Are HR facing the next global shift after COVID?
It’s no secret that the past couple of years since COVID hit, enforced many changes that affected, directly and indirectly, HR roles and their responsibilities.
On one hand, this is the golden age of the Human resources profession:
While more and more organizations understand the burning need to invest in their employees’ wellbeing, retention, and recruiting processes, HR are those who lead those processes hands-on. We can witness an internal growth in HR departments and more job descriptions and titles, ranging from “chief people officer” to “HR business partner” have entered the business lexicon.
“COVID actually presented a once-in-a-lifetime value opportunity for the HR profession: to show our value and be valued”, said this week Johnny Taylor, president of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) during their annual conference.
A once in a lifetime value opportunity for HR
the double challenge for HR
At the same time, HR carry more responsibility to perform, design, and execute those processes, which leaves them oftentimes “overwhelmed”. This is the word being used most commonly in a series of HR interviews we held in the last few months at Uppey, to understand where are the pain points.
But there’s another aspect to the increasing pressure in the HR domain and this is the post-COVID situation, related to the foreseen economic downturn. While companies plan or already go through layoffs, others are tightening the budget, and the discussion of hybrid work and its implication is far from being resolved – HR people are the ones who, once again, need to face the human aspect of it all.
As with every unknown situation which is dependent on a wide array of factors, HR managers who wish to arrive more prepared to face the economic slowdown can’t predict the future but they can definitely start deep processes in the present.
Preparing to meet the crisis
Training employees to deal with uncertainty and learn how to mentally prepare for setbacks has proven itself highly useful during COVID, and would still be highly applicable now and in any upcoming global change at scale, not alone organizational changes. After all, we are all first and foremost people before we are someone’s employee, employer, or manager.
Making the best out of learning & development processes means that HR can manifest their increasing visibility in the business market and their seat at the management table to advocate for making room for those processes to take place.
Business organizations love to prioritize budgets and allocate resources in advance;
No reason to wait until the next crisis will knock on our door before we learn how to deal with uncertainty, setbacks, and hardship.
We hope this article was helpful!
If you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions we haven’t included in this article – feel free to email us at contact@uppey.ai. Our E-door is always open for a conversation!
Read next:
How To Land On A Training Topic That Meets Employee L&D Needs
