What companies will expect from their corporate communicators as employees return to the workplace: part 2, HR and IT

In part 1 of this two-part series, we examined the expectations of the executive team for help from corporate communicators as the team prepares to return employees to the workplace from their home offices. In this part, we look at the expectations of human resources and information technology teams for similar help.  Both are going to be developing new policies and practices in response to the pandemic that will need to be communicated to the workforce – and in some cases to customers and suppliers.  Even when HR or IT teams have primary responsibility for communicating a policy change, the communication should be integrated with other return-to-the-workplace communications so that employees get consistent and coherent messages from the organization.  Ensuring that consistency and coherence is one of the jobs of corporate communications.

The HR team needs

For HR, a leading policy area is determining new safety procedures in response to the pandemic (“COVID-19 Back-to-Work Checklist,” February 11, 2021).  Topics within this area that HR will want to address include:

• Employee health screening procedures
• An exposure-response plan
• The use of PPE
• Workforce vaccinations
• Physical distancing standards
• Customer and/or visitor contact protocols.

For each of these topics, the communications goal is not only to gain employees’ understanding of the new policies or procedures but also to gain their acceptance of, and compliance with, both.  Achieving that goal will require research, or sensing, with the workforce to determine initial levels of acceptance and resistance toward the new policies, message formation, message testing, and continuous sensing to determine if employees are likely to accept and comply with the new policies (Joni, April 23, 2021).

Corporate communicators can and should provide similar communications support for other HR policy changes in response to the pandemic.  These other policy areas can include:

• Employee benefits, which can change as an employee’s status with the organization changes
• Compensation practices, which may have been disrupted by the pandemic
• Remote work policies and practices, such as whether remote work will be a permanent option and for whom it will be an option
• Other policy changes driven by the pandemic such as attendance policies, meal and break policies adjusted to encourage physical distancing, travel policies, telecommuting policies (“COVID-19 Back-to-Work Checklist,” February 11, 2021).

For some companies, communicators may need to support HR in communicating with unionized workforces.  Topics for these communications can include:

• Hazard pay policies
• No-strike clauses to ensure that work continues in the event of a future infectious disease outbreak
• Adding a force majeure clause into an agreement to protect the employer from contractual obligations during an event that is beyond the employer’s control (“COVID-19 Back-to-Work Checklist,” February 11, 2021).

The IT team needs

Information Technology will also need communications support and counsel as IT teams figure out how to deal with a hybrid workforce by building additional infrastructure and encouraging safe work habits (“The IT Leader’s Guide to Supporting a Hybrid Workforce,” ND).  Some of the safe work habits can be enabled by technology, including:

• Thermal imaging and wellness checks
• Occupant and proximity analytics to determine how people use spaces at work to ensure social distancing
• Touchless technology integrated with personal devices.

These technological solutions require that employees understand and use them, which will necessitate the same development and execution of communication strategies as the HR initiatives.

Since a hybrid workforce will often operate through virtual meetings, employees will need to learn and embrace best practices for conducting such meetings to ease burnout and “Zoom fatigue” (“The IT Leader’s Guide to Supporting a Hybrid Workforce,” ND).  Helping employees to embrace these practices will be one of the jobs of communicators working with IT.  That job will be especially important for making a cultural change to promote virtual meeting etiquette.  Elements of that etiquette include:

• Everyone committing to understanding how to use the technology
• Everyone agreeing to be muted when they aren’t presenting
• Everyone agreeing to turn their video on
• Everyone agreeing not to multitask during a meeting
• Everyone agreeing to start and stop meetings on time – or sooner (“The IT Leader’s Guide to Supporting a Hybrid Workforce,” ND).

For many organizations, the new meeting culture will be quite different from the current meeting culture.  The communications team will again need to develop a change management communications strategy and work with IT to implement it.

Over the past year, most organizations and their employees have been through a wrenching experience unlike anything they have ever gone through.  Employees were asked to adapt quickly to a new normal of remote work.  Now management is asking them to pivot again to yet another new normal, characterized in the majority of companies by a hybrid model of work.  Harvard Business School’s Tsedal Neeley sums up the current situation this way: “Ultimately, every company will have to determine the best path for their employees and their entire ecosystem. Likewise, every company needs to be prepared to handle the cultural impact of whatever path they follow”  (Gerdeman, March 8, 2021). Corporate communicators are uniquely equipped to help senior managers and their peers in HR and IT manage that coming cultural change.

References

AVI Systems. N.D. The IT Leader’s Guide to Supporting a Hybrid Workforce. AVI Systems blog.

Gerdeman, Dina. March 8, 2021. COVID Killed the Traditional Workplace.  What Should Companies Do Now?  Working Knowledge: Business Research for Business Leaders, Harvard Business School.

Judge, Coni, PhD. April 23, 2021. The Psychology of Communicating COVID-19 Throughout the Pandemic and During Return to Office/Site and Future of Work. Case Study.

SHRM. February 11, 2021. COVID-19 Back-to-Work Checklist. SHRM.org.