Throughout the COVID-19 health crisis and economic disruption, HR leaders have needed to be cognizant of the role they play to support company objectives. Whether it’s supporting the transition to and from remote work environments or re-aligning the roster to support a new operating reality, HR leaders have been thrust into a challenging situation of needing to balance the needs of both talent and the company.
Many companies have had to revisit and revise their business objectives and strategies. This means that company leaders are looking to HR to support them through these changes. These changes most likely impact employees and possibly introduce the need to reframe the roster and hire new employees.
Now, as we look ahead to the next season of this disruptive period, HR leaders face a fresh challenge of remote onboarding new employees who may be brought in to fill a fresh need and “re-onboarding” current or furloughed employees to align with company changes. This could be the result of the company changing direction to adapt to new market conditions, the C-Suite deciding on a new strategy and new objectives, or other significant changes that will force you to re-evaluate the roster.
Remote Onboarding During the “New Normal”
As most have realized that working remotely can be effective through the health crisis, in the “new normal” of flexible work environments and phased return-to-work scenarios, companies now have the ability to onboard remotely.
This may mean the entire recruitment process may now be conducted online. Companies may find that job postings and reaching out to qualified candidates online can also extend to both the interviewing and onboarding process.
For current employees that need to be re-onboarded, HR leaders need to think about what this would look like to help employees transition back into a new work environment for a company that may look very different compared to the company they knew in March.
The key to successful remote onboarding of new and current employees is effectively communicating the new company objectives to the talent and prepare them for success in their new or revised role. Employees need to understand how their role is aligned to support the direction of the company.
Start with the New Company Objectives
At the beginning of 2020, you may have recruited, vetted, hired, and onboarded an employee based on the need to address a specific challenge in the company. Now, much of that is out the window if your company has charted a new course following the economic disruption.
With the business changing, you need to go back to the objectives of the company and evaluate what has changed. For example, your company may have previously focused on project-based deliverables for customers. Now, the company may be shifting to more consulting-based deliverables to leverage your expertise. This shift would create need for significant change in talent and skillset required.
Most likely, the talent acquisition and talent management strategy will need to be adjusted accordingly. This can result in a change to how your company interacts with candidates and employees.
After evaluating the change, you can strategize and create talent programs that support the overall business. This could include introducing more remote-based positions -- made available to both new hires and current employees -- or performing other recalibrations to support the new objectives.
How to Recalibrate Before Onboarding New Employees
During the health crisis, your company may have laid off or furloughed employees. Now, after the company decided on a new direction, you will need to re-evaluate your talent mix and decide whether to bring back those employees if they fit the new operating reality.
Or, perhaps there is a need to shift staff and redeploy them in a different capacity. This introduces another consideration about the training that may be required to bring staff into alignment with the requirements of their role. Whatever the situation, this requires a careful evaluation of costs, budgets, and available resources to recalibrate how much to spend on talent, technology, and possibly new training.
If you decide on a mix of utilizing current employees, bringing back some employees, and hiring new employees, you will need to consider the financial implications. This is especially important if many of your current employees took paycuts during the crisis with the expectation that it would be temporary. Now, you need to factor in whether you have the budget to restore them to their previous pay levels, and you need to be prepared to answer questions from employees about their pay status.
Adding to the pay concerns, companies will need to consider both internal equity and external equity, especially if paycuts were taken. There may be legal implications, which means it would be prudent to perform a pay analysis as part of the decision-making process.
The overall goal in recalibrating the talent roster is looking at the new direction of the company, deciding what skills and experience you need from talent to support this change, and then ensuring that you have the budget and funds to support the initiative, while also balancing the need to be fair and equitable with regards to compensation.
To be successful, HR leaders will need to partner with the business and understand the shift to plan for the near-term, while also anticipating future situations. This requires a forward-thinking approach to look beyond the immediate change to see how the business will be run one, five, and even 10 years from now. Being proactive is key!
Change Your Thinking to Change Your Onboarding
Specific to hiring new employees, the conventional thinking about hiring has been challenged in 2020. Many hiring managers want to be able to sit down with a candidate and conduct an in-person interview.
