​The impact of the pandemic on women is an issue for everyone in the economy, as under-representing women in the workforce deprives businesses of much-needed skills, leadership and resources. Today, it’s crucial for employers to support the women in their workforces with greater focus on changing prevailing gender dynamics in the workplace. Here are actions steps that can be implemented immediately by organizations to support gender parity.   Communicate the benefitsAdvancing toward gender parity in the workplace is far more than the right thing to do. The data is clear: Companies with women at the top perform better. And in the private sector, numerous studies have found that having more women in the workforce and a greater gender balance of female leaders improves productivity share performance, business results and overall economy​Remove obstaclesRecognize the obstacles women historically face at work—lack of role models, gendered career paths, and lack of access to sponsors and influential networks—and identify ways to remove them. This starts with active listening; the best leaders ask women what they need to succeed.​Make work-from-home workAs we’ve seen over the last year, management can be done in new arrangements. Find ways to build flexibility into roles previously seen as inflexible. ​Start with YESSuccession planning must be bolder. Instead of saying, “She doesn’t have the experience,” ask, “What do we need to make it work?” Challenge assumptions. ​Leadership owns itTo demonstrate commitment to getting women into leadership, change must be led from the top. Leadership must also be held accountable by making progress measurable.​Make goals measurableLeaders must know exactly where they need women to be. Looking at macro numbers is not enough. Articulate a talent legacy—how things will change and what it will look like by when. Focus on outputUpgrade your performance evaluation processes and metrics to ensure a focus on outputs and, crucially, do not include assessments from periods of lockdown when childcare was unavailable.​Identify adjacent skills sets for new rolesDemonstrate how short bursts of training and upskilling can accelerate people from one job to the next.Approach learnability as the great equalizerNow is the time to focus on helping employees develop technical skills at speed and scale, while also hiring people with learnability—the desire and ability to learn new skills. This can make a real difference in shaping a future in which everyone can be ready for high-growth roles.​Hire for soft skillsWhen looking for those employees with learnability, look for soft skills like communication, collaboration, creativity, curiosity. These are the most valued—and the hardest to find—human strengths in today's job market and employees who have them make smoother transitions to new roles or careers.The good news is that the future that women say they want for work is closer to what research indicates all workers want—more flexible, virtual, trusting and integrated. More equal.

​Over the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has erased hard-fought gains in gender parity at work. It’s been twice the negative impact as women have taken on both more at home while roles predominantly held by women have been downsized. At the same time, a new future is currently unfolding that needs to take into account the skills, leadership and resources provided by women.  Behind every setback, an opportunity can be found. Employers must meet the call to support the women in their organizations and reshape the environment of work. Here are ways to move forward with women learning new skills, advancing in leadership and stepping into a post-pandemic world. Needs to reskillThe impact of the pandemic accelerated changes already taking place for in-demand roles. Reskilling and upskilling will benefit women to meet the increased demand for cybersecurity experts, data analysts, software and app developers. In addition, new roles provide opportunities in areas such as contact tracers, distance monitors and temperature checkers are emerging as fast as others decline in aviation, hospitality and entertainment. Ask for flexibilityWomen and all parents and caretakers can leverage the last year to ask for flexibility and remote work options to continue if they are available and have provided improved balance. Millennials in particular who have caretaking responsibilities are most eager to avoid the commute and least willing to lose flexibility they have gained. As the vaccine roll-outs continue and organizations plan for the future, make sure to communicate your work preferences and how the optimal arrangements benefit everyone. Consider career progressionFor many workers, it’s been a year of coping and getting by as best as possible under the circumstances. In fact, IT workers are the only sector that do not rank “just keeping their job” as top priority. Now as we look ahead, don’t lose sight of career development, progression and advancement. Women should feel empowered to move up in their organization and ask for responsibilities and positions of authority while being supported by their organization. Value your soft skillsWitnessing the biggest workforce shift and reallocation of skills since World War II means that skills that were en vogue in 2019 might now be out of fashion. However, soft skills continue to endure and be in demand. In times of rapid transformation and uncertainty, these so-called soft skills are more important than ever in workers and in leaders. As we move forward, women can emphasize abilities such as adaptability, communication and human connection to help themselves and their organizations navigate change. As we progress through and past the COVID-19 pandemic, the world needs women leaders more than ever. For International Women’s Day, the time is now to focus a spotlight on the necessity of women’s impact in the workforce.  

​Behind every setback, an opportunity can be found. And while the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a chain reaction of setbacks for women around the world, it’s also provided an opportunity to raise awareness about gender inequality in the labor market. New global research from ManpowerGroup sheds light on this, outlining how women’s career trajectories have been disproportionately impacted by COVID and why the risk of a “She-Cession” real. It’s time to advance the global conversation about why a gender-aware response to COVID is necessary. Here’s why.Equality maker or breaker? How the crisis impacts womenMen may have a higher COVID-19 fatality rate, but data indicates that women will bear the longer-term consequences of the economic and social crisis. With women’s employment 19% more at risk during the pandemic compared to men’s,[1]the dangers of occupational segregation and the informal economy have been exposed like never before.​Not only are women over-represented in many of the sectors most impacted by COVID-19—e.g., retail, hospitality, entertainment, travel and manufacturing—but they’re also more likely to work in the informal economy. This means women are far likelier to have lost their livelihood, lost income or experienced a drop in working hours.​The figures look a little different from country to country but tell a consistent global story. During the first month of the pandemic, the 740 million women who work in the informal economy lost an average of 60% of their income. This figure swelled to 81% in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and 70% in Europe and Central Asia, while women workers in Asia and the Pacific reported a 22% reduction in income.[2]WFH may not be working for womenWork-from-home is good for women, right? Not so fast.“It’s tempting to think that flexible work options will be a universal big equalizer for women,” says ManpowerGroup Chief Talent Scientist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. “Not always. Men are more likely to want to use the office for networking, women for collaborating and getting work done. Working from home could accelerate underlying inequality by further reducing opportunities for face-to-face networking.”​ManpowerGroup research found that women and men have dramatically differing attitudes about working from home and returning to a physical office post-pandemic. Women said they are more concerned about going back to the workplace and more appreciative of the office as a means of separating work from home. Meanwhile, men said they are more likely to want to be in the physical office for visibility and promotion and to say they feel relieved, happy and confident about a return to the workplace.​To prepare for a hybrid future that accommodates both remote and in-person workers, employers have to be careful to avoid a two-track workplace: men in the office, women at home, where they may miss out on informal networking and critical assignments. Such a disparity could also give rise to a new form of “presenteeism,” whereby employers make assumptions about their employees’ productivity and performance depending on whether they’re physically co-located or working remotely.​Employers can combat this by looking at the effects of remote working by level and whether or not it provides the same career benefits to the entry-level, mid-career, and executive roles. Most important is that employees are evaluated on their output and rewarded for what they actually contribute rather than for the show they put on.Unpaid domestic work and the parent trapWith more than 1.5 billion children out of school worldwide,[3]many women workers must now double as school teachers and/or caregivers while working from home. Even before the pandemic, women took on the lion’s share of responsibility in caring for loved ones and doing unpaid domestic work. Now, gender equity in the household has grown even more lopsided.​Since the pandemic began, 56% of women globally have increased the time they spend on unpaid care work (compared to 51% of men), and 60% of women report spending an increased amount of time on unpaid domestic work (compared to 54% of men).[4]​In the U.S., mothers have reported spending 15 hours more per week than fathers on household tasks and education as compared to fathers.[5] And 1 in 3 mothers has considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their career because of COVID-19.[6]​Employers must understand that remote working does not occur in a vacuum and build flexibility into roles previously seen as inflexible. By taking active steps to challenge embedded assumptions about the gender-normative roles of mothers and fathers, those norms will be less likely to drive the way managers and colleagues perceive remote working by parents and what they expect of them.​Another must for women in today’s workforce: plenty of flexibility. Women want outcomes that allow them greater control over how and when they get work done. They expect employers to accommodate One Life, where work and home are integrated, rather than part of a balancing act.Mind the leader gapOstensibly, it’s been a good year for women in positions of power. In May 2020, the number of women running Fortune 500 companies hit a new high[7](although the fine print will tell you that that means that only 7% of companies on the 2020 Fortune 500 list are run by women). Meanwhile, women leaders—from New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern to Germany's Angela Merkel—won praise for their handling of the COVID-19 crisis.​And studies have continued to prove that women are good for business. In fact, companies with the most female officers have financial returns that are 34% better, and demonstrate enhanced productivity[8], share performance[9] and business results.[10] Before the pandemic, the number of women in senior management roles globally was gradually increasing. In 2019, it had grown to 29%, the highest number ever recorded.[11] And in the U.S., which has traditionally lagged behind the global average, representation in the C-suite grew from 17% to 21% from January 2015 to January 2020. Now, female leaders in the U.S. say they are 1.5 times more likely than senior-level men to think about downshifting their role or leaving the workforce because of COVID-19-related burnout.​ManpowerGroup research is clear: When it comes to ascending to leadership positions, women aren’t looking for favors, just a level playing field. To accelerate the rise of women in leadership positions, employers can start by putting policies into place that directly address those things that established female leaders have said were the greatest obstacles throughout their career: lack of role models, gendered career paths, and a lack of access to sponsors and influential networks.[12]​2021 finds the workforce at an inflection point and many employers unsure about what steps they need to take to ensure gender parity within their own organization. In this new reality, ManpowerGroup is partnering with employers to help them commit to paying greater attention to the re-balancing of family care responsibilities and careers, to changing prevailing gender dynamics in the workplace, and to rethinking the way women work, are recognized and rewarded.​10 ways employers can progress gender parity in the new realityHelping women upskill and adapt to a fast-changing world of work will be one of the defining challenges of our time. Now is the time to reset for the new reality and make the progress the next generation of women in the workplace need to see.Know “the why.” Advancing toward gender parity in the workplace is far more than just “the right thing to do.” The data is clear: Companies with women at the top perform better.Set women up for success. Recognize the obstacles women historically face at work—lack of role models, gendered career paths, and lack of access to sponsors and influential networks—and identify ways to remove each of these. This starts with active listening; the best bosses are asking women what they need to succeed.Make work-from-home work. Understand that remote working does not occur in a vacuum. Find ways to build flexibility into roles previously seen as inflexible. Take active steps to challenge any embedded assumptions about the gender-normative roles of parents so that those norms do not drive the way managers and colleagues perceive remote working by men and women and what they expect of them.Ask “why not?”Succession planning must be bolder. Instead of saying, “She doesn’t have the experience,” ask, “What do we need to make it work?” Challenge assumptions. If we think it is possible, we can make it possible.Leadership needs to own it and measure it.To demonstrate commitment to getting women into leadership, change must be led from the top. Leadership must also be held accountable by making progress measurable.Make it count. Leaders must know exactly where they need women to be. Looking at macro numbers is not enough. Articulate a talent legacy—how things will change and what it will look like by when. Plan for it as if it were a strategic business priority or investment. True change takes time, focus and discipline.Focus on output. Upgrade your performance evaluation processes and metrics to ensure a focus on outputs and, crucially, do not include assessments from periods of lockdown when childcare was unavailable.Identify adjacent skills sets. Identify adjacent skillsets for new roles, and importantly demonstrate how short bursts of training and upskilling can accelerate people from one job to the next.Remember, learnability will be the great equalizer. Now is the time to focus on helping employees develop technical skills at speed and scale, while also hiring people with learnability—the desire and ability to learn new skills. This can make a real difference in shaping a future in which everyone can be ready for high-growth roles. Hire for soft skills. When looking for those employees with learnability, look for soft skills like communication, collaboration, creativity, curiosity. These are the most valued— and the hardest to find—human strengths in today’s job market and employees who have them make smoother transitions to new roles or careers.The good news is that the future that women say they want for work is closer to what research indicates all workers want—more flexible, virtual, trusting and integrated. More equal.​References:​​​[1]https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2020/gender-equality-in-the-wake-of-covid-19-en.pdf?la=en&vs=5142[2]https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/9/feature-covid-19-economic-impacts-on-women[3]https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~mdo738/research/Alon_Doepke_Olmstead-Rumsey_Tertilt_COVID_2020.pdf[4]https://data.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Whose-time-to-care-brief_0.pdf[5]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/business/economy/coronavirus-working-women.html[6]https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace[7]https://fortune.com/2020/05/18/women-ceos-fortune-500-2020/[8]https://hbr.org/2019/02/research-when-gender-diversity-makes-firms-more-productive [9]https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/female-leaders-may-boost-share-price-performance-credit-suisse-says.html[10]https://talentorganizationblog.accenture.com/financialservices/the-economic-case-for-gender-balanced-leadership[11]https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-management[12]ManpowerGroup ESG - Seven Steps to Conscious Inclusion​​

