Dawn of 'Human' Era

The role of a human resources (HR) leader has undergone sea changes over the past couple of years alone. Amidst the overall disruption the pandemic caused, the expectations from an HR leader escalated to another level. If the HR leader was the link between management and the employee workforce, akin to the transformation of roles of other CXOs, the organizations today expect more from their HR leaders. This includes direct contributions to the growth via multiple avenues, helping employees settle into the new normal, and even equipping the organization for a pandemic like scenario in the future.

A recent Gartner poll shows that around 48 percent of employees will likely work at least part of the time remotely after COVID-19 versus 30 percent before the pandemic. This brings its own set of challenges to the HR leaders. While the HR department remains funda mentally responsible for the workforce’s performance, productivity, and efficiency, they will have the bigger job of comprehending the challenges the employees face, including what they are struggling with inside and outside of work. This implies that employees will need support, including enhanced sick leave, financial assistance, adjusted hours of operation, and child care provisions. In the long run, HR leaders will also need to pilot the transition from an efficiency driven to a resilience driven organization.

On the other hand, organizations worldwide will focus on expanding their geographic diversification and investment in secondary markets to mitigate and manage risk in times of disruption. This will increase the complexity of size and organizational management, which in turn will create challenges for HR leaders as operating models evolve. HR leaders will need to diversify their skills, acquire new ones, and leverage the technology more to navigate these challenges. This issue is about a bunch of HR leaders from the IT sector who lead by example.