06Jun

Like so many other things this year, the annual office holiday party is in danger of becoming yet another COVID casualty.

But it doesn’t have to be. There are alternatives, says the Society for Human Resource Management.

“Managers are finding other ways to help their workers celebrate this year,” reports an article on the SHRM website. Virtual parties and gift exchanges, online team cooking experiences, wine tastings and corporate gift-giving, are some of the ways companies are showing their appreciation for making it through a challenging year.

“While nothing can entirely replace an in-person experience,” says Taylor Paone, senior manager of employee experience and culture at DailyPay, speaking to SHRM, “These initiatives give employees the chance to bond and have a little fun.”

According to the promotional products firm IPromo there’s been a surge in corporate holiday gift orders. Instead of spending on the traditional office party, companies are opting for more expensive gifts employees will use all year.

“Employees may appreciate a high-value gift that they will use often,” more so even than “a once-a-year party,” says iPromo CEO Leo Friedman.

Another option is to host a virtual holiday party. Preciate Social built a platform especially for parties and social events. Different from virtual meeting platforms like Zoom, Preciate Social enables multiple conversations to take place simultaneously. Participants can circulate among others attending the event, striking up conversations similar to how they would in person. There’s even the background murmur of other conversations. Musicians and other performers can provide entertainment.

You can also use Zoom to throw a virtual party. Since the pandemic, YouTube and Instagram have seen hundreds of virtual event how-tos uploaded. This one, explaining how to host a virtual happy hour or party, has been seen 64,000 times and has more than 100 complimentary comments.

Rouxbe, an online culinary school, provides recipes and video instructions for a virtual dinner-making event. Coordinators select a menu from the hundreds of recipes for a three-course meal. Companies can opt to mail the ingredients to each employee or send them a supermarket gift card. At party time, everyone gathers on Zoom to cook together and even enjoy a cocktail.

For companies that have been holding regular Zoom meetings and hosting virtual social events, a holiday gift employees might value even more is time off. Paone says, “Zoom fatigue and the solitude of working remotely is an ongoing challenge and we must encourage staff to step back from the computer and spend time doing activities that re-energize and recharge them.”

Photo by Pineapple Supply Co. on Unsplash

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Jun 6, 2023

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Jun 6, 2023

The ‘Radical Reinvention’ of Human Resources

Now is the time for a “radical reinvention of human resources,” declares a report from IBM’s Institute for Business Value.

Businesses are adapting to the rapidly and dramatically changing world, says the report, prefacing the findings and recommendations from a survey of more than 1,500 HR executives from a variety of industries.

How they engage with employees must also change. “Enterprises now must become inherently humanized, build engagement with remote employees, foster trust in uncertain times and cultivate a resilient, diverse workforce capable of facing whatever the future may hold.”

This, says the report, is HR 3.0.

HR thought leader Josh Bersin, who collaborated with IBM on the report, explains what that means in his introduction:

“Traditional HR 1.0 departments focus on compliance, administration, and highly efficient service delivery.

“HR 2.0 teams move toward integrated centers of excellence, and focus on training and empowering business partners to deliver solutions at the point of need.

“HR 3.0, which only 10 percent of companies have achieved, turns HR into an agile consulting organization, one that not only delivers efficient services, but also practices design thinking to push innovative solutions, cognitive tools, and transparency into the organization.”

HR 3.0 - blog.jpg

The report found substantial agreement among the surveyed executives on the key ingredients of HR 3.0, but uncertainty among them about how to evolve their operation. Providing that guidance is the essence of the report.

After studying multiple HR practices, Bersin and IBM identified 10 “Action Areas” drawn from what the most successful companies are doing. “Our analysis has identified ten priority Action Areas critical to the HR 3.0 model. The Action Areas span the breadth of the human resources function, in some cases wholly reinventing traditional people practices.”

These 10 are:

  1. Measure employee performance continuously and transparently
  2. Invest in the new role of leadership
  3. Build and apply capabilities in agile and design thinking
  4. Pay for performance — and skills — in a fair and transparent way
  5. Continuously build skills in the flow of work
  6. Design intentional experiences for employees
  7. Modernize your HR technology portfolio
  8. Apply data-driven insights
  9. Reorient and reskill your HR business partners
  10. Source talent strategically

Though few companies are on the path to 3.0, those that don’t begin to evolve will be left behind.

“Even as leading companies transform their HR model, it’s clear HR 3.0 is not a destination, just a way station. The world is changing too quickly to allow even a hint of complacency,” the report concludes.

“As we continue to face unprecedented opportunities to build better businesses and a much better world, an HR 4.0 will evolve as a model to help us keep doing just that.”

Image by David Mark

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