Guide for HR managers dealing with changing policies and demands due to COVID-19 pandemic

This guide has been created for HR managers dealing with changing policies and demands arising from the unprecedented scenario created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this guide is to provide pragmatic action items to ensure business owners, HR admins, and employees make a smooth transition to the new “normal” without losing productivity.

Strengthen Internal Communications

Send Announcements to Keep Everyone in the Loop

As the COVID-19 situation evolves with each day, you will find yourself making announcements to update your employees with your organization’s plans and policies. It is often more appropriate to make announcements for a group rather than sending out an email. ClayHR makes it simple for you to create corporate-wide, location-wide, and department-wide announcements. To create an impact, you may also supplement your announcements with training modules and videos.

Staying Compliant

Sick Leaves

Falling sick is never fun, but getting pulled down by the novel coronavirus has its own implications. The federal government has requested employers to provide paid sick leave benefits to all employees calling-in sick because of COVID-19. ClayHR allows you to track sick leaves related to the coronavirus – you can create a new leave type and policy. This helps your organization stay compliant with the new policy change that the federal government has introduced.

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Understand what your employees need with the changing times

Create custom fields that are relevant for your situation

ClayHR allows you to readily create custom fields that provide you the information and details that are relevant to you.
How do you tell that Dave prefers to be called on his cell phone in case any urgent issue arises and on the other hand, James prefers his home phone and that he is going to log off at 6 pm?
Do not sweat, you can create custom fields and store all the information so that it is available to each and everyone in the organization.

To do this, go to Setup Menu > Organization Setup > Custom Fields. Make sure to select “User” as the Custom Field Location, and select the appropriate Write/Read permissions in the Custom Field Advanced Settings. Learn more about creating custom fields here.

Invite your team members to complete those fields

Now that you have created the custom fields, you want your employees to use and complete those fields. To invite team members, go to User Record > Edit User Record.

Create a Custom Report

With the changing needs of your organization due to COVID-19, you can document and create custom reports for the information that is most relevant to you.
Though this report can be made available to everyone in the analytics section, our HR managers are also sharing this information/report in the email.
To create a custom report, go to Analytics > Reports > Report Designer > Create New Report > Report Content.

Manage Projects and Employees Who Are Working Remotely

Time Tracking

In this COVID-19 situation, most of your employees will be working from home. You will need a way to track your employees’ remote working hours, especially if you have hourly-wage employees. The best way to do this is by using a mobile-friendly time and check-in and check-out applications, like our ClayHR Time & Scheduling application. The app has mobile time and scheduling tools which allows users to clock-in and clock-out directly from their mobile phone, providing real-time accountability to managers. The app automatically syncs with payroll which saves you from spending time inputting logged hours into a local spreadsheet.

Project Management

ClayHR has inbuilt integrations with Jira, which makes project management easier, especially with remote workforces. Did you know that you can also onboard the contractors into ClayHR, not just the employees?

Schedule Regular Check-ins

Check-ins make remote work much easier and more effective. Having a 1-1 session with the managers may ease some of the apprehension or anxieties that may have arisen because of this unpredictable situation. While phones and email work for some activities, virtual conference rooms such as Zoom are great for teams and collaboration. Consider investing in messaging apps such as Slack, which can reduce communication gaps that may arise from having employees work remotely. ClayHR is integrated with Slack, which allows all of your employees to stay connected on a singular messaging app.

Use This Time to Train Your Employees

Upskilling your staff

If your business is experiencing a relatively slow time because of these changes, make the best use of this time but upskilling or training your staff. With the ClayHR learning and training module, you can easily create, assign, and track training for your employees. This may also be a good time to introduce and train team managers and leaders on the concept for 360-degree views and establish new protocols and policies.

The Bottom Line

COVID-19 situation is unprecedented, and all of us are simply trying to deal with it to the best of our abilities. While it presents numerous challenges, it also presents an opportunity to refocus our efforts to take a more strategic view of employee relations. This forced downtime can be used to learn and relearn processes and procedures and acquire new skills.