Future Workplace’s recent survey, entitled The Impact of the

Coronavirus in the Workplace, was conducted among 350 HR leaders in the USA to explore this

question. I will share some insights on how this new normal of work is evolving within

organizations.

1) Ramp up Training and Investment in Remote Working

Across the globe, companies are dealing with the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic by mandating

or encouraging employees work from home. As the coronavirus spreads, working from home is

the new normal for workers. We are hearing comments like: “It’s the first day of both working

from home and home schooling... I never signed up to be a teacher and now I believe teachers

should be paid like CEOs!”

What are companies doing to prepare for one of the largest work from home experiments ever?

Our research examined the various ways companies are dealing with remote working and one

way is training. Our Future Workplace survey, The Impact of the Coronavirus in the Workplace,

asked, “In what ways does your company offer training on how to successfully work from

home?” The responses ranged from offering both worker training and manager training, to

mentoring, coaching, and even launching Employee Resource Groups targeted to remote

workers and their families. See Figure 1:

Figure 1

FUTURE WORKPLACE

Microsoft is going one step further. They created a Guide to Working From Home During

COVID-19. This guide was shared with the Microsoft global workforce and a version was made

available to customers as an editable document to use with their own organizations. The link to

the customizable version is here: http://www.aka.ms/WFHguide-Customer

Rachel Russell, one of the architects of this document and the Flexible Work Lead at Microsoft

says, “We designed the document to support our employees working from home during this

outbreak, some for the first time and many with others at home as well. Our guidance ranges

from setting up your physical and virtual workspace to managing your time and wellbeing, as

well as specific guidance for managers. Everyone’s experience is different, and we continue to

offer learning resources and community spaces, like Yammer groups, where employees can ask

questions, share anecdotes, and brainstorm ideas for staying healthy, engaged, and productive.”

The Guide to Working From Home balances the mechanics of working from home with the

emotional implications of managing it all: work, home, children, and importantly, your own self-

care.

Future Workplace summarized the list of successful strategies for remote working following our

recent Future Workplace Virtual Summit, and interviewing both Rachel Russell and Stacy

Elliot, Senior Director of Communications at Microsoft, a pioneer in remote working for the

last 17 years.

Tips for Working Remotely

MICROSOFT'S GUIDE TO WORKING FROM HOME AND FUTURE WORKPLACE

2) The Future of Work Is the Future of Worker Wellbeing

My Forbes column, Top Ten HR Trends That Matter Most in the 2020 Workplace, details

how companies that focus on the future of work are consumed by the impending disruption of

jobs, automation, and changing workforce demographics. All of these are important, but we also

need to make worker wellbeing a priority! Today more than ever, the future of work is

the future of worker wellbeing. With the growth of the digital economy, our ‘always on’ way

of working, the stresses in managing work-life integration, and now dealing with the

coronavirus, assisting workers with their wellbeing has never been more important.

As Cecilia Tse, Wellbeing Strategy Leader, PwC says, “We are committed to helping build our

people’s wellbeing and we define this to include their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual

well-being. But we are going beyond viewing wellbeing as a perk, we are being prescriptive to

provide our people guidance and suggestions for habits they can consider forming in each of

these areas on our PwC Be well, work well Habit Bank.” This focus on worker wellbeing is

especially important, as workers experience anxiety in dealing with the coronavirus. Our Future

Workplace survey asked the question, How is your organization dealing with increased anxiety

during the coronavirus pandemic? Our list of suggestions are outlined below in Figure 2.

Figure 2

FUTURE WORKPLACE

3) The Coronavirus Can be an Opportunity to Re-define Your Business

The coronavirus pandemic is fundamentally shifting how we live and do business and will

accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution, fueled by smart technologies such as Artificial

Intelligence and mobile supercomputing. The Future Workplace Survey asked HR leaders, How

could the Coronavirus be advantageous to your business? Figure 3 shows the range of

responses where some HR leaders saw the coronavirus as an opportunity.

Figure 3

FUTURE WORKPLACE

Many survey respondents commented on how the coronavirus could be an opportunity to re-

think assumptions on their products, services and business model as well as cross training and

creating new products to be better prepared for the next pandemic.

As I toward 2021, I see the coronavirus as an accelerator for defining the role of the corporation,

remote working, re-skilling, skills based hiring, and the transformation of corporate learning.

CEOs Will Be Bold in Protecting and Investing in Their People

On August, 19, 2019 the Business Roundtable released a statement signed by 181 CEOs

acknowledging all of a corporation’s stakeholders- workers, communities, partners- were as

valuable as their investor shareholders. This statement now looks to be prescient. In the past few

weeks, there have been numerous examples of corporations proving they meant what they

acknowledged back in August, 2019.

