Post-Pandemic: start planning now!
We opened with a question and the response was “I was conned!”. You know you’re in for a very candid evaluation of the state of the world. This week we invited Liz Dowling to the show to talk about her thoughts on a post-pandemic business landscape. Opening the show, she says,
“What we have to remember, is that every single person is experiencing something different at the moment. In the form of grieving, loneliness, and personal challenges”.
We fast forward, to the time when returning to the office becomes a reality, “not a lot of people are going to want to jump onto public transport and get back into their normal life”. With the prospect of a continued level of social distancing, until we have a vaccine, this could lead to “people being completely overwhelmed”.
On the subject of, remote versus office-based working post-pandemic. She thinks “you’re going to need to create a hybrid”. As some employees might want to return to the office as soon as possible. Some “might be scared”.
“As Business Leaders it’s really important to recognise that and also start planning for that now. How do you want to come back to work will be key to understanding your employees’ mindset when we finally come out of lockdown.”
What’s the end result?
Talking about companies’ ability to pivot into a purely digital working model. Liz tells us the “pandemic is going to enable us to get our infrastructure in place.” “We have been going on about digital transformation for years!”. As Zoom slowly becomes a recognised adjective, does this mean more change for the world of recruitment?
We move onto the subject of measuring productivity. Her opinion shifts focus,
“We going to see a lot of technology from other sectors come into our [recruitment] space. I don’t think there are many businesses measuring productivity in an efficient way in terms of quality versus quantity.”
In summary, her advice for businesses and leaders, “everyone works in different ways, and if you really want to create a diverse workforce, you have to enable people. You need to get out of the way and let your people fix this and trust them, if you don’t have that trust and empathy – you won’t survive!”.
If that wasn’t enough, below you’ll hear Liz talk about:
- Investing in communication training
- Using the lockdown to prepare for post-pandemic workspace
- It’s time to review your productivity framework
- Is this the end of presenteeism?
- Identifying opportunities as HR and Recruitment teams
- How can you virtually on-board people and make them feel the culture