​Providing support for mental health and encouraging check-ins and downtime can help organizations enhance the benefits of a remote work environment for employees. ​The massive shift to working from home has been beneficial for employees and organizations. In a recent ManpowerGroup Future of Work survey, 8 in 10 respondents want more remote work to better balance family life. But the survey also revealed some complexities about remote work, such as the inability to leave work at the office. Here are ways that managers can accommodate working from home in a way that is beneficial and promotes balance. ​Pay attention to mental health needs ​There are a number of relaxation techniques that can lower stress, reduce the flight or flight response and help increase well-being for employees, from physical exercise to breathing practices. Organizations are providing help during these times with on-call counselors and virtual health appointments. ​Create channels for communication ​Working from home can feel isolating, but adding more video calls to the workday isn’t necessarily the antidote. Instead, managers can provide less intrusive but more timely feedback mechanisms, which include pulse surveys, peer group support and Slack or Microsoft Teams-style collaboration. Managers should use these channels to listen. ​Help manage workloads ​Organizations should understand who has additional obligations to care for children or parents, or family members that need attention. Globally, 40% of people say schedule flexibility is one of the top three factors when making career decisions, according to ManpowerGroup research. Managers can redistribute work to those who have capacity, or offer flexibility. ​Remind employees to take a vacation ​Taking time off –– even at home –– is just as crucial to employee balance today, maybe even more important than in “normal times.” Historically, the majority of North American employees don’t use all allotted vacation time. Unfortunately, overcommitment is counterproductive. Taking vacation time is a vital part of preventing burnout, maintaining job satisfaction and inspiring and motivating an employee’s best work. Encourage employees to take their deserved time off. ​Recognize generational differences​Organizations should know that there are generational differences in attitudes about working from home, with Gen Z and Boomers more eager to return to offices for networking or collaboration. For these workers, additional virtual communication can replicate opportunities. ​Ultimately, helping balance during working from home comes down to recognizing and respecting boundaries, and communicating frequently. These guidelines can enhance the experience for everyone involved.

​Over the past decades, rapid digital transformation has enabled organizations to completely reimagine the way they work and manage talent. From reliable video conferencing platforms to digital collaboration software, to ubiquitous cloud-based connectivity, and a data-centric approach to strategic decision-making powered by the synergy between artificial and human intelligence, an imaginary worker from the 1950s would surely marvel at the current landscape of work as if they were in a Black Mirror episode. ​And yet, it took a pandemic to truly accelerate this trend and transform the way most people work day to day, leveraging these foundational aspects of technology to dramatically change how we approach jobs and careers, perhaps forever. Indeed, for those with the skills to work remotely, the crisis has turbocharged an unparalleled shift toward more flexible work, and being able to live one life that better blends work and home — trends we know workers have wanted for some time.​Technology has the potential to be a great enabler, providing humans with the tools to remain emotionally and socially connected even while in physical isolation, and the crisis has been the critical catalyst for change. At the onset of this crisis, talent literally left the building, and we’re now beginning to realize that in many places, it is unlikely to come back. In what will surely count as one of the strongest demonstrations for the extraordinary human capacity for adaptability, workers of the world have been able to remain productive even in lockdown.​Humanyze, a technology firm that specializes in social sensing (led by MIT’s Ben Waber, who coined the now widely-used term people analytics), mined anonymous company e-mail, chat, and calendar data to find that working without an office has actually extended people’s working time by an average 10–20%, while also reducing work-related stress and negative emotions, increasing confidence and well-being, and increasing communication with close collaborators by a staggering 40%. In the early days of the pandemic, Microsoft reported a 200% increase in virtual meetings (mining their client data from Microsoft Teams), with a total of 2.7 billion meetings per day. Although virtual teams and remote work were already quite prevalent prior to Covid-19, it is likely that overall collaboration will actually increase when everyone is remote, with firms like Twitter and Square announcing their employees can work from home forever, and early indicators suggesting that business collaboration is stronger now than before the pandemic.​As we look to the new next, unsurprisingly, many people have no desire to return to the office full-time, and, by extension, be forced to live close to it, especially if it is there mostly for symbolic or decorative purposes. As our newly released ManpowerGroup global analysis shows, 8 in 10 workers want more remote work to attain a healthier work-life fusion. To be sure, we had been talking about the benefits of an agile, hybrid, and fluid workforce for some time, but the pandemic marks the formal entrance to the age of digital nomads and a personalized workforce, with five salient trends (and opportunities) to consider:​1. Technology Is Deepening Human Connections: Discussions about new technologies, such as AI, often paint a bleak and dehumanizing picture. For example, the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari, has warned of the rise of a “useless class” of humans. And there are vastly exaggerated alarm bells being rung over automation. A more obvious trend so far has been that humans working with, and enhanced by, AI, almost always produce better results than humans without AI, or AI without humans. While the crisis accelerated the use of technology, which enabled the decoupling of work from a “place”, this shift was already occurring as a large proportion of organizations — large, medium, and small — made necessary investments in online collaboration tools like Zoom and Teams, growing the market for collaboration software to more than $45 billion globally (resulting in a 300% increase in Zoom’s share price since the pandemic started).​Technology is rapidly becoming more human. We aren’t simply collaborating; we are running businesses, visiting family, attending weddings, and educating our children through technology, making the virtual world more humane, forging deep digital connections that are founded on true human connectedness. The crisis has converted collaboration software to “cohabitation software,” with Microsoft reporting a 10% increase in social meetings (including “pajama day” or “meet my pet day”) during the past few months. All this allows us to exist “in the same space at the same time” together, while we determine the place.​2. Building Culture Outside the Building: Last year, when the world could not even imagine the present state of affairs, we presented our research on What Workers Want, and a Fortune 500 CEO asked us: “How do you possibly build culture when you don’t sit together”? Our response was that culture doesn’t exist within walls; it exists within people, so you have to build culture through people, wherever they sit. We could tell he was skeptical — yet the pandemic has proven that we can and must build culture from living rooms and home offices across the country. Workers knew this a while ago. It’s why people may use the exact same technology yet experience work in a very different way when they move from one company to another. Fundamentally, culture is “how we do things around here,” and it’s the sum of default behaviors, preferences, values, and decisions that make each organization a unique habitat, regardless of whether people frequent an office or not.​Now company leaders are realizing it as well. Leaders can focus on building culture anywhere by refraining from micromanaging, getting over the politics of presentism, and learning to measure what each employee actually produces and contributes to the organization with as much objectivity and data as possible. Above all, by nurturing trust and fairness in relationships with employees, leaders can upgrade the company culture even in a virtual-only world.​3. Work That Supports Life:Our ManpowerGroup research shows that the second concern after health for workers post-crisis is maintaining flexibility. Most workers want to work remotely a few days a week; they want a hybrid workplace between work and home that allows for better balance. But the office does still have a role in human connection. Companies like Ford are taking this as a moment to redesign how office space works. Others are investing in new hubs where people come together to collaborate and socialize. Gen Z employees are most positive about coming back into the office (on their terms), and they, especially, look to the workplace as a source of socialization as much as a place to network and learn. Gen X and Boomers, who are leading many companies today, enjoy the separation that the physical workplace brings in their efforts to keep work and home a bit more separate.​It’s critical for leaders to realize that while workers may still want to occasionally come to the office, few want to come in every day. For jobs that must be in-person, it’s going to be important to flex the hours to minimize the commute, flex the shift to allow parents to be part-time teachers, and flex the days to enable the workforce to work in a way that supports life.​4. Screens as the Great Equalizer: The great thing about video calls is that the boxes are all the same size — it’s a great equalizer. Prior to the crisis, we had all been in meetings where a portion of the team was in person and part was online. The online participants were primarily bystanders to the actual meeting. There was an advantage to being “in the room,” akin to being in the right place at the right time, and saying the right thing to the right person.As companies work to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, technology provides the level playing field most groups want. Not only is it harder to engage in office politics, show-off, or manage up when you are in a Zoom call and everyone is watching, but the ability to capture, record, and analyze meetings data provides organizations with hard facts to evaluate DE&I in real-time. Diversity analytics, including a measure of how much people from different groups speak during meetings, whether they are included or excluded from the informal social networks that govern the power dynamics of an organization, and whether their ideas and comments are well-received by the group, promises to accelerate progress in a still dysfunctional area. It is a wonderful silver lining that technology and the global health crisis have sanitized a lot of the toxic politics and nepotism that corrupt the meritocratic ideal of talent-centric organizations: it is a lot harder to “pretend to work” when nobody sees you or cares about where you are.​5. Talent Geographically Unleashed: The virus isn’t confined by borders, and neither is talent in a virtual world. For years, the model has been the same; when you’re interested in hiring talent, an early question is often “Will you relocate?” On most talent plans around the world, it’s the biggest career-limiting question, as it’s restricted career advancement and company growth for decades. However, in recent years, we have seen an empowerment of skilled talent calling the shots on separating where they choose to live and where they contribute to work. Software developers experienced the earliest shift — the work followed the talent. Then, with record low unemployment in many areas of the world last year, we saw this openness to location expand into other sectors, such as banking and consumer goods.​Technology has now untethered talent from location. Talented individuals with in-demand skills in any sector now realize they can live where they choose and work where they are qualified. And employers now realize they can source “best of” talent from anywhere in the world as long as they have internet connectivity. The idea that workers have to physically move to get a job is gone, along with the costs of relocation. It’s actually quite simple: talented workers want to be free — free from geographic borders, free from physical location expectations, and free from government restrictions. As The Economist estimates, opening borders to free up talent would result in a $78 trillion increase in global GDP: “Labor is the world’s most valuable commodity — yet, thanks to strict immigration regulation, most of it goes to waste.” If technology and cultural organizational changes enable people to do their work from wherever they want, they will set talent free even with current immigration laws and restrictions, countering the recent political trend to slow down globalization in favor of nationalist policies.​***Workplace and workforce have now been separated, while work, home, and school have been brought together. Technology is moving humanity away from the office and back into homes across our nation every day. We are building culture outside of buildings, with work that supports life on a more even playing field, with talent that can come from anywhere. As we look to the future, it’s time to unleash these new way of working for the long-term, with a focus on well-being, equality, and productivity that can work for both employers and employees long after this crisis ends. It’s time to embrace the truly global talent pool that is available to drive growth, regardless of where those people call home.In short, the global talent pool has arrived, and talent is the new global currency… if businesses have the culture, confidence, and technology to tap into it.​*This article was originally posted on Harvard Business Review authored by Becky Frankiewicz and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. 

