‘Prepare for the worst and hope for the best’ goes the unofficial motto of HR.
While dealing with COVID-19 isn’t something new, the current phase of Omicron will see the greatest impact yet on workforces across the country. Now that borders are open the virus is spreading quickly, and there is a greater potential for many staff to become unwell simultaneously. As HR practitioners, organisational leaders and business areas alike will rely on us to provide expertise and support, to effectively manage any labour shortage and maintain business continuity.
Commander Peter Chapman of the Royal Australian Navy currently manages 150 staff as the Director of Training Authority in Maritime Logistics and Health. But it is his experience in managing employee shortages that recently earned him the 2021 AHRI Dave Ulrich HR Practitioner Award.
‘When I went into the Logistics Workforce team in 2018, we were down by 25-30% of our workforce demand,’ Peter explained. ‘But we also wanted to grow it by another 10%. So the business challenge was to build a strong, engaged and capable workforce again,’ he said.
What Peter did to resolve the issue is interesting (we’ll get to that in a moment), but it’s what he didn’t do that first captured our attention. ‘We very purposefully didn’t put a name to our initiative because of the ongoing impact of change fatigue on staff. We wanted to undersell and overdeliver, because too often we found it had been the other way around.’
It worked. Peter and his team began by simply listening to current staff, potential staff, capability owners and other stakeholders. ‘We listened to some pretty painful truths,’ Peter admitted. From there they got down to business by making many small iterative changes that gradually built trust with the business and workforce. This included efforts to improve culture, like providing coaching programs, education opportunities, and fun social activities.
Taking a holistic view, Peter also recognised the need to integrate career planning aspects into his workforce planning. Because staff numbers were so low, the Navy couldn’t afford to lose any more people – and Peter understood this would be a valuable tool in retaining staff. So he worked to change organisational career planning policy. Previously when staff had asked for career pathways or certain conditions of service, policy would be used as a reason not to advance them. In a massive change to standard practice, Peter instead took their requests at face value and tried to give what was asked. ‘That required internal policy changes,’ Peter said. ‘But unless it requires legislation, you can generally get policy changed. Focus on whatever area is a roadblock and get through that red tape if you think it can benefit the individual and therefore capability,’ he suggested.
The results of Peter’s work speak for themselves, with a now fully-staffed workforce (from 80% to 100%), 50% reduction in turnover, and research showing rapid decrease in employee dissatisfaction triggers (17 critical issues down to 2).
Peter’s initial timeframe to resolve these issues was six years – he achieved it in under three. But with the prospective COVID-19 workforce shortage facing us right now, what can we do to prepare for and mitigate adverse impacts today?
The answer, according to Peter, is to be proactive and strategic. ‘The main thing – and this is probably also the hardest part of the job – is understanding the business, its risks and the potential impacts of that,’ Peter said. Once you have that, you can develop action plans that answer important questions like ‘What’s the minimum number of staff needed to keep the wheels turning? How long would it take to train someone? Can we train people pre-emptively, right now?’.
Other practical steps HR practitioners can take include:
- empowering managers to do staff cross-training or a swap program
- making connections to other business areas and in other geographical locations that might be able to supplement the workforce in an emergency
- streamlining processes for lateral and other transfers
- clarifying processes and requirements for tapping into the surge reserve.
But, Peter emphasised, we should always continue to have a long-term mindset. ‘Don’t take shortcuts. Continue to empathise, listen, have two-way communication, and advocate for the health and wellbeing of staff.’
Of course, the safety and wellbeing of staff is always a priority for HR. But Peter said this should be extended to include employees’ families as well. ‘Within Defence we always consider this; we’re always factoring in employees’ families whenever we ask them to relocate or deploy. There’s a real opportunity for the civilian sector to learn from Defence in asking about family. Is their family safe and secure? In what ways can the employer help? Because if the employer has care for the whole family’s needs, the good will and buy-in for staff will increase. If the family is safe, secure, and happy, then employees usually are too.’
Looking ahead we’ll continue to hope staff stay safe and that there are no drastic employee shortages. Yet if it does happen, it’s worth remembering: while the driving force behind implementing changes like these may be unwelcome, the changes themselves and the outcomes that result can be truly exceptional.