How Hybrid Work Has Changed HR

The hybrid work environment has changed the role of HR professionals.

HR practitioners now have to focus on workforce planning and enabling change within their organisations.

With the introduction and encouragement of flexible work schedules, HR people need to sharpen their workforce planning skills by introducing new categories of remote employees.

So when estimating the future workforce, HR executives will create subsets full-time, part-time, working from home locally, working from home from their overseas homes and a group of contingent or gig workers.

And this will not be easy for all employees, especially those who have had difficulty coping with change in the past.

When hiring, they have to seek employees who are quick to learn, adapt and communicate well when using new forms of media.

This will mean re-looking over the Job Descriptions (JDs), Job Specifications and competencies needed for a hybrid workforce. Every JD for instance will describe the work environment implying safety and health matters.

With so many employees wishing to work from home and perhaps even requiring it as a condition for employment, the main issue for supervisors and HR is managing performance.

So it is back to the HR toolbox to re-do Objectives, goals, strategies and measures (OGSM), Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), SMART goals, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Management by Objectives (MBO) and even the Balanced Scorecard.

Managing all these changes will require constantly communicating pending and current initiatives, seeking their feedback and monitoring job satisfaction levels periodically.

And let's not forget, all this is going to greatly impinge HR's ability to maintain compliance across the organisation.

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