The year of the 'people crisis' and how HR can help
Companies must elevate HR strategy to survive and thrive in a year of cascading crises.
The crises of 2020 are many — the pandemic and its horrific toll, the devastating economic recession, this summer’s painful reckoning with racial injustice. For businesses, they are also all fundamentally human, and have resulted in wave after wave of people-related challenges, none of which we’ve fully addressed.
HR has necessarily been front and center in responding to these crises as they arose, but putting out fires is not the sole function of a good HR team. It’s anticipating the challenges still to come, putting policies in place that demonstrate empathy and seizing opportunities presented by crisis, building trust with employees at every step.
Related: Effective crisis communication increases employee confidence—even during a pandemic
That starts at the top. As the leader of an HR team myself, I’m fortunate to report directly to my CEO, but you’d be surprised how many companies still operate with HR under finance or operations. This way of working, with HR purely managing tasks, has long shortchanged companies and leadership teams trying to see around corners and get the most out of their most precious resource — their people. In 2020, it’s untenable.
Executives have an opportunity to fully leverage their HR teams in their crisis response. Here’s what the new job description looks like.
Forecasters, not bystanders
A typical HR department oversees benefits, payroll, and recruiting. A strategic HR team includes data analysts and operations specialists, marketers and communicators — it’s a proactive as well as reactive discipline. The team should include designated business partners, internal stakeholders with visibility across the company who can see when a great employee is in the wrong seat, or when a team with a big idea needs an extraordinary operator to get it across the finish line.
Internal mobility functions alone support 41% higher employee retention, and, in a year where teams are being asked to do more with less, a function traditionally thought of as cost-saving is revealed for what it is: an internal incubator for top talent.
Culture carriers — and creators
Today, with nearly 50% of the US workforce working remotely, our workplace flows through our screens, and our immediate coworkers are our families, many of whom are working their own jobs (and homework assignments) right next to us. The challenge is to create a culture that’s still empowering given the obvious constraints. I’ve been encouraged by the focus of HR teams on providing support for some of today’s most pressing employee challenges, including resources for working parents, mental health, and increased leave to care for loved ones or simply to avoid burnout.
But I’ve also been encouraged by HR teams reaching out to each other, sharing best practices, and developing partnerships with like-minded organizations to drive real, lasting change that will improve the system in which we all operate. If we are serious about responding to the crises at hand, this way of working will have to become a staple of HR going forward.
Independence leads to trust
Edelman’s Trust Barometer recently showed a dispiriting shift: at the beginning of 2020, the most trusted group in the United States was a person’s own employer, ranking above the media, government, and even independent academic or social institutions. But several months into the pandemic, that dynamic has entirely shifted, and employer trust has plummeted. Getting to the why isn’t hard to understand — too many employees perceive their companies as prioritizing productivity or a hasty return-to-work strategy over their own safety and well-being.
I suspect much of this comes down to communication and data. Employees must feel there are genuine ways to reach management, and management must be transparent about decisions that affect their teams. HR sits in between. Return to work depends on an empowered, independent HR function that can reach out to employees and share feedback with company decision-makers — especially if it’s hard to hear.
A seat at the table
In elevating and developing people teams, there are clear parallels to the fate of the finance function during the Great Recession. That crisis made plain how essential it is for a CEO to have at her side a CFO who could be a true counterpart. These finance teams came to be defined by their agility — they were creative and proactive, and could marshall capital to help ensure faster, stronger recoveries for their organizations.
Like CFOs, HR leaders are investors, but in human capital. We enter the field to build organizations person by person, to unearth rare talents and to foster environments that allow talent to develop. And we want to build organizations that live their values, especially when that is hard.
Today it is very hard, but the discipline has never been more critical to a company’s long-term success. I am encouraged by the ways that HR teams have risen to the challenges of 2020. But there are still more to come. One date I have circled on my calendar, though, is November 4 — the day after the election. Navigating the fallout of the bitter polarization in this year’s race: now that’s a job for HR.
Karsten Vagner is vice president of people at Maven.
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