We work with human resources professionals everyday, and at all levels.
They have been at the forefront of dealing with the most dramatic change of our time felt directly in the workplace.
Overnight, most employers have had to confront not only change but the question of how growth, if not survival will look from here. This reality remains for most.
The role of HR has been key for employers who depend on the discipline. As perhaps the first global crisis in the modern HR era, HR’s value has shone in ways that will become more apparent as brighter days return.
If finance managers have provided valuable data and insight, human resources managers have proven invaluable, providing leadership in areas such as:
- A pillar for the SLT: because people are the business for many a business
- A cultural vanguard: because the way and ‘how’ a business responds is a test of culture, amongst other things
- A communication expert: because without it, a leadership vacuum is exposed
- Organisational glue: because every part of the business is touched in a crisis
- An architect and implementer of what’s next: because this is very necessary now
- Balancing competing interests: the present versus the future, financial versus workplace well-being
- Health and safety and employee welfare: for obvious reasons
HR has been at the forefront here, and rightly so necessitating: hard and fast decision making; assessing the balance of consequences; a call for deft judgment with the knowledge that uncertainty can be crippling for the human condition.
The “how’’ of getting people back to work is the next big rock for many as the balance between operating, but safety remains in sharp focus.
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