​If you could ask a candidate one question in your next Microsoft Teams interview, what would you ask? Here’s one to think about: Do you play video or computer games? ​You can learn a lot about someone by talking about gaming because people often inhabit the places and cultures depicted within games, much like they would at work. And their favorite games may be a good indicator about which of their soft skills will translate from a screen to IRL.​Globally, one in three people are gamers. But lately, people have been flocking to highly detailed simulated environments in even greater numbers, as the COVID-19 pandemic has left many sheltering in place and yearning for company, albeit online. When inhabiting these domains, landscapes and dusty divots, you learn how they work and see what happens when you make different choices and take different actions. You trace paths, avoid delays, collaborate, construct, learn and solve problems. It’s not the graphics that make video games real; it’s how they mirror our real-world decision making. ​Action-based gamers, for instance, tend to be interested in mastering skills, collaborating and competing as a team, whereas those who play strategy, puzzle and quiz games like StarCraft, Civilization, Pac-Man, Words with Friends or League of Legends may have honed their decision-making, planning, concentration and persistence skills. And video games like Mario Bros. provide incredible learning environments because failure is so easy. Did you fall into the very first lava pit? That’s okay. Players learn to dust off the lava and get back out there. They practice improved anticipation, rehearse better movement and—finally—advance more confidently. The ability to confront failure is a skill that’s invaluable for anyone who needs to make decisions in an endless range of different scenarios. ​To identify the top soft skills developed in each gaming category and map them to specific work skills, ManpowerGroup analyzed more than 11,000 games across 13 genres—from action adventure to role-playing to music and indie. By taking our Skills Translator Quiz, job candidates can select the games they play and their level of achievement. The algorithm then translates their gaming experience into workplace skills they can add to their resume and discuss in interviews, ultimately connecting them with potential job matches. This allows gamers to better articulate their skills sets, especially if they have limited work experience, and gives employers a novel way to match people to vacant roles.​Games have defined narratives—a start and an end point. Whether you’re saving the world or defeating ghosts, you have to review and assess your progress and be ready to course correct. You get rewarded for your solutions and for saving and leading others. Best of all, you get to explore the outer edges. As you practice cognitive thinking, you learn to think as an entrepreneur whose survival depends on adapting to change. ​Furthermore, you can adjust for difficulty based on performance, and as learning expands, the play gets harder, requiring more agile thinking and adaptation. ​When you play video games, you are learning how to learn—and learnability is one of the strongest predictors of job success. You also learn how to collaborate, as games are complex social systems where you engage in constructive learning together with your teammates. ​Cognitive skills are critical, and as games become increasingly social, they’re nurturing the need for foresight to be able to predict danger and success. The plot is often predicated on collaboration, with every player bringing their unique skills into the fold. You earn rewards only as teams. ​Of course, gaming is by no means a universal universe with a herd of one-trick ponies. Different video games require different skills. Some require more social perceptiveness. Others require more logical thinking. The questions recruiters might ask themselves are: What skills am I looking for? And where might this candidate have been practicing these skills online? How close are these skills adjacencies to the ones required on the job? Should I hire a Fortnite player with sharp collaboration skills or a Words with Friends Player who’s more practiced in problem-solving? ​The skills gamers acquire on their remote planet or paradise island migrate across worlds, from the game to the workplace, where critical thinking, risk-taking and open collaboration are rewarded. ​In their downtime, tomorrow’s workforce might just be helping themselves make it to the next level in their career. To learn more, download our Game To Work report.

​​By gaming more often during the pandemic, potential employees are developing soft skills that today’s employers need the most. Gaming is big business – made even bigger by COVID-19-related lockdowns. This past June alone, $1.2 billion total was spent on gaming, up 26 percent from the year prior. The good news is that all this time spent on video games could actually be to gamers’ professional advantage, as the soft skills they hone extend well beyond the console. While gaming, soft skills that are in high demand and short supply with employers around the world are being mastered – think an aptitude for things like critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity. For employers today who are rallying to regroup after the pandemic, the need for these qualities has only grown. Those who understand gamers’ unique untapped talents will be much better prepared to leverage the next generation’s skillset to their advantage. Here are some of the ways that research has shown the gaming boom is prepping tomorrow’s workforce: Developing Soft Skills From our “Robots Need Not Apply: Human Solutions in the Skills Revolution” white paper and study, ManpowerGroup surveyed 20,000 employers across 42 countries on the impact of automation on the jobs and skills that will be required for the future. What we found was that while soft skills are of greatest value to employers, they are also hardest to find and even more difficult to train employees on. And there is rising demand too for relevant skills from recent research of What Workers Want, Post Covid Report, in times of rapid transformation and uncertainty these so-called soft skills are more important than ever in workers and in leaders. Games can teach players how to solve problems, calculate probability by weighing the pros and cons of different approaches and to think strategically. In popular multi-player games, players must work together to win, enhancing their ability to collaborate remotely. Virtual environments also let players test and learn different communication styles, although gaming often leads to in-person meetups and hangouts. Finally, sandbox games that let gamers roam free are linked to enhanced creativity. These gamers tend to have better visual-spatial skills – the ability to envision movement of objects in space – important for careers in science and engineering. Improving Learnability Gaming nurtures players’ learnability – their desire and ability to quickly grow and adapt one’s skill set to remain employable. To measure this quality, we developed an assessment – the Learnability Quotient (LQ) – that enables people to identify their motivations and styles of learning. Games generally improve a player’s ability to learn how to learn by creating better cognitive models – making it easier to react to new situations. Aiding Assessments Gaming can help employers assess the skills of potential employees. By interviewing candidates about their favorite games – a topic likely to throw job candidates off guard – as a way to determine their skill set, employers are more likely to match an individual to the roles that require those skill sets. Interestingly, different games enhance different skills: To map individual games to specific skills and job candidates who have them, we worked with a psychometric specialist to analyze over 11,000 games across 13 genres. We found, for example, that people who play Tetris demonstrate mental flexibility, pattern spotting and an ability to work independently, which match well with hard-to-fill jobs in manufacturing or logistics. To help fill the skills gap, employers should take a holistic and open-minded approach to matching talent with jobs. Leveraging talent from the gaming community is one more method to create a future-fit workforce – and an innovative way to one-up the competition. Learn more in ManpowerGroup’s Game to Work report.

