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Reinventing HR In Times Of Economic Recovery

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has had a deep economic impact on every organisation. And as every sector and every industry prepared itself to deal with this situation, the role of HR underwent a paradigm shift! HR function and leaders are no longer just about who is good with people interactions and manages the processes; HR now is a function that understands how to win with talent, which has become of utmost importance in today’s scenario.

With the industries and sectors going through their own curves of economic recovery, the HR function has to focus on ensuring that the people are engaged, reskilled and upskilled to cope with this change is the necessity of the hour.

Each sector will have its own recovery journey and HR function will have a key role to play there. While some sectors may have a V-Shaped recovery, others may look at a U-shaped or even a Z-Shaped recovery. To give you a little more detail on the different economic recovery curves, a V-shaped recovery means that once the lockdown ends, the customers will return immediately and employees need to be ready and able to provide products and services.

For example, the ecommerce industry. A large number of ecommerce companies are in the process of capacity building and reskilling their employees to meet the expected surge in demand. For these sectors, HR function was step in step with business, they were constantly hiring and adding numbers to their employee strength so as to meet the demand.

Amazon, for instance, has hired 175,000 employees during the pandemic, which translates to $4 Bn investment in Covid-19 related spending on employee benefits and safety measures included $500 Mn bonus for the front line workers and delivery personnel. Imagine the type of upskilling and onboarding process which the HR function would have to continuously clock throughout the pandemic!