Emergency preparedness isn’t anything new to human resources. Part of being in the profession is ensuring the health and well-being of employees as well as protecting the company’s infrastructure. As such, HR managing directors are accustomed to being "ready for anything." Preparing everything from hazard and emergency plans, evacuation procedures and lockdown protocols, to how to appropriately communicate companywide emergency instructions and information, HR professionals are typically prepared for whatever comes down the pike. But, for all the emergency preparedness, you’d be hard-pressed to find many HR departments that were ready for a pandemic (prior to 2020).
An employer commenting on a job applicant's physical appearance is inappropriate. Accidentally sending an email to the wrong person is often embarrassing. Doing both is a recipe for disaster — and a viral video.
Returning to a hybrid office could be even more damaging than the move to fully remote work, writes the former HR chief at Google. Here’s how to get it right.
In the past, HR and diversity overlapped occasionally but largely existed in parallel. During more than 15 years in corporate HR, I had little interaction or collaboration with central diversity teams. The relationship between the two functions had begun to change in some progressive companies, then shifted abruptly following the murder of George Floyd and the beginning of America's racial reckoning in the summer of 2020.
Over the past 50 years, society has made great strides to de-stigmatize many physical and genetic conditions. Educational efforts have helped many people understand conditions like Down Syndrome and cerebral palsy that were previously misunderstood. Yet, through leading a company that provides behavioral health solutions, I’ve seen that when it comes to showing compassion and understanding for those with mental illness, we still have plenty of work to do.
As workplaces across the U.S. are returning to normal in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, employers face the challenge of determining what that workplace will look like. It will certainly be different. According to a McKinsey survey, many of the shifts in the ways that business was conducted during the pandemic will not change, including a higher percentage of employees desiring to continue working remotely.