Organisation Culture Pre & Post COVID
COVID-19’s effect on the social and economic arenas was like a bolt from the blue. It not only made the companies move to remote working but also had a profound effect on the organisational cultures. How could one conserve and nurture that intangible aspect of the workspace that has been maintained since day one? Organisational cultures are the signs and symbols, shared practices, and underlying assumptions of an organisation (Meyerson and Martin, 1987). Generally, culture doesn’t change rapidly; it adjusts slowly in response to the accumulation of norms of the behaviour. However, after the unprecedented outbreak, as we all started to stay indoors for safety, our workspace culture swiftly transformed itself into work-from-home culture with the help of digital tools. There was no definite timeline as to when we’d be going back to the office; we just had to fit with the new environmental realities. While there were new policies being floated such as work-from-home and workstation allowances as soon as this virtual office started, it wasn’t easy for the people and their families to adjust to this ‘new normal. Employers and employees took care of each other as humanity took over the economy!
Here’s how the culture went for a change:
1.Offline vs Online welcome
For the first-time employees, who had just started their professional journey, it was a task. Pre COVID, an elaborate onboarding session with team lunch was the popular norm. Post-COVID, Zoom Onboarding sessions took over. This lack of face-to-face interaction did create a gap in cultural knowledge transfer. But everyone has been helping out with fun games and activities to onboard new employees and engage everyone, for example, virtual lunch and coffee sessions.
2. Conversing vs Calling
Our conversations went from instant to more scheduled and formal. Before COVID, we could knock and speak to whomever we wanted. But now, we nudge and call; we have to check if the person at the other end is free. But people are checking up on each other more than ever. One can see so many posts where people are helping out each other, be it for jobs, internships, or networking.
3. Moments vs Memories
It takes a surprising moment and a group of people to come up with new ideas and solutions by having conversations. Under this virtual setup, this isn’t possible since our communication is not spontaneous but distanced and maintained by calendar invites. Now, we have to go back to our notes, excel sheets, calendar invites, and our memories. However, we have started noting down our work tasks and have started managing our calendars efficiently. One can also schedule short calls to have meaningful conversations.
4. Visible vs Vague
It is difficult to pick up emotional cues in the virtual setup; more so, to convey empathy. Recognition of efforts is also limited since not everyone is aware of what one is doing. The responsibility now falls upon the Leadership to build new rituals and processes that are transparent, through which people’s actions are noticeable.
This profound change has two major aspects with respect to the shift in organisational cultures pre and post COVID:
While we are almost done with the first one and the second step has been started, now is the perfect time to determine how your organisation’s culture has been holding up with respect to employee experience. It is like what happened in the Harry Potter series – Pre Voldemort and Post Voldemort era; misery came but happiness was there to stay. Let’s hope this change in the organisational culture is for good!
The Pandemic has brought an enormous change in the way a workplace operates and an organisation propagates its culture. Thinking through all the changes this crisis has made us go through, we would have to keep a check on the behaviours we want to imbibe and want to let go off. This will require a continuous and empathetic approach towards this process.
Training during and after COVID-19
Economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to be fast nor easy. It is increasingly clear, however, that the negative economic effects of the COVID–19 pandemic fall disproportionately on middle- and working-class families. In addition to bearing the brunt of infections and deaths, these families have borne many layoffs and permanent job losses, closures of their small businesses, income losses, and evictions as a result of the pandemic. Initial forecasts of a “V-shaped” recovery were, in retrospect, unduly optimistic.
Agreeing that the short-run shock of the pandemic has turned into a full-blown recession, economists and other analysts have turned their attention to a big question: will jobs actually come back? This is no idle concern. Already we see businesses adapting to the new normal by instituting processes that minimise human contact both between consumers and workers, but also within the businesses themselves. In addition to more employees working remotely, the pandemic has pushed fast adoption and increased innovation in areas such as contactless customer service and delivery, robotic warehouse management and order fulfilment, and automated food service. While the pre-COVID trends in technological adoption were already pointing in this direction, the severity and persistence of the pandemic will likely accelerate the adoption of such technologies. Furthermore, advances in artificial intelligence paired with automating technologies will expand the set of potential tasks that can be done by technology, likely resulting in more replacement of human labour. From a business efficiency perspective, this makes sense: humans get sick, machines don’t.
EXPERT OPINIONS ON TRAINING DURING AND AFTER COVID-19
At a recent Future of Middle Class-sponsored event at Brookings, I asked a panel of experts what the key issues policymakers and observers are should be mindful of with respect to training in COVID–19 era given the spectre backdrop of automation and AI. The panel included Stephanie Riegg Cellini, Professor of Public Policy, Public Administration, and Economics at George Washington’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy, David Deming, Professor of Public Policy and Education at Harvard University, and Robert Litan, Non-resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Each focused on different and important issues and highlighted some of the complications we face in ensuring that we will be able to ensure a trained workforce for the future given the issues presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Each of the panellists highlighted different but important issues. Prof. Riegg Cellini focused on the importance of retraining. A major concern, however, is ensuring we have the capacity to do so in a cost-effective way. In particular, Riegg Cellini highlighted the possibility that for-profit colleges may seek to exploit this crisis. As she notes, these colleges are sometimes as much as five times the cost of their non-profit counterparts leading students to take on substantially more debt and often do not provide the same “bang for the buck” in terms of the returns to education as the credentials that they provide are not honoured by employers in the same fashion. Finally, she argues for imposition of stronger accountability controls to ensure some protection for students.