​Workforces are rapidly adapting to a new normal out of necessity—and it could be here to stay.Flexible scheduling. Working from home. Collaborating virtually with colleagues. These were all workplace trends on the rise in recent years, as digital natives and a younger generation advanced in their careers. Globally, 40% of people reported that schedule flexibility— especially flexible start and finish times and the ability to work from home—is one of the top three factors when making career decisions, according to ManpowerGroup research. Now what once seemed like luxuries or “nice to haves” in jobs are now a necessity in response to the realities of a global pandemic. The global economy is getting a crash course in digital workforce transformation, seemingly overnight. It will be a massive undertaking and difficult transition. But it’s also speeding up trends already underway. Here’s how today’s workforce is adapting and accelerating change. Digital collaboration and conferencingTools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Teams, Slack, Sharepoint, Basecamp and more have seen a massive surge in interest as teams work to collaborate on projects, meet in real time and coordinate schedules when not in the same physical space. In some ways, businesses have seen efficiencies grow—people can start collaborating face to face with the push of a button. As digital literacy increases, teams will better be able to determine the best means of communication and choose the most effective channels for collaboration. Leaders stepping into new rolesThe ability for leaders to foster innovation, especially during periods of significant disruption, is critical, with technology playing a major role. In the past, technology was sometimes siloed into the domain of information technology or younger workers. Now everyone must become proficient with technology, including senior leaders. The pace of disruption is accelerating, and it is impacting leaders as much or greater than anyone else in the workplace. For business leaders, embracing digital tools to connect has become crucial. Leaders must have an understanding of the technical skills required to effectively communicate with and transform their team.Rethinking the work scheduleGlobally, workers are doing their job duties remotely as shelter-in-place orders are given to those who are able to stay home. This experiment in massive work-from-home protocol gives businesses an opportunity to rethink their structure. Since digital transformation allows workers to be productive on their own time and location, organizations are seeing the value of productivity over presenteeism. A major shift in the future could be a byproduct of today’s adaptations.   Those who have been at the forefront of the digital revolution for years –– Millennial and Gen Z workers –– are leading the charge and helping others make the leap. But with everyone now needing to work together, the shifts that have been happening could now become the new normal. How prepared is your organization for digital workforce transformation? Take the Digital Evolution Pathway assessment to find out.

​Today’s digital workforce looks a lot different than it did a year ago, largely driven by a pandemic that caused organizations to move entire workforces to remote work virtually overnight.In a recent ManpowerGroup webinar, Technology + People = Transformation, Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO & Managing Director of TCS, Tata Consultancy Services, Jonas Prising, Chairman and CEO of ManpowerGroup, and Heather Landy, Executive Editor at Quartz,  shared insights on how the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, the impact on skills, and how companies can find the best blend of people and technology.Here are 5 ways that the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in an acceleration of growing disruptive tech trends.Human ingenuity + technology will endureThe pace of how quickly organizations adapted to the pandemic shows the importance of human ingenuity. In many cases, organizations shifted entire workforces to remote work in the span of a week. This was accomplished through sheer resilience and ingenuity, showing that even sophisticated artificial intelligence can’t completely replace the human element. This trend of technology interacting with human capabilities will endure. Although a lot of organizations had the capability of making the shift before the pandemic hit, the crisis initiated the change and made it happen. Organizations going through transformations should remember that it's not about the technology alone, but more importantly about the culture and how you lead and what makes you really make that step change that transforms the organization.Flexible working models for allPrior to the pandemic remote working on a full-time basis was close to 4% to 5% of the workforce.  Today, it’s about 35- 37% of the workforce with a blending of both the offline and the online worlds likely to continue. Workforces have been able to apply human ingenuity, the ability to adapt very quickly, and combine it with technology that while it was always there, we weren't embracing it to the same degree as now---we continue to do the work and maintain the productivity, but in a completely different way. Although human beings are social creatures that like to congregate, what this pandemic has proven is that organizations can create situations enabled by technology where we can combine work life and personal life in new ways that benefits the individual so that the flexibility is available when workers wanted and when they need it and it also benefits organizations all at the same time.Continuous learning is a mustGrowing reliance on technology will accentuate the polarization of the workforce between those that have the skills and the tools to make this transition and those that don't. The need for companies  to invest in the tools and technologies to up-skill and re-skill their own workforce and create a learning culture within the organization have become even more essential.  Many employers are still very unaware of the need to re-skill and up-skill their workforces, critical to growing their talent pool and their human capital in terms of skills and capabilities to execute on business strategies. The gap in training may eventually create a huge turning point in favor of a more scalable re-skilling and up-skilling effort at not only a company level, but also a nationwide level as this situation continues to evolve at such a rapid pace.Strong cultures will winIn a recent Quartz survey, 37% of respondents said that they felt their workplace culture had improved since the start of the pandemic while 15% said they felt that it had deteriorated. Companies that were already at the top of their game culture wise, employees have a favorable impression. The split suggests that building and maintaining good company culture is important, especially when workers are spread out. Organizations that do the right things in terms of increasing the rate of communication, engaging teams, and prioritizing health and safety can emerge from the pandemic with an even stronger culture. As for leadership, organizations tend to move slower with transformational changes than their own frontline talent, so it’s important to create the leadership culture that can successfully navigate today’s complex, fast-changing environment.Trust will dictate transparencyIn the personal space, people have moved a lot in terms of being willing to share information even knowingly. Today’s environment is used to transparency for good or bad, but the trust factor, what institutions individuals trust with that information, is going to determine how workers feel about sharing it.  Many of the world's largest companies today are essentially the world's largest companies because individuals provide so much data for free, which is monetized by the companies. It’s how organizations manage the data that will determine how much individuals trust them with it. In the end, it will come down to individual preferences, and the trade-offs they are willing to make—which have to be built on a full understanding of what the data is being used for. Watch the Technology + People = Transformation webinar available on demand for additional insights.

​Employers need to be vigilant to keep their workforce connected and engaged.Businesses facing the COVID-19 crisis are confronting both immediate and long-term challenges for their workforce, including persistent pressures that erode morale over time. Here are ways that businesses can help improve morale when it is needed most in times of uncertainty and crisis. Create mentorship networks Social connection is especially important when workers are scattered across locations. Encourage your team to connect both for personal and professional reasons--a positive step toward supporting mental health. At the same time, it can also provide long-term opportunities, learning pathways and help people think beyond the crisis of the moment. A mentor can help younger employees identify areas for growth and development, and provide a low-stress opportunity to have career conversations. Don’t overlook reverse mentorships, whereby junior, often younger,  employees help more senior ones learn and adapt to new technology. At some point, times of uncertainty will shift back to stability, and at that point having existing mentor relationships to build off of will become even more valuable.  Encourage moments of levity In times of great crisis, leaders might feel it's hard or even inappropriate to be anything other than serious, but allowing for and encouraging moments of positivity and levity is what everyone needs from time to time, as long as it’s authentic and grounded in facts. It’s one of the most obvious factors of job satisfaction, but one of the hardest to get right, and key to creating an employee-centric work environment. This could be in the shape of virtual after work mixers, a business development day, or simply opening up communications channels and encouraging staff to share their news on your intranet or group chat. When staff gets along, they are far more likely to boost each others’ morale. Model and promote kindness Kindness has always been an important leadership trait, but it’s even more business critical in uncertain times that require empathy and understanding. In a survey of 51,836 leaders, a tiny percentage – just one in every 2,000 – were rated at the bottom quartile in terms of likability but in the top quartile in terms of overall leadership effectiveness. Kind and likable leaders will be transformative when their teams need this trait the most. Celebrate small victoriesIt’s easy to get wrapped up in routines and challenges. But even when businesses are at their most stressed – and especially then – it’s important to pause and notice the accomplishments of colleagues. As a bonus, when leaders pay attention to catching their team doing something right, they are less likely to negatively stew over their problems. The positivity will be reflected back on mood and productivity. Improving morale in a difficult environment takes work, but it’s worth it. Slowing down, paying attention to the needs of the team, and taking deliberate actions can help build momentum into a beneficial upward cycle. 

For many of us, a career is primarily a source of financial stability, and we need to get away occasionally to relax and enjoy a holiday with family, friends, or even alone.  ​But is there a way that companies can make time at work as enjoyable as being on holiday? Is it possible to create a workplace that is so engaging that people aren’t working from weekend to weekend and actually look forward to Monday morning? Sound impossible? Read on.  ​It is no secret that an engaged workforce contributes to higher financial returns. Studies have shown that companies with high employee engagement have seen a yearly positive change in operating income of over 15%, compared to companies with low employee engagement where the change is -30%.What is really interesting is that managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement scores! So, if you are a manager, here are some strategies and tactics on how to create an engaging, career-oriented workplace. If you aren’t a manager, consider sending this article to your boss!​Work as a rewardNothing compares to the feeling of success. When organizations directly link organizational achievements to individual efforts, employees will perceive work as a source of joy. This requires several things. You have to hire and cultivate passionate, dedicated people and you have to set clear goals and performance management metrics for evaluation. When employees are held accountable for results and rewarded for their achievement, engagement levels rise.​Humanize your approachManagers have to build genuine relationships with their staff, recognizing their dreams, fears, hopes, passions, and other emotions. “Put yourself in their shoes” is a cliché but employees love managers who demonstrate empathy and provide help and encouragement when needed. Motivation also rises when employees realize their work serves a larger purpose. However it is not enough to simply remind them of the vision statement.  Instead, share stories about real people whose lives were improved because of your company’s services or products; that will touch employees’ hearts and help them realize their work is needed.  ​Grow togetherWhile organizations rely on their workforce to grow, people also aspire to grow and develop their own careers. In fact, two thirds of individual performance drivers are tied to career conversations. To create a dedicated team of employees, organizations have to ensure that a proper career plan is developed for each individual. People are far more likely to be engaged at their work when they know how they can potentially grow within the company. Moreover, it was found that building on employees’ strengths is much more effective than focusing on fixing weaknesses. People who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job.​TeamingIn today’s business world, you can hardly find an activity which is done solely by one person. A huge portion of our daily work is about dealing with colleagues. In fact, interactions with colleagues are among the top factors that affect our job satisfaction. It is very important for organizations to establish and support formal, informal, digital and physical communication channels to facilitate cross-level and cross-departmental conversations. Having these conversations can foster common goals and align tactics. By emphasizing shared goals and transparent communications across multiple channels, managers can help employees become truly and happily engaged in today’s collaborative work environment.​CultureIt would be unfair to write this post without mentioning the importance of corporate culture. How can you expect a workforce to be focused and motivated if their environment is toxic, hostile, discouraging, or a combination of all? Creating a people-oriented culture that incorporates humanistic values such as respect, trust, diversity, and—yes—fun, is the foundation that enables all of the strategies listed above to flourish. Such a culture encourages innovation, guarantees safety of experimentation, and reflects corporate values in daily actions. Knowledge sharing is the norm and employees can always find a helping hand when needed. Creating such a culture is not easy, I know, but doing so is a critical step in getting your staff as enthusiastic about their careers as they are about their holidays.

