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How To DIVE Into the ‘New Normal’?

Now the question arises how can organizations do to adapt to this ‘new normal’? As the ’new normal’ is unveiling itself, the organization is witnessing an eventual growth and transformation while adapting to this new phase.

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The world is undergoing the biggest disruption ever that has resulted in a change of the course that businesses had geared up for. Businesses are staring at some unparalleled challenges caused by external circumstances, which were beyond their control. The adjustments, that started as a temporary arrangement, are slowly changing into a permanent change. Facing these challenges head-on, organizations have grabbed the chance to transform not only its workforce but the workplace as well. Now the question arises how can organizations do to adapt to this ‘new normal’? As the ’new normal’ is unveiling itself, the organization is witnessing an eventual growth and transformation while adapting to this new phase. Right now, there is a lot of vagueness as to what the new world of work will look like. According to Fortune 500 CEO Survey1, 26% of fortune 500 CEOs say that 90% of their workforce will NEVER return to their usual workplace.

Each and every organization's function is facing new demands at work. This scenario gives HR a chance to play a central role in ‘return to work’ conversations. Return to the workplace will be slow, staggered, and deliberate making it imperative to reset the workplace before we dive right into the ‘new normal’. Talent and culture appropriation are at the forefront of this process of recalibration. Organizations irrespective of their size and sector must look at the following 4 quintessential factors for a successful DIVE:

Digital resilience

Intelligence ecosystem

Values-driven business

Empathy

1. Digital resilience: Digital has become the default mode of delivering an experience for almost everything today irrespective of industry, function, or geography. Tasks that were considered as the most human-like education, celebrations, counseling, and consultation, are being delivered successfully digitally. In the new normal, the organizations need to assess their position on the ‘Resilience Readiness Maturity’ from a digital perspective and then take decisions to invest in the appropriate digital strategy. Digitalization is about leveraging the digital ecosystem to transform the culture of the organization in a phased manner, not just automating processes,. To become a truly ‘resilient organization’ a leader must decide a way forward with a digital strategy that will create a culture of responsiveness, agility, empathy, and compassion in the ’new normal’.

UST Global, a multinational provider of Digital technology and transformation, IT services and solutions, managed to get their workforce working remotely in less than 24 hours. They opted for an incident management solution that works in sync with their existing HCM Cloud and provided a robust and easy platform for tracking, managing, and preventing the spread of the disease across the employee base. UST Global is looking at deploying new solutions in the areas of cybersecurity which will allow employees to work in a safe environment, even from their homes. UST Global is investing heavily to create an infrastructure for remote working for a longer period of time. 2

2. Intelligence ecosystem: More and more employee interactions will move to the virtual or digital world, as our workplaces will keep on evolving. Circumnavigating through a hybrid workplace will require new concepts of intelligence. As far as talent is concerned, businesses will now prefer candidates who are well qualified in both cognitive and emotional intelligence. Both the qualities together bring a value proposition in the workplace meanwhile only humans have the capability to sustain this or utilize both the acumens when the situation demands. Artificial intelligence will help determine relevant insights proactively to ensure that leaders are focusing on where it matters the most. The new world of working will define the cultural intelligence that needs to be developed in leaders, in diverse circumstances. This will create a need to put the state of the art AI in place to bring value out of human, emotional, and cultural intelligence.

Uflex, a leader in the packaging industry, is using intelligence right from the factory floor into their enterprise applications. They are working on more projects to expand the digital purview beyond the shop floor. They are in the process of implementing human capital management or HCM solutions.

3. Values-driven business: In the #newnormal, the workforce will be highly conscious about their duties towards the larger society and environment. Hence, in the #newnormal, the businesses need to make sure that their values are at the forefront while taking any business decision, from ecological sustainability or social inclusion point of view. Both customers and employees will prefer value-driven business in the times to come. HR is expected to be the guiding light for business leaders on the following 3 dimensions of value-based business:

a. What is socially and ethically important

b. What is economically viable, and

c. What is environmentally conducive

Save the Children is a 100-year-old NGO whose primary mission is to reach out to marginalized children and their families in India. One key factor that goes unnoticed with such institutions is that they are evolving themselves unceasingly, without altering their basic values. Be it technology innovation; or innovation in their operations; or how they manage their resources such as their people; or how they keep track of children they enrolled in schools after being saved from labor; or how they use data analytics to cull out commonalities and trends for them to develop new programs.

4. Empathy: A true leader knows how to make a positive impact in the lives of people and it has never been tougher than current times. An imbalance in personal and professional lives has put employees in a position where they are subconsciously seeking compassion and empathy more than ever. Today, a leader is required, more than ever, to guide his team away from trauma and towards a better future for themselves and the business as well. “Attending to the physical and emotional well-being of the workforce has become essential to running a financially healthy business”, stated a study by TCS.

RBL, one of India’s fastest-growing private sector banks, with nearly 6,000 workers were finding it difficult to care for the well-being of its employees under current circumstances. The bank opted for an extra module in addition to the Cloud HCM, that they were using. The module gives the bank the ability to track and manage health and safety matters within its organization. Employees can quickly report health-related incidents or concerns from their mobile or desktop devices and administrators can communicate follow-up steps.

The thought of diving in untested waters can be terrifying. However, with proper preparations, diving can be relatively safe. Any organization with basics like digital Resilience, Intelligence ecosystem, Vales, and Empathy in place, will bring about the ‘great reset’ in history.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house


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Shaakun Khanna new normal hr

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