11 minute read
LBS INSIGHT
How HR leaders can adapt to uncertain times
Dr Okechukwu Amah
In uncertain times, organisations aim to achieve short-term survival and chart a course for long-term relevance. They can achieve these when the following three conditions are present: positive interpersonal relationships, collaboration between organisational participants, and leveraging all available organisational collective intelligence. Interpersonal relationship, which is the foundation of the other drivers, comes from leaders having the relevant soft skills including:
Communication: two-way, truthful, and neutral Active listening Empathy
Ability to build trust and integrity Build a climate that cares for employees, provides an opportunity for them to be part of the decision- making process, make them engaged, agile and resilient.
HR leaders are important in uncertain t i m e s b e c a u s e t h e y h e l p t h e organisation avoid pursuing shortterm survival to the point of harming long-term relevance. The productivity of human resources is central in achieving this. HR leaders need a complexity mindset which accepts that in uncertain times, organisations need to be agile and adaptable to constantly changing success factors. This mindset helps them to play four major roles, namely: balancing, umpire, data acquisition plus management, and data and information sharing.
Balancing Role
HR leaders play an active role in helping the organisation to manage the dilemma created by pursuing shortterm survival and long-term relevance simultaneously. They gather data to allow all organisational participants to recognise the need to make tradeoffs to optimise the two goals simultaneously for the organisation ' s good. For example, HR leaders ensure that before resorting to laying off or reducing pay/benefit, organisational participants know that this decision is the last resort after other less painful options have been considered.
Umpire Role
HR leaders play the role of umpires to ensure that the needed collaboration between organisational leaders and employees is developed and sustained. They also keep the collaboration active in identifying and using organisational collective intelligence for short-term survival and long-term relevance. To effectively play this role, organisational participants must see HR leaders as credible.
HR leaders are like referees in sports. However, unlike referees, they are not there to identify defaulters to be punished, but to ensure that every organisational participant operates according to the rule of engagement that guarantees collaboration and the leveraging of all the collective intelligence in the organisation. They avoid being overtly tilted towards the organisation or employees, but they steer communication along a win-win course. In doing this, HR leaders ensure that appropriate emphasis is
placed on people, process, and profit, and that in arriving at this emphasis, every organisational participant is heard, understood, and cared for while agreeing on ways to handle issues.
Data Acquisition & Management Role
HR leaders achieve excellence through data gathering and information sharing t h a t f a c i l i t a t e discussions within the organisation – first within groups and then between groups. In a complex environment, it is only data that is relevant to current situations that drives success. It is the responsibility of HR l e a d e r s t o d r a w meaning from them and interpret them in a w a y t h a t i s b e n e f i c i a l t o t h e
organisation.
HR leaders are important in uncertain times because they help the organisation avoid pursuing short-term survival to the point of harming long-term relevance
Hence, HR leaders act as 'consultants' that continuously acquire or manage external data on leaders ' skills and employee issues and use such data to facilitate meaningful and beneficial communication that achieves a common understanding of issues and the required win-win solution. This solution does not mean that every organisational participant gets what they want all the time, but that data provided will make employees aware of the discussions that led to any decision that demands sacrifice from them. Most organisations acquire data yearly, but it may be beneficial to increase the frequency of data acquisition to p r o p e r l y c a p t u r e t r e n d s i n organisational behaviour.
Data and Information Sharing Role
HR leaders need data on employees' feelings in uncertain times, their level of engagement, agility and resilience, and their perception of organisational leaders. They need data on how leaders feel about employees, how they relate with them and the level of collaboration between leaders and employees. To organise data in ways meaningful to organisational participants and to drive fruitful discussion, the HR leader must make HR analytics a central function in the department. This function can no longer be left to IT specialists who have no background in HR. With the data, HR leaders facilitate discussion with leaders, and within employees prior to discussion between groups. HR leaders ensure that all organisational participants have adequate information through data which will aid their individual and collective resolution of the main dilemma (short-term survival and long-term relevance). Hence, in uncertain times HR leaders need continuous acquisition and effective organisation of data.
Question to ponder: As an HR leader, how do you facilitate collaboration between your organisation's leaders and employees?
About the author Dr Okechukwu Amah teaches Organisational Behaviour and Management Communication at Lagos Business School.
Developing Sales Excellence during a Global Pandemic
Dr Ogechi Adeola and Professor Robert Hinson
The coronavirus, an invasive disease that has afflicted millions worldwide and caused over a hundred thousand deaths, has crippled millions of businesses, and presently threatens many more. This article puts forth the argument that sales is the lifeblood of every organisation and companies that best manage their sales functions, stand a good chance of surviving this pandemic (COVID-19) era. Sales is one of the key strategies for attaining competitive advantage and, ultimately, increasing the profitability of businesses (Pettijohn & Pettijohn, 1994), and this assertion has never been more accurate than in this season.