If you want to generate some positive energy in your workforce, here are three easy things you can do that can make a difference right away:Use their names.Open every conversation—whether by email, phone or in person – with your employee’s name. Not only does this guarantee his/her attention, it also reminds you that you are talking to a living, breathing person. Too many emails start in mid-sentence, as though speaking at, not to or with, the other person. Even in person, our tendency is to focus on our thoughts about the topic at hand rather than the person with us. This simple form of recognition can make a tremendous difference. It ensures that you not only have the other person’s attention, but that you make a personal connection that results in improved collaboration, respect and trust.Inspect what you expect, and expect the best.One of the vice presidents at a global organization in Minneapolis says that she expects to see courage, collaboration and curiosity in her employees. She goes out looking for these attributes every day and says that not only does she find them, but she supports them with whatever resources she can. Choose characteristics that represent your own or your company’s highest values; then go treasure hunting. In addition to encouraging both employee competency and confidence, you will build a mental library of inspiring stories to use for team building, presentations, and developing talent (including yourself).Talk about what’s going right.Fires and problems always arise, but in most workplaces on most days, the vast majority of what’s happening is that intelligent, competent people are doing their jobs capably and to the best of their ability. At the end of each day or week, review what went well and how you can build on it. Solicit your employees’ insights on what made things go right, not wrong. Regularly value their expertise and honor their contributions to your company’s continued success.While systemic drivers of disengagement, like bureaucratic processes, antiquated systems or stressed capacity may be out of your control, these three simple ideas will help you build influence and impact where and when it’s needed most and can help you maximize the effectiveness of your team.

​Is your employee engagement program underperforming? If so, it may be built on surveying practices popularized some 15 years ago that are still followed today at many organizations, even though these methodologies are proven to have limited effectiveness over time.Myth #1 – CensusThis is the idea that every employee should get the exact same survey. A one-size-fits-all design is said to improve efficiency and organizational momentum, while avoiding employee confusion over why people got different sets of questions. There is no academic or real-world proof that this belief is valid and, in fact, just the opposite is true.  There are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples where a more robust design provided enhanced (in quality and quantity) insights. If you have 20,000 employees and I give you a questionnaire of 40 questions, I can, in turn, provide you with insights on only 40 items. A far better design is to craft a core set of 30 to 35 questions and then create an additional 10 to 15 modules of 3 to 5 questions each.  These “modules” can be distributed on a random, geographic, or functional or experiential basis. The average survey is still only 40 questions long – but you and your leaders have now gained insights into 100 different items across the organization.Myth #2 – ConsistencyOr, as I call it, laziness. According to the consistency myth, each new survey has to match the one that went before in order to measure progress and trends reliably. On the face of it, that seems logical. Trouble is, organizations are organic not static entities. Show me a company that hasn’t changed over the course of a year, or doesn’t have new issues to deal with.  You can’t. Your survey instrument needs to change by at least 10% each wave to stay relevant to your current direction, structure, and needs, and enable you to uncover information that will be useful strategically or tactically. Again, optimized design and proper use of modules can achieve this without impacting your core survey.  You need a platform with the speed, agility and flexibility to keep up with the reality of business in the 21st century.Myth #3 – ComparabilityEverybody wants to measure themselves against the next guy and that’s why it’s easy to fall for the myth of comparability. Comparability is founded on the questionable value of benchmarking. The vendor has accumulated a database of companies whose employees have answered the exact same questions (word for word) that your employees are being asked. You are promised that you’ll gain tremendous insights by seeing how your employees stack up against the “industry-wide norm.” However, the companies in such a database are only convenience-based samples and are not representative of an industry or geography. In fact, you will learn little of value because while industries tend to be consistent, organizations exhibit tremendous variability – variability in how the culture operates, what concepts mean, how they do what they do. Convenience-based comparisons based on standardized surveys won’t help you improve. Instead, customizing your questions to your company’s unique culture, situation and needs will help you uncover your organization’s unique strengths and weaknesses to get the insights that enable meaningful change.The three C myths have gained another C-word – credibility – over the years because of the sheer number of organizations that bought into them. But, if we’re honest, we know this outdated approach to employee engagement stalls out over time and provides limited realization of business-wide benefits. A better C-word to describe it would be – common.Instead, I’d like to see companies move towards more enlightened practices that align better to changing business needs … obsess over improvement rather than comparisons … demand as much accountability from senior leaders as from front-line managers … and drive toward targeted actions that leverage organizational strength and remove the barriers to engagement.How about your company? Are you satisfied with your surveying practices? Are there other “myths” when it comes to employee engagement?

​Managing sudden shifts in workforce needs is critical for employers, and the smartest approach is a multi-pronged effort.The economic impact of COVID-19 has sent shockwaves through the global workforce. Some industries have seemingly slowed to a crawl or stalled altogether while other sectors have never been busier and are scrambling to hire, train and redeploy workers. Moving resources where they’re needed most is critical.There is reason to be hopeful that industries can adapt and help workers find new footing. In recent years due to a talent shortage, businesses have been working to tap certain underrated talent communities, including retirees, veterans and previous freelancers, for new roles. History has shown that building new talent communities can be done in a deliberate and effective fashion––now the scale has grown and the timetable compressed. Shift recruiting strategies to virtual Facing social distancing restrictions, many human resources departments don’t have the ability to travel and have in-person career fairs to find and hire the most qualified workers. That’s when recruiters need to shift their strategies to virtual meetings and social media messaging. This has been done before and has been shown to be effective. For example, ManpowerGroup helps Australia’s military recruitment efforts extend to remote corners of the country, literally and virtually, like in social media—where the Defence Jobs Australia Facebook page has over 510K followers. Find untapped work resources During World War II, manufacturing realized they had a huge untapped labor market that represented 50% of the population––women. That’s still relevant today as businesses can benefit from hiring, promoting and leading with women and underrepresented populations in their industries. With a little bit of training and upskilling, these untapped sources can even develop into a highly-skilled workforce. For example, ManpowerGroup and Rockwell Automation teamed up to help veterans upskill and develop into new advanced manufacturing roles.The 12-week bootcamp in industrial manufacturing prepares them for a new career as an automation technician.  Think beyond full time Filling talent needs doesn’t always mean hiring for full-time roles, and a full workforce doesn’t have to consist of all traditional 9-5 workers––especially today. Nearly 9 in 10 workers are open to NextGen work – part-time, contingent, contract, freelance or temporary. Both workers and organizations can turn to flexible employment opportunities, especially as a way to quickly meet and redeploy where work is needed.  Without a doubt, businesses are facing historic challenges in redeploying workforces, with some companies pivoting, adding staff or waiting out the storm. Leaders can also take a measure of comfort in knowing they can take steps to meet demand where it is needed most right now.

​Business IssueA leading provider of IT products and services for the global marketplace experienced challenges recruiting highly specialized workers, including contract and temporary talent. New Zealand is an extremely competitive market with “hard-to-find candidates with the right skills” being a commonly cited challenge. The company, based in Japan, had a decentralized global network for talent acquisition. They relied on recruitment agencies in many regions, but the New Zealand market proved challenging in terms of planning external recruitment spend and margin control. SolutionWith a need for everything from sourcing and interviewing to hiring and onboarding, the company outsourced its entire recruitment process in New Zealand to ManpowerGroup. The team assumed full responsibility for the recruitment of all permanent, contract and temporary staff. Through this partnership, ManpowerGroup deployed an onsite recruiting team focused on contract and permanent hires.The ManpowerGroup team built awareness of available opportunities through strategic marketing campaigns, social media and a partnership between the onsite team and the company’s global marketing and HR functions. ResultsSince the inception of ManpowerGroup’s RPO solution, the client has achieved the following results:External agency spend was reduced by 38 percent.The RPO team fills an average 200 roles annually, of which approximately 125 are permanent.Average time-to-hire has fallen from 96 days to 37.5 days for all permanent hires.Cost-per-permanent-hire was reduced by 34 percent.Cost-per-hire for contract and temporary recruitment was reduced by 28 percent.Multimedia campaigns resulted in a 19 percent increase in jobseeker traffic.

​COVID-19 and the need for safe distancing have accelerated the adoption of remote work arrangements by companies and it is likely to remain an option even after the pandemic is over. With more employees working from home, it has become harder for managers to detect the voice and facial cues of someone who needs support. There can be obvious signs of burn-out, fatigue or lack of engagement that are not picked up due to the lack of face-to-face interactions. Thus, when working remotely, managers and businesses need to be extra vigilant in checking in on team members, and being available with caring for mental health. Recognize the warning signsStress can manifest itself in a number of ways, including decreased satisfaction and commitment, lower productivity, increased personal conflicts, and a desire to disengage and disconnect. Employees may feel like they can’t admit they are burned out because it feels like a personal shortcoming or shows a lack of commitment. To get around this issue, astute managers will pay attention to changes in employees’ attitudes which may indicate a deeper issue. In a remote environment, this may mean explicitly asking employees about their mental state.  This can include, for example, encouraging connections beyond work matters.Take something off their plateHigh performers are high performers for a reason – they take on a lot, and accomplish a lot. But eventually, even the most productive person can reach a breaking point. Recognize any early signs of stress, and relieve your busiest workers of certain roles or duties that can be reassigned. Everyone has a finite amount of hours in the day, and productivity without burnout requires strategic cutting back on the activities that consume energy.Show OptimismIf managers show optimism, their teams will too. As an article in Harvard Business Review shared, optimism is powerful and contagious. Attitude starts at the top and can set the tone for a difficult project or a remote team that needs positive encouragement. Leaders who demonstrate hopefulness and confidence in the future are better able to help their team members find meaning and purpose in work, especially under stressful conditions. Using humour can be a useful mechanism to relieve tension and foster greater commitment from teammates.

