One of the things that such times teach us is, you have to customize the practices to your firm. If you cut copy paste something that has been designed by company
A into company B that might not at all work.

There could be broad trends that could be common across all industries, like technology adoption or
remote working, e-learning.

Individual companies should consider how these
trends can be applicable to them.

While content is the king, context is the kingdom.
In this scenario, we are taking away the kingdom, so the king cannot do much. The king in this case is the trainer or the moderator. 

While we are moving the training and meetings remotely, how do we manage the interactivity like ice-breaking sessions?

We need to think on how to make these sessions more humane.  

When we completely move online in terms of training, the trainer wants to know how much impact they will have, and again there we would require innovations.

Most of the IT companies have a mandate of 40 hours of training.

Each company needs to customize this based on their business needs, and post that they can move to the
next step in the ladder.

When we had to design the L&D programs we heavily relied on discussions with the teams. Now when everyone is scattered, the interview process for designing the L&D plan needs to be much more thorough.

Second is learning through simulations. Effective L&D organizations will heavily invest in simulation training.

Case studies will also become the common chord for
the participants to be able to relate to the trainer.

Effect would be varied. Like for some industries it
would be driven by lockdown. Manufacturing per say, can be sorted in a couple of weeks post the lockdown. 

Travel tourism and entertainment are the worst
affected industries. Recovery here will happen in phases.

This is the time to create a sustainable business model.

We need to have empathy. This is the time to have a simple and effective business plan, where employees can communicate, work seamlessly, raise concerns and get on with their life. We need to think outside the cocoon in which we operate. Make sure that
employees are engaged using activities like huddle calls.

Important thing that you need to do when your team is
remote working is trust them. If you don’t, then you will
always have doubt on their productivity. 

People are not working from home, they are over working. So it’s more important to focus on their wellbeing. Employees are managing their homes and work without domestic help. We need to switch our focus from numbers and productivity to wellbeing.

There are critical and non-critical activities that are mapped out in every industry.

In this pandemic, most of the admin, logistics and HR team are trying to expand their BCP plans to include
the corona situation into it. In all industries 4 standard practices have been implemented:

Employees are given remote connectivity.

Large data are made available to them online.

MIS employees have been given large RAMS.

Autonomy has been given to people to access a wide range of data.

As far as the media industry is concerned, everything is happening. Right from the people who are supposed to deliver to the delivery point and pick up from the pick-up point is on track. However, the end result of getting
it delivered to the customer is not happening. Ecommerce is stuck, but the internal productivity is still on.

Trust the employee and see the productivity. Remotely connect with your employees over collaboration platforms. Give them sufficient infrastructure.

Work has intruded home. We need to understand that. Discuss with employees clarity of his role and objectives.

We had done our homework on how many hours of work is required from different roles to get the required outcome. This was done when people were still working from offices. Based on this, the extrapolation model has been designed to see how many calls it requires to get a viable lead, or convert a sale. This benchmark is there with us. All data is made available to employees on fingertips.

We do not know how long the lockdown or bouncing back of sectors will happen. There will be certain sectors that will bounce back and certain that will go down. 

So if there is crust at one sector there will be trough at another. 

It’s pure conjecture at this point in time. IMF itself is not sure of it at this time. In India, another factor that will affect us is monsoon as India’s GDP is heavily dependent on agriculture. But India is one of the few economies which probably will be above zero.

Ideally all, more importantly, highly important functions. Rather than looking at functions, the manufacturing sector needs to look at processes. Relevance of functions might go away. It might move to processes in tomorrow’s world.

For blue collar workers, we have statutory compliance norms from ESI. Apart from blue collars, for other workers, it depends on the task and target that has been assigned to them, it needs to be checked and discussed with the CEO and then can be redefined.

It’s a subjective question. The standard HR reply would be, the current situation is out of scope so the probation can be extended. But for how long will be organization be able to carry this person with them owing to manpower costs, will there be openings post Covid, all these answers depends on annual operational plan of the organization which will get modified due to Covid.

Moving to basics, trust the employee. Refer to the first principle approach, ‘You don’t follow an analogy and start thinking from scratch’

I’m a certified coach. Don’t wait for the employee to come up to you and say, I don’t know why I’m not able to perform my job. It is required to have daily communication with any person to understand their mental health. It is reflected in the kind of communication the person is having at work, what kind of numbers are coming in, and what type of social media activity is happening. 

Structure needs to be in place for this.

HR teams need to be psychometrically up-skilled to handle emotional health of employees remotely.

Corporates need to go an extra mile during these times, to show empathy and compassion towards well being of the employees.

Spirituality and meditation can help in managing your mental balance.

We need certified people to understand mental health and its repercussions. Another approach is to start talking normally about the subject and not make it a taboo.