COVID-19 Implications for Business Human Resources

​Determining the hot buttons that employers and employees are faceding with Covid 19 Implications for business human resources requires not only awareness of cultural implications, but daily considerations of your decisions will make to address the critical cultural issues. Your culture will no doubt change due the COVID-19 event. Understanding the impact of your decisions that drive your company culture will provide the necessary balance required to address the issues listed above and maintain internal business continuity going forward.  
If we can agree that we are in a leadership deficit and that leadership is meant to cause dramatic and useful change in Covid 19 Implications for business human resources. We should then also agree that our approach to leadership should change in dramatic and useful ways during the crisis.

For this to occur, a leader should possess some degree of these characteristics:
  • A leader needs to be visible as a role model in order to demonstrate his/her breadth of knowledge and understanding of the current business environment and the organizational challenges.
  • He/she should display an aptitude for logic and a desire to challenge the status quo or “alleged wisdom” in order to facilitate free flowing decision-making.
  • Finally, a leader must possess the ability to be a linking agent (facilitator) with a wide array of knowledge and information coupled with an unquestionable trust, professionalism, and an open invitation for dissent.
Since none of these traits are ethereal or magically possessed, leadership is thus understandable, identifiable and attainable.

Traditionally, leadership has taken the form of direction from the top down where answers and solutions are seen as dictates (typically seen in statements like, “I know the answers, you don’t and I will give them to you as you need to know them”) and work is considered extrinsically motivating. Leaders are believed to be born with the skills (i.e., leadership skills cannot be taught), and if there is an absence of leadership, the herd (organization) is lost.

​In essence, the organization is moving around like a herd of buffalo headed for a cliff. This form of leadership is most often typified with words like, mandate, drive, push, must, will and or-else. Allegorically, traditional leadership is similar to the “Plight of the Buffalo” (if one goes off the cliff, all will follow) however, Lean Leadership operates similar to a flock of geese changing leadership when the situation/need dictates. Further evidence is found in an old Chinese proverb that states, “If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed..”

Good leaders motivate people in a variety of ways, three of which are the basis to our “LEAN” approach. First, leaders must define the organization’s vision in a way that highlights the values of their group; second, leaders must support people’s efforts to achieve the shared vision through coaching, feedback, and role modeling; and finally, a good leader will recognize and reward success.

​With the onset of the COVID-19 virus, our lives have been changed substantially in a short period of time. Nowhere is this more evident than in our working environment. Dealing with displacement of daily security brings new challenges that need additional support to maintain and sustain culture familiarity within an organization.  ​
Risk Tolerances concerning COVID-19 
  • How much is Appropriate / Acceptable 
  • Has it been Properly Communicated? / What Medium? 
  • Business Continuity 
  • Stability / What is Providing Comfort? 
​Maintaining Your Culture 
  • Continuity 
  • Consistency 
  • Adapting  
  • New Normal 
  • Feedback Sessions 
​Psychological impacts to Consider 
  • Anxiety 
  • Depression 
  • Stress 
  • Animosity 
  • Crisis Fatigue 
​Employee engagement and support 
  • Working from Home / Meetings / Socializing / Reporting 
  • Maintaining Performance Standards 
  • Mentoring Programs 
  • Communication Vehicles 
Talking with Customers 
  • What’s important / What’s not? 
  • Relaying the Message 
  • Confidence, Support and Value 
  • New buying behaviors 
Health Policies
  • Fear of the Unknown / Uncertainty 
  • Job Security 
  • Personal Protection