Tips for Hiring and Managing Teams Remotely During COVID-19

Posted by wintegrity on May 24th, 2021

Hiring Employees during the COVID-19 Pandemic

While the pandemic has forced the world to work from home, hiring managers for corporates have begun to learn the art of hiring and managing resources remotely. Remote work presents a completely new set of challenges that can, to a large extent, be mitigated by leveraging technology. But we must also put in place new processes and guidelines to ensure that we are successful in hiring the right candidates. Let us look at some emerging trends in remote hiring:

• Companies have more open positions to fill because of the pandemic-related disruptions.
• Time-to-fill and time-to-hire are now significantly lesser as hiring managers have largely streamlined sourcing processes using technology.
• Corporates are more open and willing to let remote work continue post the pandemic as well, thereby increasing the size of available candidate pool and outsourcing opportunities that will result in cost savings while ensuring we get the best people working on our projects.

Top Reasons to Hire New Employees

As companies adapt to the new normal of working remotely, staffing needs have undergone significant changes. In response to these changes, hiring managers are:

• More open to hire gig-workers to provide temporary services.
• Augmenting staff based on specialist skills required for projects.
• Combining positions - merging two or more roles and hiring one higher-skilled professional.
• Providing early retirement packages, which are being accepted.
• Proactively hiring talent to take advantage of market uncertainty.

Managing Teams during the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has taken physical as well as psychological toll on almost all of us and productivity at workplaces is a casualty when people are distracted. HR and Business Leaders recognize the stress employees are under and have modified policies with empathy at the core of managing teams.

At a time like this, new employees working from home often feel the isolation more as they have never physically set foot inside the company they have joined and have not met their team in person yet. Even before the joining date of new hires, here are things that Hiring Managers are doing to ensure that the recruits are assimilated into the company culture as seamlessly as possible:

• Ensure new employees have received and are set-up with the hardware, software, and office supplies required. 
• Provide access and share content on how to use collaboration tools, online meeting solutions, and file-sharing applications.
• Brief new employees about organization values, culture, and processes.
• Reporting Managers set specific goals, and expectations for the new employees.
• Set regular meetings with team members, and other key employees. 
• Plan frequent calls to touch-base and sort out HR-related issues.  
• Assign a mentor to new employees.

As a general practice, to improve collaboration between employees, HR have started contributing by:

1. Implementing regular cadence of meetings both inter and intra-teams.
2. Reducing performance appraisal cycle from a year to a quarter or making it monthly so that employees receive regular feedback.
3. Moving to a cloud-based HR Management System that makes it easy for all employees to check-in and check-out, apply for leaves, request for resources, raise tickets, and participate in surveys.
4. Sponsoring health check-ups, providing guidance, and arranging for professional counselling.

In conclusion, this pandemic has brought to fore our dependence on each other and made us value collaboration more than individual achievements.

Get the Right Team for Your Company Needs

Hiring new team members is one of your most significant duties as a manager. Making an effective hire takes a lot of time or energy, especially when you go it single-handedly. That is the reason many recruiting managers will go to a specialized staffing firm for help. At Wintegrity, we have years of experience placing candidates with clients in all industries including IT, Manufacturing, Industrial Automation, Energy, Financial Services, and Healthcare.