COVID-19 and the Sales Function
The spread of coronavirus has ruined most business activities, models, and strategic intents. Companies that will survive after the pandemic subsides are those who have demonstrated high degrees of innovation, creativity, and resilience. With closed offices, remote communication, health concerns, and challenges with suppliers and customers, it is only astute salespeople that can leverage and turn this crisis into opportunities to scale up their profit. Hence, the salespeople and executive teams who are going to lead the charge to return companies to normalcy and eventual profitability will have to employ the 5Cs of Sales Excellence (see Figure 1 below) to enjoy continued sales success in the light of the global pandemic
Table 1 below provides a detailed description of the 5C model of Consult, Compare, Construct, Captivate and Capture, which ranges from short to medium term sales stabilisation to long term sustained value realisation. Table 1: Tabular categorisation of 'The 5Cs of Sales Excellence'
Dr Ogechi Adeola Faculty, Lagos Business School
Professor Robert Hinson University of Ghana Business School The short to medium-term process must focus on sales stabilisation. This temporal process, which occurs between three to six months, focuses on the need to consult with identified stakeholders, compare sales targets, current and market opportunities- pre and post-pandemic era. In the long term, sustained value realisation will be the goal, where the sales team must construct a new working environment that will deliver value-added services swiftly, capture lost markets and win new customers, especially in the light of a burgeoning digital era. Consultation: This is the phase that involves in-depth discussions with employees and consumers during a crisis. In the course of the COVID-19 crisis, employees look forward to messages from employers, showing s o m e m e a s u r e o f e m p a t h y , encouragement and consideration. These employees desire to be carried along on the steps that the organisation is taking to ensure that their sales trajectory is not affected by the crisis. It is important for organisations to arm t h e e m p l o y e e s w i t h r e l e v a n t information and virtual tools necessary to improve their capabilities while the crisis persists. Such tools expand the mental horizon of the employees and enable their confidence in the organisation to grow. They also become b e t t e r r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s o f t h e organisation such that its values begin t o a l i g n w i t h t h e i r s ( M a z z e i & Ravazzani, 2011).
Comparison: During the COVID-19 crisis, organisations need to develop n e w s t r a t e g i e s t o h a n d l e n e w challenges. One way this can be achieved is by comparing what obtained before (pre-COVID) to what is and using the knowledge of that as leverage to come up with innovative ideas on strategies and tactics to be deployed after the crisis. An awareness of this will enable the organisation to cater better for the customer, thus extending the potential for increased loyalty and patronage (Helm & Tolsdorf, 2013). Construction: Crisis situations have a way of halting the present structure of organisational framings; hence, the importance of adequate and wellthought-out constructive processes. Effective and efficient organisational
teams must be formed and tasked with implementable tasks that curb the negative effects of the crisis on the profit margin of the organisation (Cefis, Bartoloni & Bonati, 2020). Flexibility must be embraced at this point, especially since there are uncertainties as to how and when the crisis will end. Marketing strategies that can align with, function, and accommodate the current crisis should be developed and implemented with speed and accuracy. Captivation: Traditional and new media become an important tool for bridging the gap between organisations and the customer base. Organisations have the responsibility to communicate how they are responding to the crisis. They need to creatively construct their messages in ways that they are not perceived as self-serving, but as authentically concerned for the well-being of the wider environment and the community where they are domiciled. Another way to capture customer attention is to create online feedback mechanisms through which they can freely communicate with the organisation. Digital communication strategy becomes of importance, as it helps the organisation communicate via a medium that is gradually being generally accepted into the global society (Kim & Choi, 2018).
Capture: This phase accounts for the presence of competition (Afthonidis & Tsiotras, 2014), i.e. how to weaken the competition and retrieve all lost markets. Through market-based research, organisations should employ the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve sales. The sales team has to learn to use digital technology to understand the evolving market developments, and how best to carve a niche to win back lost customers and increase market share.
Summary
Organisations hoping to minimise losses or creatively take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic will not only prioritise the well-being and health of their employees but also ensure that the marketing team optimally utilise their skills during and after the pandemic. It is, therefore, important that they reach out to potential and current customers through digital marketing and creative selling techniques. Consequently, organisations will have to rely more on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by moving from salesdriven brand messages to general concern messages that will appeal to the rationality of potential and current customers. Thus, organisations need to develop strategic plans to keep in touch with customers and keep them informed about future plans while assuring them that temporary setback will end, and business will return to normal. By utilising the 5Cs of Sales Excellence, organisations can mitigate the challenges posed by the pandemic, attract new customers, win back old customers and generally, create superior value, in the long term. An effective customer engagement strategy will leverage digital marketing strategies and other creative tactics to thrive in a new economy that will emerge post-COVID 19..
References
Afthonidis, E.P. and Tsiotras, G.D., 2014. Strategies for business excellence under an economic crisis. The TQM Journal. Cefis, E., Bartoloni, E. and Bonati, M., 2020. Show me how to live: Firms' financial conditions and innovation during the crisis. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 52, pp.63-81. Helm, S. and Tolsdorf, J., 2013. How does corporate reputation affect customer loyalty in a corporate crisis? Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 21(3), pp.144-152. Kim, S. and Choi, S.M., 2018. Congruence effects in postcrisis CSR communication: The mediating role of attribution of corporate motives. Journal of Business Ethics, 153(2), pp.447-463. Mazzei, A. and Ravazzani, S., 2011. Manager-employee communication during a crisis: the missing link. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 16(3), pp.243-254. Pettijohn, L. & Pettijohn C. E. (1994). Retail Sales Training – Practices and Prescriptions. Journal of Services Marketing, 8(3), 17-26.
About the Author This article was co-authored by Dr Ogechi Adeola of Lagos Business School and Professor Robert Hinson of University of Ghana Business School and North West University School of Business.