This is understandable because our natural human behavior oftentimes prefers to relate to others by way of in-person interactions! Unfortunately, that is no longer the preference given the heightened awareness for remote interactions that is present in the new era of COVID-19. People’s mindsets have switched to social distancing as the new norm.
Now, hiring managers need to embrace a flexible mindset that conducting remote interviews and completing the entire hiring process may need to be completed remotely in order to attract top talent. This can be challenging for leaders that are accustomed to executing the hiring process in-person. Be prepared for potential resistance to this need to change or be flexible. However, the disruption has proven that it’s a doable situation through current technology and videoconference software.
Additionally, remote hiring and onboarding could also be a good cost-savings measure not needing to fly in several candidates for in-person interviews and post-hire training sessions, opening yourself up to a greater pool of talent that could fit within your budget. Sometimes the best way to impact change is to get buy-in on cost. If cost is important to your company during the transition period, appeal to strategies with solutions that impact financials.
The challenge for many companies is that if you have not used a virtual hiring process before or only in rare cases, it could be a significant project to undertake. HR leaders have the opportunity, though, to embrace this shift as part of an overall mindset shift introduced by the health crisis.
The same shift in mentality applies to remote “re-onboarding” of current or furloughed employees. Instead of bringing everyone back together for a large in-person training covering the general change to company objectives, separate employees by departments, groups, or job responsibilities to provide remote onboarding on the most relevant topics. Focus on how the overall change applies directly to their specific responsibilities or role supporting the new company objectives.
Remember, go back to the business reason. Why is your company changing objectives and pursuing a new strategy? Perhaps it’s cost. Perhaps it’s a change in customer expectations. Perhaps there’s been a significant change in resources. Use the business reason as the driving force to follow through with a corresponding change in how you approach hiring new employees and re-engaging current employees to align with the new business objectives.
Ready for Remote Onboarding? Consider These Steps
For companies shifting from predominantly in-person talent acquisition and management to remote scenarios, this requires strong organization and communication.
In a remote onboarding environment, talent want to feel connected to the company. The first impression for a new employee shouldn’t be walking through forms; it should be discussing company objectives to inspire them to perform in their role. For a current employee, they want to get right to the point about how the company change impacts their role; not hearing a long spiel about the overall change. Communicate effectively!
An additional piece of the onboarding process should be involving the employee’s manager to establish KPIs that will be used to track productivity. Managers have the opportunity to also make a positive first impression on new talent or re-engage current talent in their new role through the remote onboarding environment. Again, communication is key. Managers should be coached on how to communicate the metrics that will be used, the expectations of how work is to be conducted, and when meetings will take place. It’s important to establish regular check-ins to stay and feel connected.
Ultimately, it’s about establishing or re-establishing a positive working relationship that connects the employee to the company and their manager to foster productivity without the benefit of physical oversight. This way, employees will be empowered to perform at a high level to support your company’s new objectives.
Connecting the Mindset Shift of New Objectives and Onboarding
To achieve new business objectives, the “new normal” will require a mindset shift. Current employees may no longer have a physical desk or designated place to perform their work. New employees may never see their manager in-person. Furloughed employees may need to be “re-onboarded” in a remote work setting.
In other words, you need to challenge your thinking. The C-Suite was already forced to challenge the status quo and think through scenarios they never considered before. Now, HR leaders need to follow the same exercise of trying to plan for talent developments before they happen to ensure that you can quickly pivot or react to a new challenge on the new path.
HR leaders can support the change by focusing on alignment between the new objectives and the talent mix to support the business in the short-term and long-term. Then, once those plans are made, HR managers can focus on successful remote onboarding of new and current employees to fill gaps in support of the new business model.
It’s a challenging process to quickly flow from reviewing the new objectives, embracing the new strategy, evaluating new budgets, and determining the right talent mix before onboarding employees.
NB Business Solutions is available to support your company during this process by providing HR leadership and strategy. In this time of constant change and decision-making, we can help walk through your immediate challenges to identify solutions that will best position your company for success in the new operating reality.
Contact NB Business Solutions for support with your human capital leadership and strategy.