| | MAY 2025MANAGEHRMAGAZINE.COM9· Moreover, there is no certain forecast on the period of world sanitary crisis and recession; organisations have to increase their productivity now, by:· Attracting agile staff, able to make best decisions on spot.· Improving collaboration between employees, private companies and governmental organisations.· Investing in infrastructure and digitalisation, designing creative virtual environments to boost collaboration and ease decision-making.·HR as strategic business partnerConventional HR, with its rigid set of rules and procedures (other than the ones imposed by law) disables the employees to reach their maximum potential and make their own decisions. By acting on imposed strict behaviours for too long, humans tend to become obedient and develop severe resistance to change, as opposite of initiative and creative thinking.Social restrictions are not something that one wanted. At the same time, they created endless possibilities for business growth and HR role. Rather than waiting to go back to "normal", we now have a unique opportunity to design our own, improved "normal 2.0". In the long-run, organisations using remote staff, less supervised and empowered to establish their own pace for a suitable work-life balance, to voluntarily offer their skills for various projects and to take multiple roles will gain not only increased productivity and better quality of services, but also a high-performing team, dedicated and loyal to its employer.Strategic HR should:·Make sure to communicate and motivate your virtual teams as much and as often as possible, as well as to support first-line managers in this endeavour.·Offer consultancy at all managerial levels, encouraging managers to pay more attention to people's morale, to give praise (whenever case) and raise their spirit.·Keep open, transparent communication channels. The messages should be coherent and take into consideration all options. In case of difficult decisions, prior consultation with informal leaders could make the difference between acceptance and conflicts at work.·DigitalisationWhether at the office or remote, HR self-service applications proved efficient. They eliminate most of the repetitive processes and provide employees' free access to their personal and employment data (e.g., dedicated HR person preparing statements ­ replaced with a standard report easily accessed by the employees upon their needs). For the company, the return on investment results in: simplified procedures, risk-avoidance of manual errors, creativity of the employees who were otherwise doing redundant work and increased motivation.Final thoughtsThink of the transformation process as a feedback and feed forward, learning loop. You try something (anything is better than nothing), you assess the results (positive and negative), improve the positive aspects (maximise achievements) and try different ways to decrease the negative ones (minimise loses). Then you start over, the same ­ similar action, or a very new one. The only failure is giving up before you start! What will YOU try first? As per most business cases, there is no guaranteed success recipe. However, leading people in a VUCA world, and especially in the context presented above, should focus on three main directions
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