The pandemic brought in a sea change in the way work was conducted. Even with offices shut, employees at home, travel restrictions, and stringent protocols to be observed, work had to go on. Some novel ideas helped tide over the challenges, some of which may stay on in the future.

1. Remote interviewing

Remote recruiting, one of the foremost fallouts of the pandemic, emerged more as a necessity during the pandemic when work itself was remote and there were travel bans. It was further facilitated by video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Google Meet, and Google Hangouts. There are specialized video interviewing tools such as HireVue and Montage. The recruiter and his team interview the candidate on a video call. Thereafter they can collaborate on various aspects of the selection process and decide on the platform itself. It has its challenges if internet speeds are low, or for a candidate who is not able to present a professional environment, with no distractions and noises. Moreover, it may not sustain as we ease out of the pandemic. But it has left its mark for its sheer convenience and cost-effectiveness and is expected to stay in some form.

2. Superlative Employee Experience

The pandemic caused a significant shift in the attitude toward employees. Their well-being, health, and whether they strike a work-life balance were the focus. There was a need for employee listening programs. The objective was to ensure that they get a positive experience and stay on once the pandemic is over. Some ways to improve employee experiences are to get feedback from them, encourage conversations between them on the intranet, give them more avenues to interface with each other, and give them recognition on the platform. It is believed that a focus on developing a positive experience and company culture reaps success and makes it more profitable to the organization. Recommendations by an employee, old or new, are considered the most impactful methods of getting candidates to apply. 

3. Contingent workers

The pandemic brought in disruption and the availability of the workforce became increasingly unreliable. One buffer from this was to have a pool of employees called contingent labor, to fill in absences. Acquisition of contingent employees has a different process than full-time employees. For drawing talent, one may use vendor management systems, besides career sites and social media recruitment. NAVA has been a partner with industry-leading organizations to provide need-based consultants for various technologies.

4. Analytics

Harvesting data to give insights into all aspects of HR, to identify strengths and weaknesses. The adoption of analytics by HR is gaining popularity. It can help cut talent acquisition costs, identify problems in the recruitment process, and fill vacancies faster. More specifically, analytics can help provide recruiters with valuable information on the best sources of hire, the time required to hire, acceptance rate, costs of hiring, and various other parameters. They can make predictions on acceptance probability, the time required to hire, the tenure of a candidate, and so on.

5. Remote Employee Onboarding

New candidates joining the company did not lose out from the shift to remote working. Since remote employee onboarding was inevitable, special care was taken to ensure that onboarding is professional, warm, and makes a candidate feel welcome and belonged. The training was imparted online. The intranet of the organization played a crucial role in onboarding. Oftentimes paperwork is online, including e-signatures, for all of the essential documents such as tax forms, I-9 verification, employee handbooks and policies, and contracts.

6. Improved Employer Branding

Employer branding is a combination of the reputation as an employer and the candidate experience. It is required to attract the best talent to your organization. It. In addition to keeping career sites updated, recruitment marketing and career site software can help personalize the hiring process and gather analytics to help toward this. Opinions of the recruits go a long way in building the employer brand.

7. Project-Based Contract Hiring

Many prefer freelance work since it comes in small modules, is not too binding, uses the exact skill they possess, and allows them flexibility. The pandemic has only accelerated the need for freelancers since employers may look to tide over a situation – their employee may be sick, may not be able to report to the site, may not be permitted to travel, and so on. For them too it is more convenient to hire freelancers. NAVA’s unique Talent-as-a-Service model provides scalable and flexible resources.

8. Virtual and augmented reality

These technologies are being used for employee training and onboarding. It comes in very handy to describe processes with details involved like manufacturing, fabrication, and safety manuals. An employee can get transported virtually to the site.

All in all, technology has prevailed and minimized the disruption on account of the pandemic.