The pandemic may be on the out, but employee anxiety is peaking
The world of uncertainty appears to have many twists and turns and could unravel into a major permanent change of living for everyone. Facing the great unknown can cause high levels of personal anxiety but can also leave HR leaders in a quandary as to how to plan for the future.
Do we think short-term, not expanding horizons for fear that we get caught with too many staff or too big a commercial space? Should we be bold and plan for the best possible outcome taking out long office leases and signing big contracts? Maybe the best scenario is to plan for somewhere in-between.
“Yes, business will have to learn to manage in permanent uncertainty,” Richard Parker, chief human resources officer, The Warehouse Group, and speaker at New Zealand’s HR Summit. “COVID-19 has just been one example of the types of global or local events that will force companies to rapidly change their strategy or the way they operate. That is why The Warehouse Group has adopted agile practices and processes so we are best positioned to manage this uncertainty.”
The Warehouse Group (TWG) is a New Zealand success story, founded by Sir Stephen Tindall and evolved from a single The Warehouse store to become the country’s largest general merchandise retailer. Our brands include The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Noel Leeming, Torpedo7, and TheMarket.
“Agile practices are centred around multi-disciplinary tribes and squads that are empowered to solve problems and deliver solutions on an end-to-end to basis each quarter,” Parker added. “Each quarter the tribes agree the objectives and key results for the quarter based and team members are reallocated to tribes to enable for it to be delivered. This enables The Warehouse Group to change and adapt very quickly to any changes in the macro and micro-economic environment. The days of setting an annual business and then forgetting it for a year are long gone.”
Many businesses around the globe have had to endure restricted trading conditions due to lockdown with New Zealand experiencing harsh criteria. Being a small country, it has its advantages in that it can be nimble in its operations and movement.
“The best way to manage micro-economic factors is through rigorous integrated planning and data science practices that enable you to best predict when events may happen, how your customers may be impacted, how such events may impact different parts of your business, such as your supply chain, and then plan how you will respond,” Parker said. “We live in such an integrated and globalised world that most global events will have local economy impacts. Our planning, risk and data science teams are just a few of the teams that are involved in this ongoing process to ensure we best manage the events on global macro-economic issues.”
Of course, human resources has a key role to play ensuring that any systematic change within a company is clearly communicated and planned for with the right resources. While it is good in theory to be able to say that you can adapt quickly to whatever macro or microeconomic challenge is thrown at you, the practical reality can be starkly different.
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“Human resources plays a central role in managing the well-being of employees during times of uncertainty and a key aspect of that is keeping them calm and focussed.,” Parker said. “Openness and communication are key and in particular acknowledging and talking about the uncertainty and the anxiety it may be causing people and then how the company will support them.
“By way of example during the COVID-19 pandemic we rolled out a large number of initiatives including: we had an extensive communications strategy outlining how we would be managing it and supporting team members, we guaranteed the pay of all employees during store closures even if they couldn’t work; we provided additional special leave, we ran numerous webinars on a diverse array of topics on physical and mental wellbeing topics, we partnered with our EAP supplier to provide additional support and sessions to our team members; we trained our managers on how to have conversations with their team members to keep them calm and support them during times of stress and anxiety, and we have partnered with organisations like Mentemia to enable our people to have tools to support their mental and physical wellbeing.”
Global uncertainty may be here to stay, but that doesn’t mean you can’t plan your business to behave in the way you need it to be in order to survive and thrive.