How Has The Pandemic Expanded The Role Of HR?
The COVID-19 Pandemic changed the way people imagined and lived their lives. The pandemic was disturbing for everybody everywhere and majorly for businesses as they were forced to work remotely- a shift that happened without any warning. The changes induced by the pandemic forced all companies to make changes to their operations which expanded and irrevocably changed the roles of many employees in the workplace.
The Pandemic has greatly expanded the role of HR professionals. During the pandemic, HR professionals were subjected to expand their roles and make significant changes to the HR lifecycle to meet a new set of business needs. Since one of the major roles of HR is talent and workplace management, the role of Human Resource managers has seen significant changes because of covid-induced remote work models.
“HR managers played a significant role in navigating employees and helping them adapt to the digital and remote work environment. Moreover, most HRs had to reimagine and make changes to many of their roles like recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, conducting disciplinary actions, and more. Thus, due to the pandemic, HRs had to make significant changes to how they worked. They were also subjected to learn new skills and perform tasks they hadn’t previously done- thus expanding their role”, said Keshav Jindal, Chief Human Resources Officer at WhizCo- a New Delhi-based influencer marketing and creator management agency.
“A great example is conducting virtual recruiting, for which many HR professionals had to think differently about their role and learn new skills and technologies to facilitate the entire recruiting process- from planning and talent sourcing to selecting, hiring, and onboarding employees.”, Keshav added.
Keshav further added, “I believe that the suddenness of the pandemic and the new business models and practices it brought with itself surely gave rise to many new HR practices and expanded the role of Human Resource Professionals in an organisation. I also believe that the expansion of the roles and the new skills HRs needed to cope with the new settings weren’t just relevant to a pandemic, but the need for these new skills will continue to be essential. We now see more and more businesses and people working remotely even after all the restrictions have been lifted, and therefore, these new skills will likely continue to develop and stay useful and relevant.”
Since most of the workplaces were remote during the pandemic, HR professionals were expected to work harder and adopt new strategies to successfully manage the workforce, facilitate communication between departments, and take care of necessary paperwork. They had to ensure that everyone is engaged with the company as they work remotely. Managing remote teams was one of the most significant changes in HR practices post-pandemic.
Even after the pandemic, HR had to expand their roles to re-establish organisational culture as the social dynamic between employees was no longer the same due to less face-to-face interaction and the awkwardness of it all. The pandemic made a new normal for everything in our lives, including work, and the role of Human resources in an organisation has now been significantly expanded to meet these new demands.