COVID-19 AND THE MIDDLE CLASS
The economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic present a unique threat to the middle class. The pandemic is accelerating structural changes in the economy, disrupting labour markets, and exacerbating existing inequality. It is imperative that policymakers push for investments in workers and institutions that help to more closely tie worker skills to employer needs as the economy recovers after COVID-19.
5 ways COVID-19 has changed workforce management
· New technologies are going to necessitate new roles, which is one reason to encourage new skills.
· Employees will benefit from being taught new mindsets, behaviours and values in the new quickly-changing workplace.
The world’s response to COVID-19 has resulted in the most rapid transformation of the workplace. Working from home has become the new normal, and we’ve gone from digitising the relationship between firm and customer to digitising the relationship between employer and employee.
We have been catapulted forward, fast-tracking trends such as automation, digitalization, and innovation.
Companies are at a crossroads: those that capitalise on post-COVID opportunities will find themselves in a good position to retain their talent and attract people when the situation stabilises. By contrast, those that fail to change will be left behind, exposing their employees to increased risks of financial distress, facing layoffs and closures.
But what changes should be on their radar?
1.Rapid reskilling
If employees are taught how to build a learning mindset, it will prepare them well for dealing with a constantly, even sometimes abruptly, changing environment.
The quick adoption of new, advanced technology is the central catalyst and is likely to lead to an acceleration in the creation of new roles. Changes in workload during the pandemic have sometimes resulted in an imbalance of resource allocation. Reskilling and upskilling can help employees move from one part of the business to another.
The economic impact of COVID-19 also has a direct impact on responsibility surrounding youth employment. In the wake of the last financial crisis, some countries saw entire generations face a future with far fewer opportunities.
Governments are worried that youth unemployment will skyrocket because many jobs impacted by COVID-19 are held by younger people. The COVID-19 Risks Outlook report, published by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Zurich, gave such a concern justification, finding that 49.3% of senior risk experts believe high levels of structural unemployment, particularly among the young, is a likely consequence of the pandemic. At Zurich, we will use our institutional skills and knowledge to help retrain and reskill our younger new hires.
2. Changing leadership and management competences
The COVID-19 crisis sent shockwaves through industries and economies, but perhaps its greatest impact has been the human one, namely fear and uncertainty. A big part of this has been the fact we have a totally new routine – one in which everyone who can must suddenly work from home.
There’s no blueprint for what we’re facing and business leaders around the world are changing strategies to keep up.
In tandem with honing digital skills and an improved infrastructure, it is necessary that corporate culture and leadership skills focus on empathy as transformation and disruptions become the new normal.
3. A culture of trust, transparency and openness
This period has required us all to be supportive of one another, as we all face uncertainty. Control has to some extent given way to trust. People are learning how to do work disparately and with far less oversight: they are learning “on the job” what works and what doesn't work at home, and holding virtual meetings that might have happened before but never to such an extent.
Ironically, in the midst of social distancing, many of us are getting closer. We are building more adaptive teams, are more consistently in touch with each other and connection has become a priority in the name of working remotely. But beyond that we are connected with purpose and as a community.
4. Individual and social well being
The pandemic and lockdown are putting pressure on employees in ways that not only test their wellbeing and private lives, but also that of our society as a whole. The World Health Organization recently found that 45% of health workers in China are suffering from anxiety, while the prevalence of depression in Ethiopia trebled in April alone. Coronavirus has created a mandate and an opportunity for us to expand our mental health provision.
Long before COVID-19, Zurich realised there was a growing number of workplace and work environment challenges, leading it to develop a global wellbeing framework. Today it is applied across the Group and implemented at a local level to meet the different needs of employees. Its four pillars encompass mental, social, physical and financial wellbeing.
Many of the programs found natural resonance in the COVID-19 situation, in particular those aimed at supporting mental health. At the Tackle Your Feelings programme in Ireland and Australia, sporting role models reinforce the message “it is OK not to be OK”.
Many companies will rebalance their priorities in the coming months, so that resilience becomes just as important to their strategic thinking as cost and efficiency.
5. Working in a more agile way
It is unprecedented to have a large cohort of people, all over the world, start working remotely at once. The events as they have unfolded have shown how fast we can adapt though, and have demonstrated that we can move faster and act in more agile ways than we thought.
Business leaders now have, in some sense, been gifted with a better idea of what can and cannot be done outside their companies’ traditional processes, and COVID-19 is forcing both the pace and scale of workplace innovation. Many are finding simpler, faster and less expensive ways to operate.
By
@Rumana Maner [MBA]
HR Manager
AirCrews Aviation Pvt Ltd
manerrumana@gmail.com
rumana.aircrews@gmail.com
www.AirCrewsAviation.com
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