Completing the same amount of work in fewer days can be challenging, potentially leading to lower customer satisfaction. Employees might experience increased stress due to longer working hours.
It is heartening to see employees looking up to the human resource department to help them through the crisis; it just shows that they trust we can play the part.
Leaders should also keep an eye out for regional policy and regulatory changes. This becomes critical especially if a firm operates in multiple global locations. It’s best to create organization-wide guidelines but allow local leadership to fine-tune these as needed, says Amit Bhatia, Senior Analyst, Forrester in an interview with us.
Given the current situation, what has determined and will continue to determine each organization’s success is the caliber of its leadership and management.
The business landscape appears to be undergoing permanent changes, and we are seeing now is a shift towards a more flexible, dynamic, and hybrid model where people will increasingly expect more empowerment over when, where, and how they contribute to their organizations, says Kim Schmidt, Global Leader - Leadership, People and Culture at Grant Thornton International.
Flexible organizations, no matter their size, must remain poised for the unexpected - be that a natural disaster, a business system operational apocalypse, a cyberattack that shuts down all applications, a disgruntled former employee purposefully introducing malware or even the death of a top executive.