Flexible HR Policies To Navigate Possible Solutions During Tough Times The flexibility of the HR policies must be directed at making the organization more resilient to unforeseen situations

The past couple of years have driven organizations to reimagine their structure and operations in a way that was never thought of before. It pushed them to navigate the unexplored terrain to sail through the tough times, while ensuring business continuity. At such times, having flexible HR policies makes it easier to face the unknown challenges of the time.

The flexibility of the HR policies must be directed at making the organization more resilient to unforeseen situations. It must bring about changes that reskill the employees to render them agile, adaptable and future-ready for the changing times. It is much needed to keep them motivated, committed, productive, and satisfied at a time when nothing seems to be working their way.

Let's explore certain important remediation that companies must adapt to.

Understanding the employee

Companies must realize that employees are the most important assets who work towards achieving the goal of the organization. Therefore, it is important to understand their personalities to bring out the best in them even during challenging times. Proper KPI and KRA mapping must be conducted to get a clear picture of the future perspective. It gives an insight into the aspirations and strengths of an individual, like what kind of brands they want to work with, what type of work they want to do, what do they expect from their career, etc. Likewise, the managers will be able to align their strengths to the fullest to get tangible results. Understanding the individual will also help in keeping their motivation high during the tough times.

Building and sustaining a strong work culture

Given that companies need to ensure the continuity of work and there are moments when work has to delivered at odd hours; beyond the working periods. It is assertive that there should be flexible policies where employees have the availability to work from home. During the pandemic, the companies were left with no other alternative than to adopt flexible working conditions. It forced the organizations to revisit their fundamental notions held strong for so many years. Creating a space for enabling omnichannel working culture was the need of the hour and soon the management realized that it would be the way forward for the companies to work henceforth. It brought to light that health will be a major concern amongst the people. For which virtual working model was adopted with alacrity. But this will be exercised continually based on the situations arising in the future. With time it must be structured in a way to avoid any unnecessary wastage of time due to various travelling, personal emergency, medical conditions, location and many more barriers.

Here, the companies must be vigilant to keep a tab on the incompetent employees who take disadvantage of the work from home provision and slack off from work. It is important to come up with strict protocols to define the extent of leverage the employees can take of work from home culture.

Empower employees to stand their ground and take tough calls

There are times when the clients demand unrealistic deadlines or continuously ask for last-minute deliverables. During the tough times when employees are on the verge of losing their sanity to meet deadlines, complying with such unnecessary pressure is undesirable. There must be training for employees to help them better handle such uncalled situations. An empowering culture must be nurtured where the employees irrespective of their position have the right to check the clients for idealistic timelines. There is a need to protect the company's integrity as well as the clients, it is equally important to bridge the gap and follow strong work practice.

Team bonding

While employees are working towards giving impactful results, sometime should be taken off to conduct events or activities that will play a major role in team bonding and making the relationship between members even stronger. Such events help in instilling a sense of loyalty among the employees across the length and breadth of the organization to script many ingenious deliverables in the journey.

Cumulatively, it can be said that the flexible HR policies must be aimed at valuing the employees and acknowledging their various needs during tough times. In the process, the productivity of the company must be kept intact and a comprehensive structure must be devised that encourages companionship, diversity, individuality, and shared responsibility to help the organization withstand the tough times.