As we move deeper into the throes of the global Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, technology is playing a more prominent role in all our lives than ever before. A sudden and global shift to remote working is presenting a number of challenges. How can you communicate effectively with your team? How can you maintain morale amongst isolated colleagues and how do we tackle the problems of misconduct with a more disparate workforce?
In this article, we will address the challenges we are all facing and outline some simple and clear steps businesses can take to protect their teams and safeguard their workplace cultures.
The Darker Side Of The Digital-First Society
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, we see many of the positive aspects of society come to the fore. But unfortunately, there has also been a rise in harassment, bullying, and discrimination in the workplace. Initially, this was seen to be race-related – targeting people of Asian heritage but has since spread to include people who expressed symptoms of the virus. Trade unions have warned of an increase in discrimination at work and advice from ACAS states: “Employers must not treat an employee differently because of their race or ethnicity.”
With the sudden shift to a work-from-home model for many knowledge workers, the immediate concern is that the vector for discrimination will shift in parallel. Just because people don’t talk face to face doesn’t mean discrimination isn’t happening. Studies carried out prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 revealed that 40% of workplace misconduct complaints included incidents that took place via workplace collaboration tools such as in-house messaging services. In addition, some 30% of UK respondents to a survey by Totaljobs in 2018 said they had been victims of workplace discrimination on official corporate messaging platforms, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat. In the US, a 2019 survey by Monster.com revealed that 39% of respondents had received aggressive messages from colleagues on similar tools.
This, matched with a rise in discrimination cases as a direct result of the Coronavirus outbreak begs the question of what employers can do to bridge the gap between themselves and employees whilst working digitally?
Legacy reporting tools like misconduct and ethics ‘hotlines’ have been proven to be outdated and ineffective, and fears remain among workers that they will be treated differently as a result of utilising tools like them. Moreover, there are some very real concerns that organisations don’t take such mechanisms seriously. Lloyds of London, for example was exposed in December last year for its complaint hotlines being inoperative for 16 months due to unpaid bills.
This supports the general acknowledgment that in the workplace, up to 75% of cases go unreported, and this number is likely to increase if employers fail to successfully open up routes for individuals to report their concerns.
Hotlines have remained unchanged for decades. Now, the market opportunity for a new, creative, problem-solving type of HR technology is clear.
Trust Tech
The current climate provides a unique opportunity for a new wave of HR technology to emerge – one focused on building trusted lines of communication between HR and employees. Whether or not the pandemic marks an epochal shift in the way we run business, the need for safeguards to protect the mental and physical health of the masses has never been more significant.
What Can Employers Do?
With a legal obligation to protect their workers, companies can take simple steps to foster greater trust and ensure their teams feel supported:
- Remind employees of your organisation’s discrimination and harassment policies and ensure that these are adapted for a remote-first culture (i.e. how they apply to discrimination across messaging apps) and are easily available.
- Encourage a speak up culture: stigmatising issues (such as with race-related discrimination due to COVID-19) can be challenging for employees to report. Without effective reporting tools in place, many will suffer in silence.
- Take reasonable steps to prevent discrimination and harassment : Typically, employers will only avoid liability in the event of a discrimination case if they can show they have taken ‘all reasonable steps’ to protect employees, such as implementing an effective and secure solution for reporting sensitive issues that take place in person or digitally.
- HR teams are stretched but technology can help. Investing in the right trust technology solutions can help businesses establish a trusted line of communication with employees and update people much more effectively on company policies relating to COVID-19. The right applications also allow people to report COVID-19 related discrimination quickly and easily.
Done well, technology can work in partnership with businesses to help them protect their employees and safeguard the workplace cultures they have worked so hard to put in place.
Written by Neta Meidav, CEO & Co-Founder, Vault Platform