The leaders that emerge in today’s crisis will help innovate to solve the problems of tomorrow. In times of uncertainty and turmoil, leadership matters even more because the leader sets the tone for how an organization responds. Businesses need to be guided with a steady and reassuring hand, and yet pivot and be agile when the situation demands it. Grit, persistence and collectiveness are some of the traits of an innovative culture, and they are needed to face some of our biggest problems. As businesses face crisis on a global level, here are a few ways leaders can step up and help to foster an innovative culture when it’s needed most.  Learnability is a must  Learning quickly is more important than ever in times of massive change. Leaders need to have not only a high IQ and EQ, they also need a high Learnability Quotient, or LQ. Today’s problems are so complex and multi-faceted that they require learning as fluid situations unfold. Leaders need to be role models by seeking out different experiences, unusual perspectives and by being open to fresh ideas, ever as they foster a culture of learning in their organizations.   Experimentation and communication  When we are in uncharted territory, leaders must also have an understanding of the technical skills required to effectively transform their business in times of change, such as how to suddenly shift to remote work. They should surround themselves with experts and take time to stay informed of the latest trends, challenges and opportunities facing their organization and how to communicate those needs quickly throughout the workforce.    Ability to adapt for the next crisis   Crisis and transformation does not create a once and done situation. Change is dynamic, so agility and continuous adaptation is essential. Feedback is important to informing what steps leaders should take. Leaders need to innovate, experiment and learn fast and support their teams to do the same. Tomorrow’s environment is just beginning.   

​While it’s too early to tell when businesses will reopen or in-office work will resume, the way we picture the ending can tell us a lot about leadership. As we grapple with sobering unemployment numbers and hear of economic woes in nearly every industry, leaders face a balancing act of staying calm and reassuring, while also being realists about the state of their business.The question is what role optimism plays in maintaining the health and productivity of a team. Is the weekly jobs report half-empty or half-full? Positivity improves most aspects of job performance. It’s simply easier to stay productive when you feel a sense of purpose, growth or difference making. And it’s harder to maintain a rosy outlook when it feels like all is lost.Humans are hard-wired for optimism. It seems most people would prefer a distorted view of reality than one that delivers a cold truth. When Jim Carey’s character in Dumb and Dumber asks about his chances for dating Lauren Holly’s character, she gingerly replies that the odds are about one in a million. Her answer makes him ecstatic, exuberantly proclaiming, “so you’re telling me there’s a chance!”Many of us are choosing to see the economy through Jim Carey’s eyes. We believe there will be a “v-shaped” recovery. And there’s reason to believe the changes we’re experiencing during these times will have a lasting positive impact. We’ve wanted flexible working hours. We’ve been yearning to work from home. And now that we have these things, we’re unlikely to let them go.We’re basically biased toward optimism.  As Thai Sharo, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, noted, “when it comes to predicting what will happen to us tomorrow, next week, or fifty years from now, we overestimate the likelihood of positive events, and underestimate the likelihood of negative events.” When it comes to seeing how the pandemic will end, our nature compels us to believe that it will all be magnificent. And why not? Reevaluating our conditions of employment in light of rapid change should have a positive effect on society.The optimists among us have pointed out how pollution levels are way down.  The canals of Venice have turned clear. Animals are flourishing in cities. And we’re all suddenly interested in baking bread. When it comes to work, we’re becoming more empathetic, more flexible, and have a newfound appreciation for essential workers. These are all genuine reasons to be optimistic.Even as we’re grappling with insecurity and rapid change, great leaders can empower us with hope. According to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, ManpowerGroup’s Chief Talent Scientist, the best business leaders combine internal pessimism (in order to see deficiencies and foresee problems and threats), with optimism (exuding a sense of positivity and nurturing hope in others). To be sure, this feels intuitively better than the reverse: being internally overconfident while projecting external insecurities.The best leaders are the ones rallying their employees to see the best possible outcome. If they work in sports, they’re reminding their employees of how much the world will need them when they come back. If they work in the restaurant business, they’re pointing to the indelible cultural fabric that restaurants provide to our cities and towns. Privately, they’re grappling with the unknowns of whether there will be a baseball or football season, or whether the restaurant customers will be ready when they finally switch on the open sign.No one can see how this will end. But the best leaders enable their teams to see the happiest ending. Their external optimism is encouraging them to strive for that result. Even if the odds are just one in a million. They’re telling them they have a chance.To see more on this topic from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, see here.

​How can I make my workplace more inclusive? While culture starts at the top, you can help take steps to make your organization fair, equitable and committed to conscious inclusion.  A diverse workplace is a healthy workplace. It’s everyone’s responsibility – and to everyone’s benefit – to help develop a workplace that is welcoming and inclusive. Here are ways everyone can help move your company forward.   Understand conscious inclusion  Conscious inclusion is the desire, insight and capacity of people to make decisions, do business and to think and act with the conscious intent of practicing inclusion. To that end, ManpowerGroup has a comprehensive survey exploring gender, generational and geographical differences in attitudes towards women in leadership. The report presents seven practical steps to reach the tipping point where women will accelerate into leadership roles. While leaders are responsible for implementing ways to support inclusive leadership, everyone in the organization can educate themselves with the principles, discussions and benefits of conscious inclusion.   Be a coach and a mentor  If you’re making your way up the ladder, it’s important to look around to see who else you can assist. One way of supporting others is to provide coaching and mentoring. Where can you give back? It is important to identify which topics require mentoring support and which require coaching. Mentors typically have specific expertise in the area in which the mentee requires support. If you have an area where you can help others, you can help the organization thrive and become more inclusive.   Plan for the future  Over time, all organizations will become more diverse. By 2050, there will be no racial or ethnic majority in the United States—diversity will be the norm. Talent—in all its diversity—is the most potent competitive differentiator. If you want your organization to be competitive 20 years from now, start thinking about how you can contribute to its inclusive culture through mentorship programs, hiring beyond traditional talent pools and widening your network.   If you are thinking about how you can contribute to an inclusive workplace, you have already taken an important first step. From there, taking action and working with others can make the goal a reality. And when an organization can innovate with multiple perspective, everyone wins.  

Welcome to the era of the millennial workforce. While this generation has been rising up the ranks, a new report from LinkedIn shows that millennials are projected to fare the best in the job market over the coming years.   Three-quarters of 2,406 U.S. hiring managers surveyed said they plan to focus recruiting efforts on millennials over the next five years, according to the report. Millennials include those born approximately between the years of 1980s to 1997, which puts them prime into some of their most productive working years.   The millennial workforce contributions also make sense in the context of their place in the global market. Millennials and Gen Zers make up roughly half the world’s population as 10,000 baby boomers retire each day, reports USA Today.   So what do millennials want? According to ManpowerGroup research, both women and men want flexible, meaningful and challenging work. They understand they have a career ultramarathon ahead of them and want to achieve balance for the long run. For women, to pursue challenging work, it must come with flexibility. They continue to do most of the emotional labor and unpaid work at home – balancing work around commitments.  ​As employers face a continued global skills shortage, millennials share in the following advantages as well as their preferences when seeking to develop their careers.   Flexibility in work arrangements  Today’s way of working may not be how tomorrow’s generation operates. According to a ManpowerGroup survey, a growing number of people are opting for alternative models over full-time permanent roles. Part-time, contingent, contract, temporary, freelance, independent contractor, on-demand online are all on the rise. This affords businesses the choice, flexibility and alternative ways of working that build resilience for less predictable futures. Younger millennials, in particular, are seeking out gig work.   Positivity and optimism  According to ManpowerGroup’s Millennial Careers: 2020 Vision report, millennials are remarkably upbeat about their careers. Two-thirds are optimistic about their immediate job prospects. Sixty-two percent are confident that if they lost their main source of income tomorrow they could find equally good or better work within three months. The majority of millennials globally see a promising future and successful careers ahead. They are the can-do, will-do generation.   Growing into new roles  Research shows that rather than having one job for life, millennials are focused on continuous skills development. Millennial talent provides organizations with employee traits like learnability and curiosity rather than a narrow set of defined “job skills.” According to Lory Antonucci, M.Ed., GPHR, Executive Talent Management Consultant for ManpowerGroup, while roles may also be actual positions (and someone’s job), they are first and foremost a combination of needed and valued skills, knowledge and outputs. Roles are about adapting to change now and in the future.  ​As we enter a new decade, both employers and job seekers will have to adopt new ways of thinking about careers. With both experience and youth on their side, millennials are in a great position to capitalize and make the most of the 2020s –– on their own terms.

