‘HR Team Should Stay Connected With Colleagues, Provide Emotional Comfort’ says Satyanarayana Vinjamoori
The pandemic has forced companies to make rapid changes in a short period in their work management. Since a challenge of this scale has never been seen in the recent past, executives have been clueless on how to bring the situation in control. Indeed, many companies have been relying on human resource teams (internal or external) to facilitate them in navigating through these tough times.
Automatic Data Processing - ADP Inc., a leading Human Capital Management provider in the world, is said to be closely monitoring COVID-19 developments through local authorities and the World Health Organization. The global payroll outsourcing provider has recently revealed through a report on the US economy, companies in the US shed 2.76 million jobs in May, entailing that the pandemic’s toll on employment may have peaked and rehiring may be underway. Experts believe that there are similar patterns for the Indian economy as well.
Shedding further light on the matters, Satyanarayana Vinjamoori, Senior Director- HR, ADP shared his insights and observations on what companies have been going through during the pandemic at BW People Presents BW Dialogue on People Power in Association with BW Businessworld. Vinjamoori has over 25 years of cross-functional experience in HR Delivery, HR Process & Product Development including 18 years of leadership experience in Strategic HR, Product & Team Development, Software Service Delivery across multiple geographies in diverse domains.
To watch the full video webinar on Facebook. CLICK HERE
To watch the full video webinar on YouTube. CLICK HERE
Vinjamoori stated that the most important component in these tough situations for people is to get paid on time. He informed that HR is the core domain of their company, and in HR, payroll is the most important part. He shared that as the lockdown began, within 48- 72 hours everyone was wired; and in the process, the HR team along with the IT team played a crucial role. Vinjamoori added that the IT team does not know where all the associates live so they have to coordinate with the HR team to work that out. “It is a new experience since people have been comfortable working with someone next to them. There were a lot of queries so we had created an emergency response team to handle those,” Vinjamoori informed.
With various observations on how work is performed during the lockdown, people have been pondering whether current 'work from home' can be the new normal in the post-covid times. Vinjamoori addressed, “Working from home is definitely not a norm. Only during exceptional situations, we can allow for some time but that’s about it.” Taking on the policy perspective, he thinks that people ought not to work from home, generally speaking.
Not just working style, but the role of HR is indeed expected to change in the post-Covid times. Vinjamoori believed that during these tough times, HR is asked to provide comfort to the people that whatever is required will be done. He said, “HR has an important role to be continuously connected with these people. And, these people who are working from home are going through a lot of difficulties at home – maybe with the family, issues in the neighborhood.”
Vinjamoori necessarily pointed out the HR people are themselves employees and be facing similar challenges in their homes. So, that’s to be taken into account. There are also concerns about how offices are going to be started again. Vinjamoori stated that this pandemic is a crisis situation, though, of a huge scale, similar situations were faced by almost every company. And, so he added, taking this to be a similar crisis situation, solutions to the prevalent problems should be developed.
