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Milton Nyamadzawo
Correspondent
The coronavirus pandemic has caused tremendous disruption in livelihoods and businesses.
Because human resources (HR) is key to supporting companies and catalysing changes in the workplace, organisations must rethink, re-imagine and reconsider how they foster talent, deliver services and strengthen their institutions through forward-thinking HR strategies.
To survive, businesses must adapt to the future of work. The capability to move with speed and agility is a critical competence HR can influence.
HR is arguably the best position to see overall processes and offer a systemic viewpoint, ensuring coordination, communication and collaboration across units, functions, business groups.
An increasingly digital, human-centred and experience-driven economy was being built before the pandemic. Its progress has accelerated at a speed and scale that no one could have predicted.
But what now for organisations and workforces? Where are the next set of business and HR priorities leading us? How can we get out ahead and co-create the future of work?
In view of the pandemic, there are several major themes that are driving conversations that matter at executive level right now. Those conversations quickly turn to action as companies set their objectives for the coming months, quarters, and years.
What has changed in the past year?
Well, everything and nothing. To those at the vanguard of human and employee experience, they have adapted, responded and pivoted their business models in ways that work for their people.
For others, it is catch-up time as they come to the realisation that the old ways of practicing HR do not cut it anymore.
Human leadership
In an uncertain and challenging world, human-centred leadership is of critical importance.
Developing organisations filled with high quality leaders who put people first and lead with empathy, compassion, and integrity is a high priority to create sustainable and impactful businesses, especially in light of widespread remote and “essential worker” arrangements due to Covid-19.
The hybrid organisation
The world of work has changed, in many cases, for the better. With more choice and control over how outcomes are delivered, workers and companies have begun to understand the potential of building their companies around life in a holistic way.
We are actively observing new models and ways of delivering positive outcomes across different workforces and contexts. As HR practitioners, we should explore the consequences, challenges, and outcomes associated with a balanced approach to work between home, office, and elsewhere.
Business for all stakeholders
A shift has been taking place within corporations in recent years to promote a business agenda that better serves all stakeholders within and around a business, rather than a narrow focus on shareholders, short-term profits, and ideas associated with perpetual economic growth.
This is an area of great interest (and potential long-term impact) and many companies have assumed a multi-stakeholder view in and across their business operations today.
Redefining performance
What is high performance in 2021?
High performance can often be delivered to the detriment of others, and there is a growing argument that “winning at all costs” is no longer a viable path forward to create admired, respected and trusted brands.
Is it “high performance” if people, or partners suffer as a result of a brand’s growth agenda? This theme is also being explored in the context of changes in expectations at individual, organisational, and societal levels.
How people are enabled to deliver their performance is also an area to explore given the rise of the surveillance economy (e.g. tracking, intrusive and inhumane performance software) in the workplace, and changes to performance systems and approaches (e.g. systematic focus on outcomes rather than the traditional dependency on rigid and controlling bureaucracy and inputs).
Micro-managing every detail of how employees should behave is demoralising, inefficient and impossible.
Businesses have a profound opportunity to make a positive contribution to the planet. They also have limitless potential to create or facilitate a wide range of negative outcomes in the world.
A new HR
The notion and leadership idea that humans are merely “resources” is being strongly challenged by those practicing in the HR profession around the world.
The question now is concerned with what comes next? How can organisations create internal support functions that better serve people and the human experience at work?
The momentum behind more progressive ideas is increasing, and this will be high on our agenda in 2021 and beyond.
An organisation’s success is based on having talent in the right roles at the right times, and HR is integral to this process.
Managing talent through the Covid-19 pandemic requires fundamental shifts. At the same time some parts of the organisation may be shuttering, others are ramping up.
This dynamic requires strategic redeployment, flexibility, reskilling and tapping into the gig economy with speed and effectiveness.
People need to feel a sense of community, common purpose and camaraderie. Social capital is the goodwill, fellowship, linkages and shared understanding that allow us to work together most effectively.
HR has a role to play in helping the organisation build, maintain and sustain social capital among employees.
Establishing mentorship programmes and affiliation groups, developing teams and ensuring thorough on-boarding are ways HR can make a difference here.
