Now What?

How To Prepare Your Team

For the Post-COVID New Normal

Maria Lamp
Content Strategist

While some people are still waiting for things to go “back to normal”, it’s becoming

increasingly clear to many of us that the world will not be the same once COVID-19

passes—whenever that may be.

What are the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the way we work, and how can

leaders and HR teams prepare for the new normal?

What is the new normal in the world of work?

The remote era is upon us

Anyone who can is working remotely today. And while this won’t necessarily be the

case forever—a study in the UK found that nearly half of employees expect to go

back to limited flexibility once lockdown ends—it’s a near certainty that remote work

is going to be more widespread than it was before the pandemic.

Daniella Sikora, Head of People Operations at Typeform, stresses the need for

businesses to shift their strategies and embrace remote work as the new normal.

“The situation we are experiencing now is far from normal and requires adaptation,

flexibility and new ways of communication and collaboration,” she says. “We will all

learn how much more open to remote work we can be once this is over.”
For some, it’s a blessing—a major challenge for others. Even teams who had

embraced remote work long before the coronavirus hit aren’t completely untouched,

having to rethink their approach to team building. Vaida Revuckaite, Head of People

at Slite, believes the biggest challenges for remote teams are working on team

culture and getting people to connect. “Even though we've been fully remote before,

we did in-person meetings and retreats to have space to get to know each other and

connect as human beings as well,” she reflects. “Doing that from a distance,

especially if you have new joiners, is more difficult.”

The unprecedented nature of the situation means there are no proven best practices.

Leaders have a lot of trial and error ahead of them, to figure out what works.

Although there’s no one-size-fits-all solution just yet, Revuckaite is confident there

are many positives that can come out of this huge global shift towards widespread

remote work. “For example, being forced to rethink how to organize work sessions,

bigger team workshops, and meetings,” she says.

“We've been doing in-person meetings every two-three months. Now we’re doing

them remotely. Something we changed that worked nicely was to record the

presentations beforehand using Loom. Then we just did Q&A sessions with two-

three people in each time slot about the presentation. We found that the questions

were far more thoughtful as people prepared them before and the discussions were

more qualitative.”

It’s a buyer’s market in the hiring world

For the past several years, the global job market has been overwhelmingly talked

about as a seller’s market. The talent was calling all the shots, as an unprecedented

and gradually worsening talent shortage meant that top talent was free to pick and
choose where in the world and for whom they worked. The legendary and

ominous talent crunch was on track to cost the world economy $8.5 trillion in

unrealized annual revenues in 2030.

When COVID-19 hit, that trend was reversed practically overnight. In the US alone,

the number of people left jobless by the coronavirus has reached 22 million.

Economists can’t even begin to accurately predict the total cost and extent of the

recession we’re heading into, but it’s a safe bet that $8.5 trillion looks like a dream in

comparison.

The talent landscape is changing on a massive scale. Businesses in deeply affected

regions and industries are shutting down, downsizing, or freezing their hiring plans.

With a huge flood of newly unemployed talent suddenly on the market, companies

lucky enough to be hiring will have their pick of the litter. They’re also having to learn

to interview and onboard new hires remotely—another trend, like remote work, that

was already growing steadily and is now getting a big, unforeseen boost.

Employee mental health is coming into focus

The world of remote work isn’t all fun and games and hilarious Zoom backgrounds.

Behind the seemingly cheerful scenes, employee wellbeing is taking a hit. COVID-19

is bringing into sharp focus the importance of maintaining the mental health of the

workforce.

Experts anticipate a substantial increase in the prevalence of mental health

concerns. A recent JAMA study predicts increased “anxiety and depression,

substance use, loneliness, and domestic violence; and with schools closed, there is

a very real possibility of an epidemic of child abuse.” Employers can’t afford to sit
back and hope that their employees aren’t affected or that they will be able to

manage everything on their own.

“For our workforce to stay engaged and productive, people need to be healthy,” says

Daniella Sikora. “As HR leaders, we need more than ever to support our people in

this new reality, introduce initiatives that focus on mental and physical wellbeing,

open lines of support, and reinforce frequent and open communication. We also

need to adapt our internal People processes focusing on technology to help us with

employee engagement, onboarding, offboarding and so on.”