The impact of the Covid-19 health crisis and lock down continues to present unparalleled challenges, including rising unemployment in many markets.   ​To prepare for a safe return to work and to restart economies around the world, ManpowerGroup has formed a HR services industry alliance and with that will make a vital contribution to helping people return safely and enabling companies adapt to the new normal. ​In a new paper, “Safely Back to Work in the New Normal”, the industry - which is the world’s largest private sector employer - calls for employers, trade unions, and NGOs to collaborate and for governments to support, stimulate and endorse these efforts.  ​Download Report​​

​As the date draws closer to 1st June 2020, preparing for the gradual re-opening of businesses after the end of the circuit breaker is top of mind for many employers. Most organizations are now at a critical juncture as they navigate a phased shift from remote work to restart operations and support their people to return to the workplace, while working within the requirements of the new physical distancing economy. Although the re-opening of workplaces differs by industry, we know that it will take large-scale cooperation and alliances to prepare. That’s why ManpowerGroup has forged a key partnership between other HR industry leaders to help companies plan a safe return to work. This week we co-published an industry report, “A Practical Guide to a Safe Restart: Best Practices for Organizations”, and call upon employers, trade unions and NGOs to join us, too. Organizations of all types and sizes can use this report to identify and apply best practices that will get them up and running in a safe, healthy and productive way. Download Report ​​​

​Remote working has become the new normal in the wake of COVID-19. How can employers support their remote employees from afar during this period? ​Despite having been around for years, not many employers offer remote work as an option. Many employers were thus unprepared for the transition to telecommuting when governments around the world enforced stay-home policies to curb the spread of COVID-19 within the communities. ​​With most businesses closed, these are challenging times for both employers and employees. Day care centers for children and seniors are closed and living at home with both children and elderly family members to care for can be taxing for working individuals. . ​Here are ways employers can support employees working to care for themselves and their dependents during the COVID-19 outbreak: ​Provide flexibility ​With kids at home and other personal commitments demanding for attention, staying focused while working from home can be challenging for employees. Employers have to recognize that employees, regardless of their gender or marital status, can be parents or caregivers. During this period, employers can support employees by allowing them the flexibility to arrange their work around their other personal commitments. For example, letting employees arrange video meetings during their children’s nap times. ​​Communicate your expectations ​Many workers are telecommuting for the first time ever and may feel lost or uneasy with the new mode of work. Moreover, working at home has blurred the lines between work and personal life, and some employees may not know when to switch off. Leaders need to communicate their expectations to employees clearly and let them know how their performance will be measured during this period to help them understand what needs to be done. Also, when setting expectations for employees, be realistic and take into consideration various life factors that could affect employees’ productivity. For instance, the Internet speed might be slower at home as family members will be accessing it to do work or home-based learning. ​Focus on output rather than screen time Similar to presenteeism at work, employees’ screen time does not equate to productivity. Don’t insist that employees have to be at their screens from 9 to 6. Leverage on the flexibility that remote working gives and let employees work at timings when they are most productive. For instance, let an employee take a longer lunch break so that they can cook lunch for their family. The employee can make up for the additional time away by working at a time when they are better able to concentrate, such as when their dependents are asleep. Free from distractions, the employee may be able to produce better quality work or get more things done than usual, benefiting the employer. ​Check-in on employees regularly It is more important than ever to connect with employees personally now that opportunities to interact at the workplace are gone. Besides team meetings, employers can also make use of video conference technology to organize virtual team events where employees gather to mingle online. Employees’ children can also be invited to participate as well, which can help young children understand that their parents are working at home even though they are not at the office. ​Employers can also connect with their workers on a personal level by having one-on-one video calls with employees. During the call, check in on their conditions and if they have any concern that they would like to share. Lend them a listening ear when needed as some may have no outlets to turn to for stress relief. This is a difficult period for many and showing empathy and support can go a long way in helping employees stay engaged and motivated. ​ Create a support group for employees in the same situation Employers can create an online platform for employees with the same situation to seek advice and share resources. For example, employers can create a group chat in communication apps for working parents where employees can share resources for home based learning, activities that parents can do with their children or seek advice from each other for parenting issues. ​With remote working becoming the new norm for now, employers have to rethink the way they manage employees and keep them engaged and focused during this challenging time. View working from home as an opportunity to discover new (and even better) ways to engage employees rather than a disruption to business as usual. Show employees that you care about them and they will reciprocate in turn.

​Global Best Practices for Getting Back to Work: #SmartRestart #PeopleFirst  As countries around the world begin to relax lockdowns, lift restrictions and plan for a return to some kind of new normal, it’s refreshing to be looking ahead to restarting our economies and reopening our workplaces. Already there are lessons to be learned from early waves from South Korea and Singapore, and now the Nordics, Spain, Italy and others planning how to ease thousands of workers safely back to work in the coming weeks.  While we scrutinize the impact of this health crisis on GDP, digest the reams of data and look ahead to formulate scenarios to minimize damage to our economies and businesses, it’s imperative we remember this crisis is all about people – about how people behave, how people react and how they respond in times of crisis.  The question we should be asking is not how speedy, how soon or how stringent a lockdown or lifting of restrictions should be; more, how do we encourage individuals to act on the information available and change their behavior accordingly?  For example, while restaurants remain open in Sweden, business is down 80% - because adherence to public advice is incredibly high. The focus on not alarming the population yet creating the culture and conditions that encourage people to take the right steps is one of the most important determiners of how we will emerge from this crisis.  Employers have a significant role to play with 3.3bn people at work every day. When we talk about how to reopen the economy, understanding that customers and employees want to feel reassured requires data and insight to build trust and instill confidence for a strong, smart restart. As a global organization operating across more than 75 countries, here’s what we can learn from those countries first impacted, first emerging: Testing, tracing and technology is key. Just as tech bridged the way almost overnight to remote working, it will also help bridge society back to reopening. Data is strengthening our response to the pandemic and the fast deployment of contact-tracing and self-diagnosis apps are helping containment.  In Singapore, a contact-tracing app that requires users to opt-in and share data, is already proving that many prefer the confidence of knowing and minimizing health risks. It also helps ensuring individuals at risk follow the quarantine rules. Widespread availability of testing is critical too.  Spain may prove to be one of the hardest hit countries in Europe, yet this week a partial release of lockdown allowed 300 000 workers who couldn’t do their jobs remotely return safely to work thanks to distribution of over one million testing kits, and 10 million masks provided at subway stations. What we can also be confident of: people will not return to productive employment if it’s perceived as a risk to their health and to the health of their loved ones. Communication, Communication, Communication. Openness and honesty remains key, and it works both ways. The best employers are carrying out pulse surveys, asking people what works for them, what they expect from their employer and how they can do more to help. Others - like airlines – are asking customers what will make them feel comfortable to fly again. In South Korea the government launched a campaign to educate people that testing at a national scale was key to containment. They established a call center to keep people informed, introduced an app to assist self-diagnosis and tracing, and wearing masks in public was universally adopted. Clear communication focused on data and insight has undoubtedly saved lives and allowed people to work safely and confidently. We cannot simply flip the switch.We cannot go from ‘off’ to ‘on’ with the current situation. There will be no universal return date for all. Countries ahead of the curve are orchestrating a phased approach prioritizing health and containment. Employers must provide clear guidance so people understand the rationale around returning. Gatherings at work and outside will be controlled. Workers who can work remote will likely stay home. Shifts will be staggered to allow for physical distancing, deep cleaning will happen between shifts and protective materials will be available to workers. Temperature-taking and virus-testing will continue in order to contain the virus, reduce anxiety around inevitable, controlled flare-ups and heighten worker confidence.  Partnerships and collaboration counts.Reopening the economy will require large-scale cooperation and alliances -- public and private, international and domestic. That’s why we are proud to join together with HR Industry Leaders and call for employers, trade unions, and NGOs to join us, too. We know this collaborative model works. Countries around the world are beginning to minimize disruption with a collective will to defeat the virus. In South Korea the public and private sectors are coming together quickly and efficiently, seamlessly merging data to identify new cases and isolate their spread, resulting in raised awareness and socially responsible behavior.  Acknowledge we will return to the future, not the past. Now is the time to embrace a shared vision of tomorrow. The sudden transformation of how we do business is going to have a lasting effect. Some of these changes are closer to what workers wanted all along. For years we’ve heard the growing chorus of calls for more flexibility, for remote working. Trust is now being required of both sides - to balance well being, productivity and independence.  And for those who remained on the job – the essential workers who have served us in hospitals, grocery stores and delivery centers – their service must remain valued and rightly rewarded long after the shut-down ends. Work is something that largely defines the human experience. If we remain strong, resilient and well-positioned to support our colleagues, customers and communities we can all be safely back to work - however that manifests itself in the next normal. Employers must be a part of the solution and put the well being of their people at the heart of what they do, protect lives and livelihoods.  After all, we’re all in this together. ​This article is written by Jonas Prising, Chairman & CEO of ManpowerGroup. The original article was published on LinkedIn.

