Is Your Organization (Including You) Ready to Meet the Challenges of the #NewNormal?

(This is the 2nd Part of a two-part special contribution from distinguished guest author Shruthi Bopaiah. Click here to read the first part.)

In the first part, we spoke about 11 major areas that we need to keep an eye on to maximize the effectiveness of your new Work- From-Home setting. We also touched upon the impact this new forced work setting will have on employees' mental health. Conditions like increased anxiety, difficulty setting boundaries between work and home, and the pressure to be available or 'on' all the time are on the rise.

Let's look at what we will all end up building, all thanks to the #NewNormal.

The emergence of new competencies

The new way of life brought upon us because of the crisis calls for equipping ourselves with new skills and behaviors. There is a lot of chatter among employees on public forums about crisis communication, remote leadership, emotional intelligence, leading through change, managing uncertainty, adaptability, and more, all need of the hour.

An essential competency I think we will all need mindfulness - to be in the here and now - not overthink, over-analyze, which may lead to anxiety.

Related Work From Home Policy: A Definitive Guide For Managers

In addition, the ability to think clearly and focused amid a frustrating and stressful situation will go a long way toward helping people perform at their best and may lead to a better life.

How prepared are organizations? How are we, as individuals, preparing ourselves?

While it is about managing work and home for employees during this current crisis, the management has a more significant challenge of handling the business environment.

The organizations are facing challenges of formulating policies around WFH:

• real and pressing issues of cost-cutting,
• managing large scale employees remotely,
• and making tough decisions around possible lay-offs,
• freeze on bonuses/compensation hikes, and more.

It is a novel situation for organizations. We are at the brink of a shift that can snowball into a dramatic economic and social restructuring, plagued with current uncertainties and a crisis that does not have a clear way forward.

The omnipresent questions are, "What will normally look like?" and "How do organizations position themselves for it?"

This uncertain time calls for building new skills at all levels of the workforce. I have put down a few that I think are of paramount importance.

1. Resilience

Businesses and organizations need to act on being resilient. Compounding the challenge, winters will probably bring in a renewed crisis, and therefore the resilience plans must account for this. The use of new digital technologies such as the one mentioned below is beneficial:

• sophisticated automation powered by AI,
• advanced analytics,
• Internet of Things (IoT), etc.

They can help reshape the way operations are done to support or augment human decision-making.

2. Innovation

Institutions that re-invent themselves to make the most of better insight and foresight as preferences evolve will disproportionately succeed.

Opportunity: Organizations that can make sense of how businesses can be more productive, drive efficient delivery to customers, and push technology adoption to situations where labor is absent.

3. Foresight

Organizations need to anticipate widespread policy changes and regulations that can help handle health crises such as this in the future.

4. Learning

This pandemic has provided an opportunity to learn from a plethora of social experiments and tech innovations, ranging from working from home to policy changes. This situation also allows organizations to understand which measures will contribute to productivity and employee welfare if adopted permanently.

5. Collaboration

Organizations need to accelerate internal initiatives and pursue new forms of cooperation with customers, suppliers, and partners. They must also re-think the speed and global coordination they need to react to in the highly interconnected and mobile world.

6. Leadership

Be calm and be optimistic while acknowledging the seriousness and uncertainty of the crisis. It is good to accumulate knowledge, revise ideas and actions critically, to evaluate what can be adopted/discarded.

7. Compassion

The need of the hour is to be compassionate. As an individual, leader, or organization, what the world needs now is compassion, compassion, and more compassion by all.

New Learnings from the #NewNormal

As days progress, we see a positive adoption of the isolation, which was initially difficult to adjust to. So be it working from home, connecting with colleagues and teammates at a slightly more personal level, managing chores, and working more efficiently. People are now working around this to make way for a new style of living.

Tools such as Zoom, Skype, and facilities such as conference calls earlier being used exclusively for official meetings are increasingly used by people to connect with family, friends, and relatives. Every small act of kindness and courtesy, which was earlier absent, is now making a huge difference. People are now more appreciative of life, of things that were taken for granted before.

Individuals are now working as one whole community - light lamps or clap hands; people find oneness. They are sailing through this and fighting against this as a joined force of humankind.

Related: How To Boost The Mental Health Of Remote Workers?

Another significant change or learning that has happened across the world, probably unintentionally, is the practice of empathy. Before COVID-19, empathy was a fanciful word adorning the content of training programs and as a 'good to have' behavior trait. With this crisis, literally at our doorsteps, we are practicing it - understanding the problems faced by others. Be it major issues like:

• the loss of jobs for some around us,
• endangered health for those working closely with the infected,
• the financial crisis that daily wagers are facing.

To simpler things like:

• understanding to allow our house-help stay away from work with pay,
• distribution of food and essentials to the less fortunate ones
• and even practical actions of wearing a mask and maintaining distance to protect others from the possible exposure to infection.

There is a pay cut faced by the employees in both the private and Government sectors. There are lay-offs, unpaid leaves, no onboarding for those already recruited, and many instances where people are put at a financial risk.

Unlike at any other period, there are no riots, protests, lawsuits against the organizations or Governments. Instead, the common man has accepted the helplessness of others and the repercussions of the crisis, displaying an unbelievable level of empathy. Likewise, the recruiters and managers are equally troubled to be delivering the 'bad news.'

To summarize, the situation can be overwhelming, and this crisis has already seen the worst impact. So, the importance of empathy, compassion, and mental health during such times is very critical. Clients and other stakeholders will measure the companies on the compassion meted out at the end of this. Any slips or delays that happened will be understood and forgotten.

Here are the links to some resources that influenced my thoughts and may interest you as well:

1. What Will the World Be Like After Coronavirus?

2. ROUTINES CAN LOWER STRESS

3. COVID-19: Systems resilience in times of unprecedented disruption

4. Beyond coronavirus: The path to the next normal

5. Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges

This article is written by Shruthi Bopaiah. She is an industry leader with a diverse experience across HR , Marketing and Communications. She has many accolades in her name including Top 50 SHRM influencer and Top 40 Under 40 HR Leader. Considering the current environment, Shruthi shares some Tips on how to engage the workforce given her background of working in key areas of Employee engagement and Employee Experience. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com