• Microsoft announced that they will keep paying the hourly workers who

support their campus during this period of reduced service needs.

• Starbucks, identifying the anxiety of this crisis, has extended its mental health

benefits and extended therapy sessions to all U.S. based employees and their

eligible family members starting April 6th, 2020.

• StopTheSpread.org, the blog on Medium authored by Ken Chenault, former

CEO of American Express, and Rachel Romer Carlson, CEO and co-Founder of

Guild Education, asks CEOs to stand together to support coronavirus recovery by

funding national healthcare needs such as ventilators, respirators and hospital

supplies.

There Will Be a Surge in Remote Working after the Coronavirus

In 2017, FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics estimated the number of people working

remotely increased 159% between 2005 and 2017, with a 44% rate of growth in the last five

years of that span.

That was only the beginning. Remote work is here to stay! The coronavirus is making

companies, employees and their managers more comfortable with working from home. From

now on, we will question taking that flight to see a client if we can communicate on a new

project using Zoom.

Face time will no longer be the measure of worker productivity. Instead we will finally focus on

results! With the benefits of tapping into a geographically and ethnically diverse talent pool,

managers will increasingly explore how to make remote working part of their culture.

Skills-based Hiring Will Move from The New Normal to The Normal

More companies will move from hiring based on degree pedigree to hiring based on skills and

more apprenticeship jobs will surge.

I spoke with Ravi Kumar, President of Infosys Ltd, on how the coronavirus will impact

businesses. Ravi wrote his point of view in an inspirational LinkedIn article, Thinking Out

Loud, on the confluence of opposites born in unprecedented times, such as an increased need

for collaboration while we work remotely or the need to reap benefits of global

interconnectedness along with local resilience.

Organizations, even as they deal with the challenges of the here and now, are putting into place

plans for their post-COVID recovery. Transforming their talent models and digitizing their

talent value chains will be a big focus area.

Kumar predicts a surge in skills-based hiring as more companies outsource routine tasks to

machines and humans focus on uniquely human skills of creativity and critical thinking. Kumar

says, “I see a future where machines will handle problem solving and humans will focus on

problem finding.” That vision has committed Infosys to be a leader in the skills-based hiring

movement, where the company focuses on recruiting candidates with the skills and capabilities

they need rather than on their degree pedigree. Infosys partners with various community

colleges in the country to hire for the right skills. In anticipation of the large scale digitization of

workplaces, Infosys is stepping up its effort accelerating this with the recently launched Digital

Apprentice program for community college students to learn-earn-work in order to land digital

backbone jobs.

Learning Will Be Radically Transformed

This new normal of working will drive new ways to learn online. Research and Markets has

forecast the e-learning market to triple by 2025 to reach $325 billion.

That was before the coronavirus. This estimate will only increase as companies have no choice

but to launch a radical transformation of corporate learning.

We already saw this happening with:

• Walmart is partnering with Strivr to use Virtual Reality to prepare Walmart

workers for Black Friday in store shopping;

• Best Western Hotels is partnering with Mursion to use virtual reality to train

front desk clerks in problem solving skills;

• Home Depot built a mobile app to train new hires while they are on the job,

sharing product information to reduce the need for face to face training.

All of these experiments will be accelerated as business leaders disrupt their old practices which

relied heavily on face to face learning and pivot to developing proof of concepts for learning on-

the-job using the latest consumer technologies.

Chris Pirie, former CLO of Microsoft and lead faculty for online course Radical Transformation

of Learning believes business leaders must find new ways to create engaging experiences which

are experiential and fun. That means incorporating more gamification, virtual reality, and

augmented reality for corporate learning.

Organizations will Double Down on Re-Skilling Workers

While some organizations like Amazon, SAP, Walmart, AT&T, PwC and Guardian Life Insurance

have already announced plans to re-skill large segments of their workforce, the challenge for

more companies will be to go beyond designing one-off training programs. This challenge will be

much bigger than any one program. Instead, companies will create an ecosystem devoted to

creating an AI powered skills inventory, reskilling and and exploring new private partnerships

with traditional and non-traditional institutions of learning, as well as ed tech startups.

Welcome to the new normal of work. What is clear is none of us can afford to operate as we have

in the past. In the words of Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, "In the

beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind, there are few." As business

leaders we need to see all the possibilities, challenge our perceptions, and lead this disruption of

work. This is our opportunity to show how we lead in a crisis as we navigate the unprecedented

journey in the coming weeks and months.