With all these efforts HR teams can foster an attitude of resilience and build an anti-fragile organization.

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” Nothing is truer than these words by Lenin who mentioned this more than 100 years back, probably in a completely different context. At this moment the world has literally come at a standstill as the entire human race gets gripped by a deadly pandemic. In a matter of a few months, we are forced to lock down ourselves at home to prevent the rapid spread of the COVID 19 virus. In just a few weeks’ time, individuals and businesses are compelled to grapple with the basic question of survival. Organizations are suddenly forced to scramble for ways to maintain business continuity in the face of such a life-threatening crisis. However, these are also testing times for everyone on how quickly we adapt, how differently we can think and plan which will determine how strongly we emerge from this adversity.

The coronavirus outbreak that started off in China’s Wuhan district late last year throws several unprecedented challenges. The last one in the recent memory that came close to such a situation, at least on the projected impact on a large scale was the global financial crisis in 2008. Even though the current crisis is biological and sociological in nature, it does pose several challenges for business. The International Labor Organisation (ILO), has estimated job losses to run over 25 million as a result of COVID-19. Unlike some of the events in the past, the current crisis brings forth human fragility. There are many pertinent questions with no clear answers and none of us are equipped to face this unique challenge.

In the last major crisis i.e. GFC that the entire world faced between 2007-09, most of the organizations turned to corporate finance for survival but the COVID-19 pandemic is a human crisis that brings the need for HR to be at the forefront of ensuring success in sailing through the crisis. Thus, HR needs to redefine employee engagement in such challenging times.

· Share leadership vision and direction transparently

· Equip managers in meeting the basic emotional needs of their teams

· Facilitate frequent conversations and touch bases

In Savills India we have designed the 3R approach, Reset, Relearn and Rejuvenate to employee engagement.

Reset:

To Reset means pressing the reboot button on how our people were used to working before this crisis. It is a completely new world with newer interfaces and the intent here is to create novel ways of working which will help them not just during the crisis but also in the post-COVID world. The utilisation of our already existing cloud technology platforms helped us to create a quick efficient virtual connectivity with our employees who are spread across India. We immediately leveraged on our investments made on various platforms like Workplace by Facebook which is a social collaboration tool, adoption of the entire O365 ecosystem for smooth connectivity, Skype and virtual people management platform.

Relearn:

Every adversity brings with itself a hidden opportunity. Due to the COVID lockdown business are compelled to shut down physical offices and people are stuck at home with some time in hand. Organisations should tap this situation in their people’s favour by making available a plethora of learning avenues. Thus, in Relearning, we committed ourselves in creating a space to transform the current Work from Home (WFH) scenarios into high engaging Learn from Home (LFH) scenario. This was made possible by conducting:

· Consistent Knowledge Sharing session between inter/intra teams

· Byte size Lockdown learning sessions on a wide variety of topics related to personal and professional enhancements

· Industry expert sessions

· Need based e-learning module

Rejuvenate:

By Resetting and Relearning, organisations can mitigate professional risks that staff undergo, however as HRs we need to emphasise on mitigating the personal risk faced by each one of us. This is where the need to Rejuvenate comes to play. By Rejuvenate we are weighing on the need of the body, mind and soul to unite, revitalise and feel at ease during this crisis. Keeping this in mind, we at Savills introduced a wide range of programs to facilitate this very need by including not only our employees but their beloved family members as well. To begin with, our global office has launched Little Architect Competition where children of our staff are encouraged to sketch their dream homes and share their talent with the entire Savills family. In India, we are encouraging our staff to showcase their hidden talents and this contest has revealed to us the many hidden Picasso, Bob Marley, Jimmy Hendriks within our company. As a result, we are an inch closer to each other and we can relate with our team members on a whole new level.

We introduced daily morning wellness sessions which are known as Lockdown Fitness sessions which includes Yoga, Pranayam, Home Strength Training and High Intensity Training. These sessions are being conducted by our fellow Savillians and we are witnessing record high participation levels. Every Friday, we have lined up casual engagements like cooking classes, cocktail making workshops and Friday musical evenings hosted by our employees in an effort to continue the momentum of our Happy Hours.

To help support our people through these challenging times we have introduced a whole host of guided meditations that we can practice from the comfort of our homes using the Headspace application. We have also collaborated with a renowned association of Executive Coaches to provide life coaching sessions to our people. People who feel distressed are also provided with a Telecounselling service which will help them cope up with the stresses that these times induce.

We believe these are hard times for each of us but a little harder for those struggling to make ends meet. So, with this thought we have launched our CSR initiative in collaboration with one of the most well renowned NGOs in India. The initiative focuses on providing daily use and essential items to the daily wage earners across various states. We have received an overwhelming response so far and will continue our efforts to support the hardest hit communities during this pandemic.

With all these efforts HR teams can foster an attitude of resilience and build an anti-fragile organisation. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb said: “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resist shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

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