SHRM South Asia Blog

COVID-19: Creating Safer Workplaces for Onsite Employee

Ever since the outbreak of coronavirus in March 2020 in India, work from home has emerged as the new normal. It has undoubtedly given a new lesson to HR in business agility and would now become integral to workplace policy.

However, work from home is not a feasible option for manufacturing and allied industries, financial services, pharmaceutical, R&D, real estate and many other sectors. It is not a long-term option for IT and ITeS companies either. Organizations are facing several challenges – a slowdown of production, slump in productivity, ineffective team collaboration and communication and technology...

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Viewpoint: The First Big Career Transition

I asked Shiv, the impatient Management Trainee the question my manager had asked me many years back. ‘Why do you want to be a team leader?’ Shiv replied instinctively, ‘Because I am ready to lead a team. Three of my classmates from Business School are already managing teams. If they can do it, so can I.’

Managing others - the complexity of it

Being a team leader very often means transitioning from being an individual contributor to a people manager’s role. That often comes with a salary bump and a career path that gets...

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Viewpoint: Is Online Education Effective

What if content creators was left to a team of experts and teachers offered personalised learning in person or in small groups.

 

When the lockdown began, education went through a forced pivot (along with many other things like healthcare, retail and the office, of course). Is online education effective and what is the problem EdTech should solve for instead?

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Outsourcing IT in the post COVID-19 world

The COVID-19 outbreak has seen a drastic shift in how organizations operate in India and abroad. Gone are the days of corporate hallways buzzing with employees as most of them are working remotely. The post-COVID-19 world is heavily dependent on remote technologies to let employees work from home. As companies deal with the challenges of remote working in the post-COVID-19 world, they will need to alter their current operating models accordingly.

Work-from-home (WFH) is the new norm...

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COVID-19: Employee experience in times of crisis

COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on people’s lives across the world. This has resulted in the disruption of employee experience across all organizations - big or small. An organization’s employee experience is the sum total of everything that an employee feels, encounters, or observes throughout his journey in the organization. It is the aim of a good organization to provide a positive employee experience to their workforce to boost their morale and enhance organizational productivity.

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Changing employee expectations: What HR Leaders and organizations need to know

The past decade has propelled organizations towards preparing for the VUCA world - a world which is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The true test, however, of that preparation has come in the current times through the COVID pandemic. Employees had to suddenly start working from home. Organizations and HR Leaders had to plan for this without a clear view of the duration of this phase.

In a pre-pandemic world, the employee expectations were focused primarily on equitable rewards, fair promotion...

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Talent & Performance Calibration Meetings - anyone interested?

A few years back I, along with the Management Committee of the organization, were in the middle of a high-powered Performance / Talent calibration meeting. One of my colleagues, higher positioned in the “power structure” of the organization proposed a superlative evaluation for one of his team members. There was a stony silence in the room, and one of my other colleagues, in fact highlighted some positive behavior of the team member. And the superlative evaluation went through!!!

I happened to know that virtually all of the present members (including my colleague who gave the positive...

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How HR can impact the employer brand during the COVID-19 crisis?

An employer’s brand value is a unique proposition that they offer to their employees. In other words, it is the company’s reputation in the eyes of a job seeker. A positive employer brand perception is a powerful force that can attract the best talent to the organization and help it to drive its business forward. This perception of the employer resides in the minds of the former, current, and future employees. Because it directly impacts the quality of the organisational workforce, the human resource department plays an active role...

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Reskilling employees in the post-COVID-19 world

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a marked shift in how businesses operate in India and abroad. Organizations are grappling with the significant changes in their work environment as most employees now work from home and remote operations are becoming a necessity. The massive disruption brought on by COVID-19 has also led to some companies having been shut down temporarily, while others are laying off or furloughing employees to keep themselves afloat. It suffices to say that this disruption has impacted employers and employees alike. Reskilling has been identified...

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"I have a feedback for you"

It is a bright morning - You are working in your desk (well… in Covid times, you may have logged in to your machine) with a hot cup of coffee. A message pops up from your boss - “ Can we have a brief chat… I have a feedback for you”

How would you describe your feeling? I asked this question to some of our leaders – the answer is uniform

"Elated? Definitely not! A knot in your stomach? YES - something must have gone wrong"

We have read countless surveys and research which...

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