Supporting HR Pandemic Response: Part 2

The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered the current (and future) state of organizations. In some instances, the need to hire and train employees has accelerated.

For these organizations, the method must be effective, quick, and implemented to scale. These requirements are even more daunting because hiring must be accomplished in ways that:

• reduce employee and public risk;
• identify and select job candidates who have the appropriate job skills to perform the work successfully, often with minimal training;
• strategically use contract workers or temporary employees as opposed to permanent employees when work volume is not anticipated to continue in the future;
• meet federal and state Equal Employment Opportunity hiring regulations and goals.

Technology is driving the effort via online recruitment, hiring, and onboarding, and with these new techniques come novel content, implementation, and compliance considerations. This is a situation in which hundreds of decisions can result in great hires adding to the strength of the business or poor hires that weaken the business requiring time spent on performance management and terminations. These ongoing demands on the Human Resources function may be so great that outside support is sought.

Initiatives that may benefit from extra support when internal resources are stretched include:

• Studying jobs to evaluate the extent to which they can be performed remotely and identify critical skills gaps;
• Designing and validating systems that allow hiring of employees using job-related and efficient processes that leverage technology;
• Analyzing work to determine the skills and other worker characteristics needed for the future work of the organization;
• Understanding risk via evaluating adverse impact of employment decisions;
• Having an expert provide an objective 3rd party review to identify ways to increase the effectiveness of current or planned Human Resources processes.

For Part 1 of this series, click here.

For Part 3 of this series, click here.

For more information and resources, click here: Addressing Organizational Challenges Resulting from the Pandemic

By DCI Employment & Litigation Services Division