As remote and working from anywhere models take flight in your workplace, the distributed talent pool shows many benefits.
However, in the world of work without borders, the tax and other compliance issues (health and safety, income bands, benefits and allowances applicable) are going to become more relevant.
Taxation
All direct taxation, including the payroll tax owed by the employer and the income tax owed by the employee is to be paid in the country in which the employee lives.
Now, with the increasingly distributed workforce and remote work, how would this uncharted territory be navigated?
Pay debate
Another more vexing question is on wages, what an employer should pay, should the earnings be based on where one lives to account for the actual cost of living, or just be based on the employee contribution to the business.
Geographic arbitrage is nothing new and many employers have always sought to set base where the labour costs are low.
The labour laws
Our labour laws have been outpaced by rapid changes in technology and the effects of the pandemic. This now requires a new set of lenses for the HR leader to guide and navigate the organisation through these unprecedented times.
Zimbabwe’s common law and statutory framework recognises workers’ rights to occupational health and safety. Section 65(1) of the Constitution entrenches the right to safe labour practices and standards. In addition, Section 65(4) of the Constitution provides that every employee is entitled to just, equitable and satisfactory conditions of work.
Employers have obligations for the health and safety of their employees and to protect their personal data.
As a result, employers must bear in mind their duty of care to their employees: What testing can they request of employees? Can they prevent an employee from attending the workplace? What payments are employees entitled to if they are unable to attend work? What must an employer consider with homeworking? What are the employer’s obligations if it becomes necessary to shut down the workplace?
The Labour Act is, however, silent on how issues of remuneration are to be tackled in situations where companies are directed to lockdown pursuant to a Government directive, like the situation currently obtaining in Zimbabwe.
Elsewhere in the region, particularly in South Africa, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (75 of 1997, as amended) and the Labour Relations Act (66 of 1995, as amended) specify that employees are not entitled to be paid during the lockdown period if they are not working.
The South African government has, however, introduced a measure to ensure that employees are paid during the lockdown period. This is in terms of The Special Temporary Employee/Employer Relief Scheme (TERS) administered by the Unemployment Insurance Fund.
Covid-19 vaccinations
Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe has advised that the vaccine is on its way and will land on our shores in the week of February 15, 2021.
This is commendable, and corporates must also come on board to secure the vaccines and alleviate the burden on the Government.
The roll-out programme will prioritise healthcare workers and staff in care facilities, teachers and those in the over 60 age group.
The current supply of the vaccine is sufficient only to inoculate a small group of eligible people in Zimbabwe and a definitive plan for effective and efficient distribution to the wider population is currently being navigated.
Against this backdrop, companies are forced to look ahead. One of the topics at the forefront now for many employers is whether they can make the Covid-19 vaccination mandatory for certain employees in Zimbabwe.
How would employers accommodate religious objections to mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations? If the objection to vaccination on religious grounds were to be accepted, it will most likely depend on whether it is deemed not to cause undue hardship on employers.
When the vaccine becomes available to a wider section of the public in Zimbabwe, and regardless of whether Parliament passes legislation that would make the vaccine mandatory by law, it is possible to imagine that some companies, based on the sector in which they operate, may want to require certain employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
For many companies, at least in the short to medium term, and possibly even longer, it may be easier (and equally safe) to require remote working.
Finally, the mandatory use of personal protective equipment, as well as proper management of distancing in the workplace, can, in some situations, make the question of whether an employee is vaccinated less relevant.
However, once it is established that a genuine need for vaccination exists for an employee to effectively perform their required tasks, the argument for mandatory vaccination becomes compelling.
A common challenge for HR leaders is remembering to look forward rather than backward. Being a top HR leader requires not just great execution, but also great foresight.
Although Covid-19 has thrust HR into immediate fire-fighting, the current situation has given it a unique opportunity to co-lead their enterprises in becoming more robust and resilient to overcome the economic and cultural ramifications of the pandemic.
Businesses are depending on HR to take the lead and navigate them through this crisis.
As a result, HR needs to develop new capabilities to effectively address these novel expectations, even when the majority of the workforce is working remotely.
Milton Nyamadzawo is an HR chief advisor for a world leading book publishing company, and can be contacted on [email protected]
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