HR Return To Work Considerations With Sumit Neogi

Welcome to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the leading employee benefits and engagement platform.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, companies across the world resorted to the remote working structure. Slowly and steadily, they are now looking to resume by reopening the offices. While they do that, it's extremely important to have an HR checklist or considerations to tackle this difficult phase. These considerations will vary from company to company, but there is definitely a generalized version of some issues that company HRs can watch out for before resuming their job on-site.

Hello everyone, this is Susmita from Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. And to talk about HR return-to-work considerations, today I have with me Mr. Sumit Neogi. Sumit is an HR professional with 17-plus years of experience in the domain and has worked with organizations such as Cipla, Aon, Reliance Industries, and Bharat Petroleum. Currently, he is the HR Director for South Asia and the Middle East geography at the Lubrizol Corporation. Sumit is also among the top 50 HR Influencers recognized by SHRM India. Welcome, Sumit.

Sumit Neogi: Thank you.

Susmita Sarma: Yeah, so before we start with your topic today, let us know a little more about you and your journey in the corporate world.

Sumit Neogi: Oh, absolutely. Thanks, and very pleased to be here discussing something which is very relevant, something which is at the top of mind, not only for HR leaders but for all business leaders. There is chaos at this point in time, no second thoughts about it.

So, a bit about me. I am an accidental human resource professional. I started my journey long back as a mechanical engineer, wanting to do really well in that area. Circumstances took me to work with an oil sector firm, Bharat Petroleum, in sales and retail. Roughly four years in, I actually developed a lot of interest in tracking the performance of individuals, and that's where I first took to human resources.

I made the choice to do my MBA from XLRI, then joined a consulting firm, where I got exposure to working across multiple geographies and multiple sectors. After that, I joined Reliance Industries Limited, where I got exposure to corporate HR and to managing HR and IR at a plant. I then worked with Cipla, a large pharmaceutical firm, as head of HR for the corporate functions, and for close to a year I was also leading a couple of verticals as the HR head there. That continued at Reliance Industries too, and then for the last seven or eight months I've been with Lubrizol, leading human resources for two large verticals they have, Lubrizol Additives and Advanced Materials, for South Asia and the Middle East.

My focus has always been to learn and grow. I've also completed a professional certification in counseling, which has helped me grow further as a professional. I believe that a state of readiness is important for one to grow. Taking up a role as an independent HR head has come with its own share of challenges. We've had a lot of transformation focus, but the COVID situation has made things fairly ambitious. What do you have to do.

Susmita Sarma: Great, Sumit. So coming to the topic, HR return-to-work considerations. The role of HR in the return-to-work phase is to advocate for health and safety while deciding when and who returns, and how the experience will be. According to you, how would organizations look after we return to work? I just mentioned it briefly.

Sumit Neogi: So it would be sectoral in nature. You cannot change the way manufacturing setups operate, but then there are certain sectors where organizations are now realizing that they don't necessarily need people to be in the office; they can operate from home. So some sectors will see a tremendous change in their business operating model. That's what I can say.

Susmita Sarma: So with special consideration to employee health, what procedures or safety measures should HR put in place for employee health at work?

Sumit Neogi: Right. So a study will tell you that employee wellness was already a large focus for most organizations in India, even pre-COVID. Post-COVID, it's going to be an even bigger focus. You'll see a larger set of people wanting to stay healthy. If you've heard of it, there's a lot of conversation these days about how the people getting infected, and those recovering, are actually the set of people whose health parameters are already right. So those with existing health concerns need to focus on getting themselves fit.

What organizations are going to do, first, is secure the workplace. There will be a very clear focus on social distancing, use of masks, use of sanitizer, apart from the temperature checks that need to happen; that's where the medical needs come in. When a person walks in and walks out, you need to measure their temperature and see how it varies. That's one part. The second is the annual health checkup of employees, because I'm absolutely sure that next year your insurance and medical costs are going to shoot through the roof. You need to ensure your employees are fine, so that's the second part. The third is focus on mental health and mental wellbeing, and that's where I believe organizations and HR can do really well if they can help employees reach out to counsellors during these tough times. That's what I'd suggest.

