The world has spun off its axis. Nothing we know, feel or experience will ever be the same again. In the space of perhaps a month, our relationship with Covid-19 has shifted from curiosity, to irritation, inconvenience, through to, at best, fear and trepidation. The virus has so many binary impacts. Whilst healthcare, police, food retail and pharmacy workers are working long, exposed hours. For the rest of us, it is the polar opposite. We live reduced lives behind screens, locked doors and twitched curtains. At a time when the world has never been smaller and more accessible, our horizon stretches no further than our front doors.
And just as our relationship with Covid-19 has shifted, so has our relationship with work and our employer. For those heroic healthcare professionals, their proximity to mortality has never been so clear. We can only hope that as the presence and threat of coronavirus begins to ebb, that the current admiration and respect we have for this group continues to burn bright.
For many of the rest of us, however, there is a very tangible separation between work and the rest of the workforce.
Are we likely to see the virus speed up the possibilities of working from home? It’s an obvious conclusion. Potentially, yes, but part of me also thinks that because working from home has become absolute very quickly, and with little in the way of choice, will we then rebel and seek the company, the conversation, the comfort of colleagues very quickly when those restrictions lift? For the self-employed, life has rarely been so precarious and unsure – and the Government’s tardy, reluctant response to this section of the workforce has done little to inspire confidence. For others, their relationship with work has been curtailed with no little brutality. And for some, they’ve been checking in the dictionary to understand the term furlough.
Employers have responded to the implications of the coronavirus in wildly contrasting ways. Some have been exemplary. A hat tip in the general direction of the likes of the Co-op, Timpsons, Whitbread, Aldi, Leon and Lloyds Bank – and this is anything but an exhaustive list.
They have listened to their people, heard their concerns and fears, communicated regularly. They have led. Few employees expect solutions at this point – they realise we are in unchartered waters – what they do expect is communication, understanding, empathy and visibility from their leaders.
There have clearly been those employers who have been far less stellar. Some we might term the usual suspects, others have taken us by surprise. They have been churlish and charmless around sick leave, threatening self-isolators with the sack, firing people and throwing them out of their accommodation without warning or notice.
Up until very recently, there have been occasions when employer branding has acted as a coat of shiny gloss aimed at obscuring internal bumps and blemishes.
That won’t be possible in the world post Covid-19.
And there will be one. It will be a world where the worst offenders – be they sports retailers, budget airlines and, surprisingly, book stores – will have nowhere to hide. How they have behaved during Covid-19 to employees will be there for all to see. Potential applicants will have but the quickest of searches to action in order understand what sort of employer they are applying to. The good, the bad or the ugly? The court of employee sentiment and the stories they use to convey such feelings will be there to either condemn or condone.
There will be no hiding place for your employer brand.
How an organisation chooses to treat its people now will define its brand – both consumer and employer – for years. How you are perceived as either a place to work or a place to avoid is being shaped as we speak. What is being done cannot be undone.
If no one knows when our current plight will begin to ease, then equally no one knows what tomorrow’s normality will look and feel like. How will employees view their organisations on their return – with open arms or with deep distrust? Will candidates be more or less likely to consider job moves? What will their job changing motivations be? Will they be looking for something different in a new employer tomorrow than might have been the case pre-virus?
Will we all have a fundamentally different relationship with work post Covid-19?
How will we greet colleagues as we return to offices, with a warm embrace or a wary, distant nod? Is my face mask available in corporate colours and branding?
(It’s important to realise that despite the apparent carnage being wreaked on the UK economy, WaveTrackR data pointed last week to a 28% daily increase in posted jobs).
There will be no normal. Or rather, everything is up for grabs. Tomorrow’s normal won’t look like todays. Particularly for those organisations who come through this period with employer brands enhanced, they have the platform and the opportunity to shape and construct a new normal. They have the chance to press the reset button. Employees will not want to go back to a pre-virus environment. In a world where few things are left unchanged, a return to the status quo is not an option.
Rather, this is the chance to initiate new values, a shift in culture, a re-set of the employee experience, improved employee communications, a greater sense of purpose and collegiality and an Employee Value Proposition that speaks to what returning employees and candidates want from an employer and a workplace – wherever that workplace might be.
Business as usual will be distinctly unusual, if not completely ill-advised. But organisations should see this in entirely positive times. This is the opportunity to listen to their people, really listen, to understand how they have viewed the last few weeks and months. Appreciate what went right, what might have been done differently. To acknowledge the voice, importance and contribution of such people. To celebrate that the workplace is open for business, open for change, open for its people.
And to recognise how the world, the workplace and the employee experience has shifted permanently and, hopefully, for good.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 