Priorities are being reevaluated

As individuals, we owe it to ourselves to do whatever we need to do to stay sane at a

time of crisis. As a society, we owe it to each other to keep going: eliminate the

busywork and focus on how and where we can make a difference.

The pandemic has shown that much of the work done daily serves little actual

purpose. In her Forbes article 5 Predictions About How Coronavirus Will Change

The Future Of Work, Tracy Brower notes that COVID-19 has led to a decrease in

unnecessary systems at many organizations, allowing these companies to respond

quickly with more streamlined processes. “In addition,” Brower writes, “many

companies have had to delegate decision making to enhance speed—resulting in

increased empowerment for employees.”

As both businesses and individuals find themselves under immense amounts of

stress and extra demands, leaders are working with their teams to identify the most

meaningful and impactful tasks. As applied behavioral scientist Silja Voolma,

Ph.D., puts it: "Productivity equals the amount of meaningful work done, rather than

hours spent or impact-adjacent tasks completed.”

How to prepare yourself and your teams for the new

world of work
As the world scrambles to make sense of what’s happening and what to expect next,

there are a few things employers can do now to set themselves and their teams up

for success.

Adopt a flux mindset

A potentially mind-warping concept to wrap our heads around is that the new normal

might mean there’s no such thing as normal. To adapt to the pace of change that lies

ahead, employers and employees alike need to adopt a “flux mindset”.

According to April Rinne, global authority on the future of work and the digital

economy, “a flux mindset demands that we make plans with the assumption that

those plans will change.” Rinne stresses that rather than not making plans at all, this

means getting used to continuous change as the default. “People with a flux mindset

will be positioned to navigate the weeks and months ahead far better than those who

are simply waiting for the whole situation to be over,” she writes.

Vaida Revuckaite similarly stresses the need for adopting a whole new mindset to

survive and thrive in the new normal. The key for teams to succeed in the new world

of work, she says, is not just to rethink your tools, frameworks, and rules, but how

you want to work in a broader sense. “In our case, we're proponents of a thoughtful,

written-based, and transparent working culture,” she says. “Having documentation,

notes, and written project content helps everyone involved to collaborate at the best
time for them, without a "here and now" distraction culture. A lot of work can happen

if you adopt good practices. You'll have more time to do calls or in-person meetings

to connect with each other and become better as teams instead of fire-fighting and

making decisions on the spot.”

Turn homes into good workplaces

The current crisis also draws attention to employers’ responsibilities when it comes

to providing their remote workers with the tools they need to work effectively at

home.

In her future of work newsletter, writer and speaker Laëtitia Vitaud points out the

importance of focusing on the home as a workplace. “With the ubiquity of knowledge

work tools, homes have been places of knowledge work for many years now, as they

have always been for many artisans and artists,” Vitaud writes. “Yet employers pay

too little attention to these workplaces whose ergonomic conditions leave greatly to

be desired.”

To make sure employees are working in good conditions, employers should expand

their definition of the workplace to officially include the home office and make sure

their teams have all the necessary tools, equipment, and moral support they need to

maintain their physical and mental wellbeing.

Look for remote-ready hires

You are who you hire. And hiring has just become a whole new ballgame. Kwun-

Lok Ng, founder of the knowledge management tool provider Kipwise, believes that

in the aftermath of COVID-19, many teams will realize that fully remote is the way to
go and stop renting offices altogether. “Hire those who would fit in a 100% remote

environment,” he recommends.

Even if you don’t completely abandon the office, there’s no way to escape the

remote future altogether. “We may need to make our remote work policies more

open and flexible, shift our recruitment needs and strategies to focus on remote

candidates,” says Daniella Sikora.”

Remote work has been thrust upon millions of people around the world over a very

short period of time, under extraordinarily stressful circumstances. Adjusting to it has

been unavoidable. Adapting to it and staying at least remote-ready, if not remote-

first, even after the immediate threat of COVID-19 has passed, will help you keep

your teams thriving as you step into an uncertain future.