The Association Blog

At last year’s Fall Conference for Animal Welfare, Nicole Belyna of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) shared current research pointing toward a two-tiered workforce—employees whose positions are suited to remote work, and those who must be onsite to do their jobs. You can read the top takeaways from her session here.

These tips are relevant now more than ever, as many shelters work their way back to regular hours and operations while dealing with shifting COVID safety guidelines from local, state, and federal agencies. What’s becoming clear: Many employees who were working remotely last year are still doing so, and need remote training tools and technology upgrades to continue and progress.

Belyna shared the following two resources full of stats and research you can use to help advocate for continued remote work and flex-time. They will also come in handy for those making a case for investing in technology, re-skilling, and cross-training for your teams. Now that we know we’re in it for the long haul, it’s time to invest.

How HR Leaders Are Leveraging the Lessons of Disruption

This 16-page .pdf outlines research conducted in 10 countries by SHRM and Oxford Economics to understand emerging realities facing employers—and next steps for leaders.

Among the high-level findings you can use to validate efforts to retain and recruit talent by offering training, tools, and flex/remote hours:

• Employers expect flexible work policies to become much more important to attracting and retaining talent than they were before COVID-19.

• Remote collaboration tools are the top area of technology investment among our survey respondents, ahead of analytics, even as many remote workers remain underequipped

Navigating COVID-19: Reopening and Rebuilding Small Businesses

This 32-page .pdf features SHRM’s study of 210 small businesses, and what they’re currently focusing their resources on. The overall highlights are helpful for seeing where your organization is. For example, 7 of 10 small businesses reported a decrease in revenue due to COVID, though nearly half had not laid off any employees permanently—and 47% had asked or allowed all or the majority of their employees to work from home.

As those surveyed looked to the future, 82% will continue to offer broader or more flexible work from home policies.

The study also found an ongoing economic disparity for hourly and salaried employees.  And nearly half of the respondents reported that most of their workers had to be onsite to do their jobs—making it a challenge to meet employees’ needs AND maintaining a consistent culture and policies for remote and on-site workers.

Has your agency invested in remote tools? Updated your policies? Please share your tips and experiences.

Learn More

Session Recording: Shifting to a Humane Workplace: Leveraging Workplace Flexibility  (approved for CAWA, CFRE and NACA CEs, plus Texas DSHS)
Research: Navigating COVID-19: Reopening and Rebuilding Small Businesses
Report: How HR Leaders Are Leveraging the Lessons of Disruption

Photo: Manny Pantoja on Unsplash