​The coronavirus outbreak has triggered an accelerated trial run for remote work at a previously unthinkable scale. What we learn in the next few months could help shape the future of work and drive innovation across a range of business functions and industries. However, while much of the focus has been on whether technology and infrastructure can handle the surge in demand, what’s often not considered are the communication nuances crucial to productivity.The digital era has ushered in a revolution in communication that’s equivalent to the one surrounding the invention of the printing press. It’s changing how we speak — often in bullet points. And it’s affecting what we hear, as the jumble of information coming at us can lead to frequent misunderstandings and confusion.​People who work on remote teams face these challenges consistently. According to recent estimates from Gallup and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 22% of Americans work from home, while nearly 50% are involved with remote or virtual team work. This continuing shift calls for a new range of behaviors and skills.​Why do remote teams demand new collaboration skills? What’s missing from our texts, emails, conference calls, and other digital communications? Body language. Even when we’re co-located, the tone of a text or the formality of an email is left wide open to interpretation, to the point that even our closest friends get confused. These misinterpretations create an anxiety that can become costly, affecting morale, engagement, productivity, and innovation.Remote communication can distort the normal pace of our conversations. The delay between our messages can often postpone or hide emotional reactions to our comments. How many times have you written an email and, immediately after hitting send, felt concerned about how it would land? Would your boss see your late-night email and consider it to be an intrusion on their private time? Would they tell you if it was? While we may have become used to these types of asynchronous interactions, they can still conflict with our normal rules for social interaction. Lacking an immediate response, we can become distracted, second-guess ourselves, or even grow frustrated with our teams.To perform at the highest levels, remote teams have to find new and better ways to operate First, consider that there are three kinds of distance in remote collaboration: physical (place and time), operational (team size, bandwidth and skill levels) and affinity (values, trust, and interdependency). The best way for managers to drive team performance is by focusing on reducing affinity distance. Try switching most remote communication to regular video calls, which are a much better vehicle for establishing rapport and creating empathy than either e-mails or voice calls. And design virtual team-building rituals that give people the opportunity to interact regularly and experience their collaboration skills in action.When remote teams communicate well and leverage their strengths, they can actually gain an advantage over co-located teams. Here are some best practices to master. Don’t conflate brief communications and clear communications: In our efforts to be efficient, we sometimes use fewer words to communicate. But such brevity can mean that the rest of the team wastes time trying to interpret your messages (and then misinterpret them anyway). Don’t assume that others understand your cues and shorthand. Spend the time to communicate with the intention of being ultra clear, no matter the medium. Indeed, you can never be too clear, but it is too easy to be less clear than you should.Don’t bombard your team with messages: Do you follow up on a task by email, text and phone? Do you tend to ask people if they got your previous message? Abusing those access points can be a form of digital dominance, a relentless and uncomfortable form of harassment. The medium you choose creates different demands on the time of the receiver. Using all of them for the same messageis ineffective (as well as annoying). Choose your digital volume wisely.Establish communication norms: Remote teams need to create new norms that establish clarity in communication. Companies such as Merck have created acronyms for their digital communications like “Four Hour Response (4HR)” and “No Need to Respond (NNTR)” that bring predictability and certainty to virtual conversations. Individual teams can also establish their own norms — e.g., to use or not use Teams, Slack, Google Docs, or WhatsApp groups. And norms can also exist on an individual level, such as people’s preferred response time, writing style and tone. For example, some individuals prefer short and quick messages, while others favor lengthy and detailed responses; people also differ in their preference and tolerance for humor and informality.While we often tend to regard human predictability as a defect, few qualities are more sought-after at work, especially in virtual collaborations. We are all unique, but our consistent behaviors help others predict what we do and, in turn, help them to understand us — we all benefit from being understood. You can make that easier for others by establishing a clear personal etiquette and sticking to it consistently.See the hidden opportunities in written communications: Being behind a screen can create new opportunities for certain team members, making space for those who might be less inclined to speak out in groups. Text-based communication places less importance on interpersonal skills and physical appearance, offering an effective way to share power and decision-making. Research shows that introverted individuals are less inhibited in online versus offline interactions. However, you need to watch out for virtual unconscious bias, where punctuation, grammar and word choice might reveal prejudiced attitudes towards certain groups.Create intentional space for celebration: Old school birthday cakes are still important for remote teams. Creating virtual spaces and rituals for celebrations and socializing can strengthen relationships and lay the foundation for future collaboration. Find ways to shorten the affinity distance. One company we worked with celebrated new talent by creating a personal emoji for each employee who had been there for six months. You can find your own unique way to create team spaces for social connection. How you do it is less important than whether you do. As more and more of our interactions happen digitally, we will continue to experience new forms of miscommunication and misunderstanding. The solution will not come from new technologies (although, no doubt, developers will keep trying to bridge that gap). Instead, the solution is in understanding the new rules of engagement; in building a communication skill set that reflects the demands of our digitally-driven age.

As COVID-19 continues to impact governments, businesses and communities around the world, it has never been truer that a resilient organization needs to plan for uncertainty and be built for change. In these emergency situations, business continuity planning must be outlined in a Business Contingency Plan - a process that identifies potential risks and scenarios and provides operational solutions. Establish Local Business Continuity Plan TeamThis can be a small team to start with that can be expanded with pre-identified, named people. Representatives from HR and the business should be included.Set clear objectives for the team and delegate areas of responsibility.This team should specifically be made aware of what they are expected to do in case any of our people are impacted.Cover Each Business Unit / Site Office When You Develop Your Contingency StrategiesIdentify critical aspects that may be affected.Develop interim mitigating/recovery guidelines and procedures for business unit operation for maintaining/resuming to normal situation if abnormality arise.Identify backup resource as and where required.Establish Communication ProtocolOutline a call tree system (emergency contacts list, staff telephone no., management contacts, government contacts etc.).Decide who should communicate what to whom and at what frequency (to staff, associates, clients and other stake holders).Keep in mind that all communication should be factual and do consider carefully how any message that you plan to communicate can be understood in the minds of the receiversWork With Building ManagementWhere relevant, clarify with the office Building Management Company the emergency procedures they have (e.g. emergency contact, additional clean down, taxi arrangement etc.).Discuss the expectation for special hygienic practices with the Building Management Company.People FirstRegular reminder to all staff about preventive/mitigating actions that everyone can take such as personal hygiene etc.Request Declaration for Health Status (both for the staff and their family members).Study work from home / remote office / operations feasibility and develop relevant procedures (e.g. information security). Update family emergency contacts.Encourage staff members to take regular temperature checks before going to the office and remain at home in case of fever.Consider not having all leadership being located in the same physical office in case of an outbreak. Develop plans in case virus is confirmed among staff where you should consider the following:When you make your plans, consider different scenarios of severity and plan for minimum or no interruption of operations due to the actions you’re taking.Ensure that your technology infrastructure aligns with you plans.If the staff member has been confirmed no return to the office is allowed, even if it relates to pick-ing up personal things, and the staff member should immediately be put into quarantine.Seek to map out who the staff member in question has interacted with during the last two weeks, prior to being confirmed with the virus. Depending on length and time of interaction, consider who else should be put in quarantine/work from home or remain in the office but being observed for developing symptoms in the coming weeks.Regular CommunicationsRegularly update internal and external audiences on the latest guidelines and business continuity plans.Periodically review, amend if needed and refine your plan as required for change in status of the virus spread or other reasons.​

​As the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, employers need to take extra precautions to ensure the safety of their employees, as well as providing transparent and regular updates related to the business and virus. Critical to this process is the role played by the Contingency Manager – an individual who can take steps to manage this evolving situation to keep employees safe, while ensuring continued delivery of business operations. Their role should include: Actively monitor development of the virus outbreak and work with management to disseminate messages to employees with clear instructions of when measures need to be activated.Educate employees on the latest available information. Brief them on the need for infection control measures and the preventive procedures that have been set in place. Educate employees on the different types of thermometers, such as oral and ear thermometer, and the proper way of using them.Collate updated contact information of all employees, i.e. home address/home telephone number/mobile phone number. Make sure all employees have contact numbers of Contingency Manager/Assistant Contingency Manager*. Employees are to contact the Contingency Manager if they are admitted to hospital with suspected infections for contact tracing purposes.Ensure that the company has appointed at least one designated Point of Contact (POC), who will be responsible for liaising with the local government agency during activation of contact tracing processes at the workplace.Check local government websites daily for updated advisories (e.g. travel advisories) and update employees accordingly.Ensure that employees who have travelled to affected areas are quarantined for a sufficient number of days, as advised. Check on employees’ health by phone or email during his/her absence from work.Appoint employee to keep quarantined employees informed of events in office.Ensure that the workplace has adequate supplies of tissue paper/hand towels, disinfectants and masks.Brief employees on personal hygiene measures:Wash hands regularly and thoroughly with soap and waterSneezing and coughing should be done onto tissue paper which should be carefully disposedAvoid sharing of cups, cutlery, etcBefore and after preparing foodAfter going to the toiletBefore and after eatingAfter coughing and sneezingAfter removing personal protective equipment like mask and disposable glovesAvoid physical contact such as shaking handsPut up notices in washrooms on proper hand washing techniquesEnsure common areas e.g. pantries, washrooms, meeting rooms are disinfected daily. Liaise with cleaning employees/contractors on thisDesignate a room/area in the office with nearby toilet facilities as the isolation room/area for the employee(s) with fever to use. Identify the isolation route (a route that is not commonly used by employees/visitors) that leads to an area where the employees with fever can be brought to the flu clinic/hospitalIdentify hospital/clinics that employees with fever can be brought toWhere advised by government agency, carry out symptom or temperature monitoring of employees. If temperature monitoring is instituted, ensure employees measure their temperature twice daily*Note: Depending on the employee strength of your company and the size of your company’s premises, an Assistant Contingency Manager should be appointed as a backup to cover the duties of the Contingency Manager. ​

​#1 Embrace New Ways of Working Leverage smart tools and tech which level the playing field for all workers – not just those who were equipped to work remote anyway. Enable collaboration but also ensure data security and privacy by explaining to workers that everyone is responsible for protecting data, while initiating practices and procedures that will strengthen data security within a business. Focus on output, not online presenteeism. Too much emphasis is placed on ‘being seen’ as a proxy for how committed an online worker is to an organization. Ensure clear output targets are set as the measure, rather than being hung-up on specific hours.Create structure for remote teams via scheduled meetings and informal checkins, boosting engagement as workers will feel included and clearly understand the value of their daily output. Find online expressions for your culture. Create a virtual water cooler (e.g. culturally dedicated Slack channels) where employees can run into each other and play out their personal and human sides. Think long-term. The reaction to COVID-19 will leave behind a legacy on which to build a way of working closer to the needs of people, proving that we are capable of overcoming physical barriers.Think of remote work as not a challenge to overcome but a business advantage to achieve. By not tying work to a physical location we democratize opportunity and open-up a world of new possibilities. #2 Prioritize Strong Leadership Remember prepared and responsible leadership is critical to react promptly and competently in a time of crisis Lead by example. Leaders should be visible in online tools and channels, communicating proactively and engaging in timely conversations where they are happening. Trust teams to be more autonomous but with processes, responsibilities and clearly defined roles to measure results and readjust behavior Consider how new ways of working and getting work done can contribute to industry transformation, redesigning business models and diversifying supplyRemember a good contingency plan is just the start to creating the basis necessary to seize the opportunities to rethink your company and its leadership in a context of great transformation imposed by the crisis.#3 Stay Focused On Reskilling And UpskillingHelp people learn, apply and adapt to new roles and new ways of workingGet ready for more training to move digital. Webinars and online tutorials “solve” the theme of co-presence. Quizzes and tests allow companies to verify learning and keep the engagement curve high.Create a culture that enables people to nurture their learnability and continually update their skills. The Skills Revolution we predicted is here and it’s happening now, ensuring people re-skill and upskill is how companies will stay competitive and people will be motivated and engaged, bringing value for the long-term.