Employee health and wellbeing

Chief human resources officers (CHROs) should focus on protecting their people from the public health threat.

• Provide leadership communication and engagement with the workforce throughout the pandemic, informed by national and global public health guidelines
• Educate employees about COVID-19 symptoms and prevention; review sick leave policies and establish procedures to support employees through this period
• Help enable safe remote working environments in collaboration with IT
• Where work continues to be completed in the workplace, team with operations to provide epidemic protection — e.g., personal protective equipment, sanitation
• Identify and support stranded colleagues in transit and globally mobile colleagues and their families

CHROs should focus on maintaining employee trust and leading through disruption.

• Educate the workforce on how to manage their teams remotely
• Create and execute a strategy to address employee well-being issues such as awareness and utilization of employee health benefits, isolation and childcare responsibilities
• Encourage and support virtual communities to foster connectivity
• Deploy remote work pulse surveys to gauge sentiment and productivity, leveraging analytics tools
• Understand new travel restrictions and impact on colleagues and operations
• Think creatively around maintaining workforce capability but reducing short-term capacity (e.g., reduced hours, furloughs)

It is important to operate in a new normal and enable the business to better respond to future disruptions.

• Adapt business planning to incorporate new scenarios and gather lessons learned to better prepare for future crises
• Reimagine employee experience and ask your workforce for reactions
• Embed well-being policies and working practices into the corporate DNA
• Develop incentives for employees that proactively engage in preventive care
• Evaluate workplaces and facilities to mitigate the impact of future public health threats where possible
• Implement new products and services to emphasize HR as a critical enabler of people value and business outcomes
• Incorporate agile and digital talent upskilling and reskilling into your learning strategy