Susmita Sarma: Okay. So, as you've already mentioned social distancing, that should be addressed in offices, working spaces, meeting rooms, and then in kitchens and washrooms. Don't you think it will be a challenge for managers to follow, and to get others to follow, these measures?

Sumit Neogi: Absolutely, absolutely, and we've witnessed this. We are social animals, and we can't stay away from having a conversation. But in an organization, these things are very important. If you don't implement these practices, people will get infected, and this disease isn't a nice one. We don't have a vaccine, we don't have a medicine for it at this point in time.

These have to become a habit. What companies have done, especially in common areas that are still operating, is demarcate spaces. For example, in terms of the canteen, what we've done is make it operate in a staggered manner. Timing used to be 12 to 1; now it operates from 11:30 to 1, and teams are given specific slots to come at a particular time. Similarly, for tea and coffee, we've set up tea and coffee stations in respective work areas so people don't need to gather, and there's no shared service point for everyone. With this disease, you need to control people getting together, and that's the key to being successful.

Susmita Sarma: So at the same time, employees too will be responsible for complying with the new workplace rules and regulations. Will that require some new, formal employee guidelines to make the process more seamless?

Sumit Neogi: Absolutely. Companies will do better if they set up clear guidelines and train their employees, and it's not about a one-time training; people need to be retrained continuously. A practice we've adopted here is that, with the help of the factory medical officer, who is a physician, we run communication sessions every ten days. Two things happen there: first, employees get first-hand information from a medical practitioner about the situation, and second, we're able to share a lot of information about what practices they should follow, not just at the workplace but at home as well, things like basic questions on how to wash vegetables, how to handle grocery packaging, and so on.

Third, organizations need to hold toolbox talks, which are basically fifteen-minute conversations covering this. Apart from that, visual displays and digital training are also going to play an important role. One thing I must mention is that the leaders of the organization have to practice what they preach. People do watch that, and you need to call out behavior that's incorrect.

Susmita Sarma: So Sumit, what about the compensation and remuneration structure? We all know the pandemic has already affected the pay packages of many, for obvious reasons. So once we start working from the office again, how should these pay cuts be dealt with?

Sumit Neogi: Look, here's what will happen. Let's say an organization is looking to control costs; it will be able to save on two fronts. One, if they let employees work from home, their operational costs go down. Two, a lot of travel and entertainment expenses, which are actually a large part of compensation, go down too. If you go to the office, you have parties, outings, food, and so on; that spending has gone down for a lot of components. The fact is, supply chain costs have gone up, but administration costs have gone down. Organizations will do well if they share that cost saving with employees.

At the end of the day, any organization that believes it can sustain itself for a long period by keeping employees unhappy is living in a fool's paradise. India will recover; depending on the sector, manufacturing and FMCG may recover within a month, while travel and leisure may take another eight to nine months. But India will recover, and people will be back in jobs before too long, I'm hopeful of that.

So if companies are able to save costs, they should share some of it. That's my view. Second, if we're moving to a new normal where 20 to 30% of our workforce, in the IT sector maybe up to 75%, will now operate from home, organizations should encourage and provide financial support for employees to set up home offices. That matters because one of the challenges of a home office is ergonomics; you won't have the same quality of chair at home that you'd use in the office. That's something organizations need to focus on.

Susmita Sarma: I came across this quote that it isn't enough just to establish safety measures; employees must actually feel safe. How can HR make sure employees feel confident, safe, and secure about coming back?

Sumit Neogi: Communication. Communicate. It's only a matter of time before someone gets infected, and during these times there's tremendous fear, almost a kind of psychosis. An employee isn't only worried about their income or its continuity; they're also worried about their health, the health of their children, their parents, their loved ones. What if they get infected? No one knows for sure whether they'll get a hospital bed or the treatment they need.

What HR and the organization can do well is give employees the comfort that, if someone gets infected, they'll be part of a proper contact-tracing process. Have very clear guidelines on what the standard operating procedure is if an employee or their family gets infected, and equally clear guidelines for what happens if someone is exposed to a person who has COVID-19. Provide employees real support in getting proper hospital access and medical care. Organizations that come out of this well, in terms of employee trust, will be the ones that cared for their people during this period.

