What’s Happening in Human Resources and Recruiting in times of COVID 19 across Canada? 4 Questions to these exceptional Canadian market leaders got me 4 Answers you will want to read.
I found myself unable to prospect for opportunities without having a good sense of what work looks like to leaders with medium to large scale organizations across Canada. Organizations with solid Human Resource (HR) Leadership and Recruitment practices. By the way, internal Recruitment is now more commonly referred to as Talent Acquisition (TA).
Looking out and across my network, there were 4 questions I wanted to ask people with some serious chops in HR, TA, and Leadership. 1. How have relationships amongst HR, TA teams, and their internal clients changed? 2. How have working business models shifted? 3. How have your policies for recruitment and hiring changed? 4. How has COVID 19 changed how you work?
The Answers below were provided to me by 5 leaders in their field, 4 of whose LinkedIn profiles you’ll be able to see upon clicking their full names beside their answers to Question 1. below.
To summarize, my answers came from the following people: two C level HR executives of large Canada wide organizations whose roles encompass operational and corporate strategy; a TA director of Canada’s first life insurance company and her team who collectively focus on technology and digital; and lastly two consultants – one whose mandate is now dedicated to responsibilities as Head of People and Culture for a well-respected girls school in Oakville as well as consulting clients across Canada in areas related to leadership, talent coaching and facilitation and the second whose clients request executive coaching in the realms of wellness and career transition ( outplacement and deliberate change)
1.Question: “How have your relationships with HR professionals (these can be peers, subordinates, or clients) changed since COVID19 hit?”
Answer:
Sharon Alderson (SA): “I would say the relationships have become closer and stronger! We make it a point to check in with one another more frequently, provide support, and ensure we have what we need to remain productive while at home!”
Audra August ( AA) : “COVID-19 has created much stronger connections with my HR networks. Many people have offered support, relied on one another, and created a strong sense of community to manage through uncertainty and new experiences. It has been important to check in regularly (with colleagues, direct reports, and external connections) to make sure everyone is ok.”
Michael De Bonis (MD): “Since COVID-19 as the senior Human Resources executive in a large essential services business I have had increased contact with the operating executives of competitive enterprises who were anxious to share emerging best practices. My experience has been that business leaders have become more open during this unprecedented time to share their experience and test their own ideas for effectively dealing with the concerns of people in their organizations.
Katrina Murphy (KM): “Some clients, regardless of position, have lost their jobs or substantial revenue. Clients often have less disposable income to dedicate to personal development (coaching, career transition support).”
Private: Chief People and Operations Officer ( CPO): “HR has been swamped, they are the ones pulling together confidence and compliance and safety protocol.
HR is now all conducted remotely. I run supply chain, operations and HR, which requires me to go to production facilities a few times a week.
HR makes calls to all employees to ask, “how are you doing?”. Diversity inclusion has expanded in our day to day practices, we are now doing more formal work given how much current issues are impacting us as a society. We ensure that we discuss return to work plans, especially with people who are temporarily laid off or those who are unable to come into the office.”
2.Question: “What kinds of changes have you made to your business to accommodate the new COVID19?”
SA: “Mental health support, increase in communications to all employees with important resources that are available, recognition from leadership – shifting 95% of our workforce to remote working – adapting really well to collaborating in Teams and in virtual meetings”
AA: “As a school, we shifted all students to online learning and all employees to remote work immediately. These shifts required new ways of teaching and working, relying on video technology to engage with each other. Many workplace policies are being updated or added, relating to remote work and infectious disease protocols”
MD: “We have introduced a broad range Employee Health and Safety Orientation plan that incorporates many industry best practices to ensure a safe work environment for our employees and the customer community that we service. The Orientation focuses on the layers of activity that together create a safe physical environment; the elements of keeping your hands clean; the importance of keeping your environment clean, and criticality of keeping your distance in the fight against COVID-19.”
KM: “Some of the additional services that were available to clients in-house, are no longer options during Coaching sessions. I have also transitioned to virtual coaching exclusively.”
CPO: “HR is polling managers and employees to see what needs are to work remotely.
Our office space is going to be set up to accommodate 50% capacity. We must poll to see who can stay remote so that we can figure out partitioning, bathroom and elevators access
We won’t redo our office spaces.
There are a lot of employees that will not send their children to daycare once the cautions are lifted. They say once school is on, they may shift their availability. This doesn’t account for people with under school-age children.
We do not want people with commute times to be on the TTC, we will create flexibility for them as to how much and at what hours they come to the office.
We will also offer remote workers sign up opportunities to come into the offices if they need a break.”
3.Question: How have your working policies for recruitment and hiring changed since COVID 19?
SA: “I would say there has been a significant shift in how we review our internal employees for open roles and understand what opportunities they might like to explore in other areas of the business! I think we have placed a focus on transferrable skillsets, and an individual’s capabilities to move into a new space or new role. From an external recruitment perspective, I think we have adapted well with virtual interviews, virtual onboarding, without sacrificing the overall candidate experience.
AA: “We shifted to hiring through video conference and new contractual language related to COVID-10 has also been added to contracts. Other recruiting processes and policies have remained the same (references, approvals) to ensure continued integrity.
Orientation, which will take place in late summer for new teachers, will be remote – so this will be a new experience – engaging and onboarding online and delivering welcome packages to homes. “
MD: “Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our customers, and therefore our level of business activity, requiring us to adjust our operations to meet these new challenges, including a review of our personnel requirements. “
CPO: “We face the biggest challenge in front line labour. There are people on protective job leave. We have had to hire temporary workers to replace them and integrate them with our full-time employees.
