The world of work has known a before Covid and is now discovering the after Covid. At the corporate level, managers and HR departments must face new expectations from employees to maintain their commitment. The future of work and its organization is twofold. By integrating HR agility into the company’s overall strategy, they must also be flexible. Not to mention the acceleration of HR digitalization, which has profoundly changed practices and processes. So how do we adapt to this post-covid world?
The post-covid world of work
The health crisis, which has overwhelmed the planet for two years, has revolutionized the world of work. Covid has had an impact at all levels of the company: strategic, managerial, production, … The post-covid job market is clearly different and forces all its actors to adapt, Forbes details this new panorama.
A wave of resignations, recruitment difficulties, decreased productivity, … HR managers and professionals are facing new challenges. They are forced to review their methods and innovate their practices to face these changes.
On the employee side, new ways of working have emerged. Employees are looking for more flexibility, both in terms of working hours and location. Telecommuting is becoming the norm for many, and some are even thinking more and more about mobile work, for example.
As a result, their expectations of their employers and managers are changing. Having good relationships, based on trust and commitment, is a key criterion for employees.
All of these changes present challenges for HR departments to find solutions.
The Future of Work is being prepared internally
Internally, HR is impacted and must adapt on three levels:
- At the global, strategic level
- At the managerial level
- At the productive level.
First of all, HR departments must work closely with managers. This is necessary in order to integrate these new working methods into the HR strategy on the one hand, but on the other hand, and above all, into the company’s global strategy. The new methods and processes must be thought through globally. For this, two questions are essential:
What is the company’s strategy for dealing with changes in the external environment? How should the HR strategy be involved?
To support these changes, the second step is to ensure that managers are informed, involved and empowered. They are the link with the employees and play an important role. How to coordinate this step with the managers? Here are our tipsfor “involving managers“.
Finally, the way employees work is also changing. Remote work also impacts the relationships between employees. To maintain involvement, commitment and the collective, the organization of events ensures that the links between employees are maintained. This can be social events, but also ceremonies, training, a community platform for the exchange of best practices, …
An attractive external HR policy
As we mentioned, companies are facing massive departures and recruitment difficulties. The cause? The new aspirations of employees. The meaning of work, the interest of missions, the feeling of usefulness, ecological awareness, … are all elements of reflection held by employees since the health crisis.
To be attractive, companies need to take better account of these aspirations and integrate them immediately into their strategy. An HR agility policy allows you to respond quickly to the demands of today’s employees and those of tomorrow.
We detail the upcoming HR developments in our“New HR Priorities” page.
The needs of companies are also changing to adapt to this new external environment. A real work of management of skills is useful to evaluate the jobs and the structure of the workforce in the short and medium term. Then, companies must act on their external image to attract the necessary skills .
HR data to prepare the future of work
The need to use information technology is no longer in question, and this is the case for HR methods and processes. Thanks to the convergence of HR and IT departments, the digitalization of HR services makes it possible to work with high-performance tools that meet the requirements of today’s function.
Whether it’s data storage, information accessibility or statistical analysis techniques, HR professionals have IT tools that ensure information sharing and team collaboration.
