Coronavirus-induced pandemic and the consequential economic crisis have pushed businesses to find models for short-term solvency and rapid revenue generation. Crisis response teams are scrambling, and business survival has become the key metric to focus on for organizations. 

Mature organizations have in place processes to activate crisis plans. However, this crisis has taught us that traditional BCPs are unprepared for a pandemic of this scale to execute effectively

Employees are the most injured in any crisis that affects a business. Human Resources personnel have the supreme responsibility of ensuring employee safety and security. General activities around employees such as monitoring performance, creating environments as close to business-as-usual as possible, social and professional interactions, and managing other employee aspects take priority for HR personnel.

It makes sense, therefore, that HR should be part of any crisis response team. We’ve talked about the tough role of HR in any crisis management plan in another article. This article, however, focuses on ideating the extent of HR involvement naturally allowable with functional teams and business verticals. 

The role of an HR is always smaller in companies that are still in their growth phase. Some companies will feed on the crisis to grow while others struggle during the crisis. So, the idea of a crisis is not definite. It keeps changing depending on whom you ask. Therefore, identifying what a crisis means to an organization is important in understanding the role of HR in crisis management planning.

For this article, we felt middle-management would be the best fit because we believed they’d encompass the views of both sides. So we asked middle-management employees on their opinions about the involvement of HR — including Talent, L&D, SPOC, and other verticals — in the business verticals in a company. For this article, core business functions are termed Functional activities or business activities.

We asked only two questions:

HR Leading the Efforts for Rebuilding and HR’s Involvement in Business verticals

Should HR Lead the Effort in Rebuilding Activities?

Hr’s role is typically confined to people aspects. Employee’s safety and security are the primary concerns across all HR verticals. As far as business rebuilding activities go, there’s not much that HR can contribute besides engaging in activities like recruitment, morale building, organizing L&D and other events, and being there as a SPOC for the employees. 

Unless a company is selling HR solutions as its business, HR will continue to be a supporting function. It doesn’t make sense for HR to lead the efforts because the led will always have more information about the businesses than the HR here.

Communication

HR’s role in rebuilding efforts depends on taking stock of what’s currently available and where it should go. Each vertical in HR corresponds to some aspect of people in the organization. Communication is key. As Madhu, a manager in a consulting company, said, “What benefits are you offering that mandate your presence in the rebuilding efforts?”

However, the important thing to realize here is that communication shouldn’t come just the human resources personnel. Business leaders should take an active part in communication as well. HR’s role in communication typically centres around clarifying core HR aspects like compensation, events, and BAU. 

Usually, there is a panel of leaders in charge of communication. Business leaders will always have more information about processes than any vertical in HR. Therefore, it makes sense for HR to be limited to clarification and maintenance of policies and practices. 

In a crisis, employees can burn out easily. HR’s responsibility will increase manifold because they will be tasked with engagement, especially during the work-from-home in the crisis. According to Ratna Sri, “HR should step up when the employees are getting affected personally in professional interactions. Otherwise, there is no need for them to step into the functional aspects of a business.”

Is There a Scope for HR to Be Involved Further in Non-Supporting Businesses?

Only half the sample population we interviewed promised us that their answers to this question were unbiased. So, we had to go only with that half. The other half cited reasons such as ineffective HR personnel at the workplace or poor processes, either of which can skew their opinion and answer.

All the people we interviewed were from the service industry, and hence, the answers were tailored to the service industry alone. All the interviewees opined that HR verticals need not involve themselves in business processes. 

The service industry has the potential to go remote — something it is already doing. This means that there is no change in an average workday. Everything is as close to a day at the office as possible. There is no input that the HR can give that will complement business processes additionally. 

Besides, all the decision-making happens at the senior levels, and any contributions can only happen at those levels. There, the distinctions might be blurry. In times of crisis, however, organizations might not have the time or resources to dedicate to such changes. As Asish pointed out, “Most companies don’t have the budget for transformative changes.”

Additionally, HR is already involved to an extent in functional processes. HR now has a big duty to make the resources’ lives better. No one has undertaken this level of remote work initiative before. But then again, this role centres around employees only.