If companies don't already have an employee assistance program or an employee wellness program, they should set one up. Let people talk to counsellors if they're going through a difficult time, and let that support extend to family members too, so family members can talk to counsellors as well. There's a Maharashtra government report showing that calls to a counseling helpline went up by 60%, and most of the callers were between the ages of 25 and 45, which is good enough data for HR to act on.

Susmita Sarma: Once we decide to return, do you think it should be done in a phased manner, or should all employees come back at the same time?

Sumit Neogi: The first question is, who is returning at this point in time? We don't have visibility into how this will play out; Bangalore reopened and is now going back into a shutdown situation. It can't be rolled back on a single given day, it'll be staggered. The way we closed down was staggered too, first we prepared groups so people came in in batches, and then we moved to work from home. The restart will be similar.

The company, HR specifically, first needs to do an analysis of whether everyone actually needs to come back to the office, or whether certain people can be kept on a work-from-home basis. It's not that they can't come to the office, but organizations can operate the office more like a co-sharing space rather than assigning fixed workstations. I know people attach a lot of value to their own desks, but I personally feel the era of dedicated workstations for everyone is changing. If we have the technology, we can operate from wherever we need to. Once people start coming back, the functions that are absolutely critical to be on-site will come back first, followed by a staggered return for the rest. I doubt we'll go back to full capacity in the near future; that's not going to happen.

Susmita Sarma: So even if an employee refuses to come to work, or return to work, because of concerns about COVID-19, that can't be grounds for disciplinary action, right?

Sumit Neogi: At least not right now, no. Not now. Until there's a safe environment in place, I don't think one should go down that path. These are the times where HR needs to counsel the employee and counsel the line manager to have an appropriate conversation and address the situation as much as possible. When we started, close to four months back, there was fear; no one knew what had hit us. Now we know we have to live with this virus if we want to survive, so it's really about having a basic survival instinct and taking good care of ourselves.

And the hiring process is also going to change after we return to work. I'm sure the recruitment done over the last three months, whoever's done it, would have been entirely digital; you wouldn't have met the person face to face. I know for a fact there were people who used to feel more comfortable meeting candidates before making a decision, but organizations have now hired even managing directors without meeting them in person. So hiring has gone completely digital, and I think it's going to continue that way; I don't see us reverting to the old process.

Susmita Sarma: And what if an employee becomes ill with COVID-19, or is placed under a quarantine order, after we reopen?

Sumit Neogi: Right, so there's a protocol established by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It clearly states that if someone the employee has met in the last 48 hours tests positive, they need to self-quarantine. You need to inform the local authority, which in most cases is the municipal corporation or district authority, about who these contacts are. As an organization, you also need to carry out disinfection of the places the employee has visited; that's the action HR should take on the organization's side. Since the guidance keeps changing, it's better for people to check the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's website for the latest updates rather than rely on what I say today.

For the employee who tests positive, what happens next depends on the local authority's assessment; today, hospitals and COVID-19 centers are managed by the municipal authority, and they decide whether a person can self-isolate or self-quarantine at home or needs to go to a hospital. Provide as much support as you can. Communicate to the rest of the team, while protecting the individual's personal information, that someone in a particular function has tested positive, that the people they were in contact with have been asked to self-quarantine and will be tested, and so on. Give people the right information.

Susmita Sarma: Right. So it's essential to recognize that workforces will need time to adapt to these new ways of working, post-pandemic. Is there anything else that will be required in the new workplace to effectively manage the return-to-workplace experience, or any suggestions you'd give to HR?

Sumit Neogi: Absolutely. Coming from my own experience over the last four months, this situation has given HR the opportunity to play a real relationship-building role. It's really about bringing the leadership team together, getting them to think things through, and getting them to make the right decisions together; that goes a long way. Organizations need to be human, the approach needs to be human, and that's the role an HR leader has to play during this phase. And as we move back to the office, or back to something like life as usual, HR will have to keep playing that role, walking a fine line of balance.

Susmita Sarma: Well, that was a great and really insightful conversation with you, Sumit. I hope to meet you again soon. Thanks a lot for joining me.

Sumit Neogi: Thank you, Susmita. Pleasure.