Human resources after Covid-19: when the emergency turns into an opportunity

13 August 2020

In less than 100 days, the labour market has experienced a veritable, internal revolution: with new business models and company practices, what are the challenges for Human Resources experts?

“What we experienced is not a kind of normal, neither old nor new: we’ve been confronted with emergency-working, rather than with smart-working and those who accessed the labour market for the first time during these past few months were penalized by the lack of physical proximity with their colleagues”, argues Cristina Danelatos  HR Director of the Montenegro Group, during the round table organized by BBS and devoted to the post-Covid labour world.

“Remote-working – Danelatos continues – is a task-oriented mode and as such it’s powerful in terms of efficiency, but deficient in terms of human relationships. Indeed, we found that those people who have strong organizational skills encountered less difficulties accessing the labour world, while it’s been harder for those who are trapped in a framework in which the company defines routines, deadlines, and functions”.

Francesco Rossi, Senior Partner at Praxi, during BBS virtual meeting, highlighted how working from home meant advantages in terms of balance between professional and private life: “the company culture of respecting schedules and self-discipline partly depends on the individual worker, but also on the management, as they too respect timetables and schedules.”

It isn’t an automatic process, but a path to be established over time, relying on a trust-based environment, on the best practices of working by tasks and on increasingly empowering the worker: “fostering learning with a more coaching-oriented style rather than providing instructions and guidelines from the top, enabled some companies, that already have this orientation, not to bear the brunt of the sudden lockdown”, Rossi explains to the Community.

Last but not least, the aspect connected to the ability to self-motivate, identified by Niccolò Montanari, HR Professional at HERA: “The health emergency lead to periods of deep introspection, to reflect on yourself and to focus on your strengths and weaknesses. In addition, for those working in teams, it’s been an opportunity to home in on how to relate in a healthy way to your co-workers. Finally, all that existed before Covid was linked to procedures, while what has happened enabled us to focus more on people, to share solutions and ideas”.

The pandemic seems to have accelerated a series of transformations in progress for a long time, that can no longer be ignored: the Master in HR & Organization at BBS which has recently received the accreditation from EPAS (European Programme Accreditation System) for 5 years, is an ambitious programme with an international focus that guarantees a comprehensive training for those wishing to specialize in an ever-transforming industry.



Apply

Back To Top