The pandemic outbreak has changed the way we go about our lives. It has thrown a challenge in front of companies on recruiting people without physically meeting them to gauge their talent and abilities. The need of the hour is to develop the right way to hire the best person without actually meeting them, and the real challenge is, finding them. Another issue is to welcome new hires remotely to the company and derive a sense of loyalty from them without them actually experiencing the values and culture of the company. 

Employees have a changed priority since the pandemic – they want more flexibility and the ability to work permanently from the comfort of their homes. They believe they have the leverage, hence the Great Resignation that we saw in 2021 and beyond. Therefore, it is critical for a company to gain the confidence of employees to increase productivity, which has always been a concern with companies not opting for Work from Home before the pandemic.

Hiring can be done through hiring apps and platforms, which may help reduce tedious tasks, find the right person, save time and money, and store data for future openings. Companies have to look at recruitment and retention from a strategic perspective as they will not go far without trust in their employees. Trust can help retain workers, increase productivity and maintain low turnover rate. Also, companies must ensure that adequate infrastructure is in place for remote work. It can be mentioned that there are various benefits of remote work and certain steps and actions must be taken before beginning recruitment.

The next challenge is onboarding of new employees – their roles and responsibilities need to be clearly explained to them. This needs to be executed appropriately to give the new hires the feeling that they are a part of the company and inspire enthusiasm. And since the representative tasked with onboarding sets the expectations of the new joiners, a charismatic person may suit the profile to build good first impressions. For more information on different companies’ onboarding practices and research click here.

What started as a stop-gap arrangement to deal with the pandemic has now become the norm. However, employees seem to be preferring the hybrid work model. It is essential for a company to respect the needs of employees to generate more productivity and be ready to go forward with this model.

Are we ready to proceed with the hybrid workforce model? Will technology ensure similar or greater productivity in work? How will employee satisfaction be affected?