Deloitte’s Recovery Taskforce partner lead, Ciaran McGovern, provides practical tools and guidance to help businesses successfully navigate to their new normal.
On May 1st, the Government of Ireland announced its roadmap to ease Covid-19 restrictions and reopen Ireland’s economy and society. Leaders pivoting from responding to the crisis to recovering from it are now focused on rebooting and reshaping the world of work.
The abundance of known and unknown “unknowns” may make the challenge seem more like quantum physics than a simple decision calculus, but with a strategic mindset, and with the customer always at our centre of gravity, this is navigable.
It’s a given that finance, supply chain and path to market are front of mind. But it is also critical at this moment for senior leaders to discern, decide and deploy a roadmap to their new normal, by answering these core strategic questions.
Core strategic questions
Through our research and work with leading organisations across the public and private sectors, we have identified three key dimensions for the future of work: the work, workforce and workplace. Leaders should develop and communicate clear guiding principles on key issues such as these in order to channel efforts to reopen the workplace and thrive in the new world of work.
Some questions to consider:
What is our new destination, and what is our first step?
For every organisation, the roadmap to success looks different post-Covid. While your company’s core purpose – its north star – may be unchanged, your short- and medium-term objectives, and your vision for reaching them, will likely need to be reworked and recommunicated.
Just as important as defining the destination, is identifying the first step. Carrying out a readiness assessment prior to reopening your workplace will enable you as a leader to have full oversight and greater control.
Setting up a taskforce team to lead out your command centre will be critical in ensuring your employees are getting the information they need to return to the workplace, and organising and overseeing the recovery effort.
Has my ‘social contract’ with workers and customers changed?
One of the most profound changes in the Covid-19 crisis has been how the social contract has changed, particularly between employers and employees. An implicit contract is based on accepted – and generally unspoken – assumptions about “the way things are.” Consider these profound upheavals in that contract:
- The accepted boundaries between work life and home life dissolved as co-workers suddenly "did life together," videoconferencing into each other's homes and lives
- The emotional wellbeing of the workforce has become a greater and much more visible priority, particularly as employees suffer the trauma of loss
- Biases against working from home are dissolving
- Businesses and governments experienced the downside of job fluidity, wrestling with how to support gig workers, who now make up a large portion of the workforce.
Further, the expectations for safety – physical, emotional, financial, and digital – have profoundly increased across all stakeholder groups, but especially employees.
How do we plan for the return to the workplace?
First, determine which functions, work and roles need to return to the physical workplace to be effective, and which can continue to operate remotely. For many organisations, the digital workplace has quickly become at least as valid and effective as the physical workplace, and will remain so.
You should model scenarios that evaluate potential workforce and workplace options with a lens to productivity, cost, safety, and operating conditions, and develop a staggered plan to get the right people back into the workplace. Guidelines should be in place for testing, monitoring, facilities management, and visitor management geared toward productivity, physical and psychological safety.
You will also need to provide support to teams in the digital workplace, and define practices and policies for remote teams. We have noticed how our days can easily be filled with video conferences and unproductive work if clear guidance on new work practices is not given.
To help HR leadership teams, we have developed a 'workforce strategies workbook' which provides an activation framework and a starting point.
How do we get people back safely and maintain productivity?
Monitor the latest guidance on testing, safety, and sanitation plans for near-term re-entry; develop sanitation policies and build up required capabilities to monitor facilities. Adjust the workplace as needed to provide for appropriate distance and hygienic behaviours, and consider concierge support to augment worker wellness, health, and safety.
Review and update HR policies, procedures, and programmes as required, anticipating scenarios such as work refusals or family situations that make return difficult.
Establish feedback channels to understand workforce concerns and conditions, assessing worker sentiment frequently, and transparently addressing the findings. We have seen how the crisis and new ways of working can impact employees in very different ways, and carefully considering and responding to your employees’ feedback will be critical.
Practical tools for success
Enabling technology will be essential when following the new guidelines set out by the government and ensuring the health and safety of the workforce. These tools will enable you to plan and track your readiness plans, manage the health and safety of your employees, and support collaboration for your teams at home and back in the workplace.
As each organisation’s answers to the strategic questions become clear, leaders can shape a viable plan for reopening the workplace and ensuring their workforce will thrive in the world of tomorrow. In doing so, they will need to be guided by their organisation’s wider purpose; now, more than ever, it will be the organisations with a clear purpose that will successfully navigate the uncertainty.
At Deloitte, our purpose is to make an impact that matters for our clients, society and people, across our many and growing disciplines. We’re going through the same recovery process and answering the same key strategic questions to determine how we will reopen our workplace. We are also taking learnings from the past few months to reimagine how we work, long term.