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Big company CHRO networking groups I belong to are saying location won’t matter anymore, you have to recruit the best person for the job now and they don’t have to be where the work is, especially for tech industries. They also say that salaries in specialized industries like tech will go down because of more talent being available. I’m not sure I agree with that. There is also the rationale that If you can work in a lower cost of living community you shouldn’t expect to get paid as much as someone who comes into the office.”
KM: NA
4.Question: How has COVID 19 changed how you work?
SA: “Relationships are usually built in the office through random lunchtime hangouts, stopping by someone’s desk or bumping into colleagues in the bathroom. Now that we are all virtual, it’s been a shift in gears to build relationships. Now we’re often on video, with kids, pets, and spouses popping in and out of the picture. Our colleagues are seeing our personal spaces and lives much more often, and I think it is opening up a completely different side of ourselves to our colleagues, which is relationship building in a different way. When years pass, we will always remember each other during these times. “
Once signs of the economic situation started to materialize, the company quickly adapted by publicly (to employees) committing to not laying anyone off this year. To make this happen, executives needed to ensure that all opportunities go to internal employees first, before considering external hiring. Before going external, an extra layer of approvals was added to the process at the beginning stages (i.e. before posting externally)
There have also been many conversations across HR to ensure there’s visibility around who our internals are, what their skills & capabilities are, where there could be capacity, and opportunities to redeploy to other parts of the business.
For TA it’s been a shift from a recruiting mindset of heavy sourcing externally to find the right person with the right skills to understanding internal talent pools, and transferable capabilities in people who might not have the right skills on paper. This is a big shift for recruiters. We developed learning sessions to educate recruiters how to shift their mindset.”
AA: “COVID-19 provided an opportunity to think differently about technology, processes, and connection. Working remotely has allowed us create efficiencies and innovative ways to engage with each other.
The greatest impact in how we work has been the lack of in-person connection. We have focused on using technology to engage one on one, with teams, and with all employees. With the potential challenges that remote work brings, we have focused on culture, wellbeing, and mental health.”
MD: “COVID-19 has accelerated the need and pace of change of work. The range of change initiatives spans our Drivers disinfecting their vehicles prior to beginning their shift, management making available a wider variety of personal protective equipment, increased demand for Health and Safety training to facilitate our ability to evolve with direction of the pandemic; a heightened need to build the infrastructure for employees to seamlessly work remotely, and a deeper understanding of the challenges of day care and home care”
KM: “I am able to operate effectively online. The absence of face to face interaction has presented an obstacle for relatively few clients, however there are some who are not comfortable with virtual calls.”
CPO: “Every day on-site employees fill a questionnaire and get temperature checks. If anything is off, they go to triage. All of our salaried employees, there are 500, work from home. From what I see here in my operations, supply chain and HR teams, those who can are loving working from home, some of my colleagues are working from cottages.
Changes to how we are working are largely around remote working and ensuring there are efforts towards the maintenance of our employee’s mental health. We call people and ask how they are doing. People want places to go, gyms are really missed, fitness is now a solo act.
Lots of people cannot work without daycare or are nervous to come into our offices or production facilities. There are struggles when remote corporate workers try to juggle small children at home.
Production employees who must leave the house to work cannot leave because of their childcare requirements. Then there is a handful of employees who prefer to be on The Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)
Product supply is down 20%, our demand is through the roof, the issue is that we are lacking headcount for our production facilities.
In our corporate office’s remote employees are as productive as they were before if not more. They are more organized; managers are using skype calls to keep in touch.
Single people without a partner or family residing with them are often facing tremendous difficulty being so alone. As I mentioned HR is calling employees to see how they are doing, we notice that single people are really having trouble being alone so much. I am married, my husband and I work from home together, we each have our own office space. Our children are older, we can shut our doors and explain that we have calls between x and x times. WE are thriving in this arrangement.
People working from home have flex hours, some start at 7 am and by 4:30 they are done. When I worked in our facilities and offices, I was never home before 6 pm to 7 pm.
Maintenance of culture is key while we all work remotely. This from a long-term effect concerns me a lot. We are training managers on how to manage teams remotely. You have to be quite organized to manage a virtual team. You can’t just drop by someone’s desk. We know that you don’t have to see people in person to manage them effectively. We know we can expand our numbers of remote workers, especially permanent workers. Our approach to managing the workforce has become more flexible as a result of remote numbers going up.
Culturally there is a wee divide between people who are essential in the plant and remote workers. Plant workers say remote workers have it made working at home. It’s a cultural divide we have to manage along the way.
Our IT team was ready before COVID hit, they had everyone set up in the cloud and connectivity to workers who needed it was already established well.
Soon we will have to address the cost of equipment to run at home offices, we will likely give remote work allowances. Sale people have always expensed this, and now remote workers are asking for reimbursements for things like printers.”
5.Question: Anything else you would like to add?
SA: “It’s certainly been an interesting time that will affect us forever!”
AA: “COVID-19 has been an unexpected journey and a new experience for everyone. While there has been a great deal of stress and uncertainty, I think going through this with everyone has brought people together and allowed us to think creatively and strategically to find opportunities for growth and change”
MD: “believe that this a time of rapid change and an opportunity for growth. Growth for business and for the people that are the engine of their future. I am seeing the emergence of new responses (i.e. curbside pickup) to current issues that show the fortitude of the entrepreneurial spirit. I am welcoming a renewed commitment to shared purpose and leadership in the Boardroom as a core competitive advantage. I am seeing a return to a balance in the investment people are making in their personal and professional lives. Quality is making a comeback over quantity as a measure of business and personal performance”
KM and CPO: NA
