Covid19 / Coronavirus Leads to Change in Employee Behaviours for HR

by HRheadquarters

As most of us do not have a crystal ball, we have probably not thought about the implications of such a curtailment of how we do things in the workplace. It is interesting to see some of the behaviours HR professionals are seeing emerge as a result of Covid19 and some of the things that need to be adapted as a result of it.

There is always going to be a small percentage of people who try take advantage of situations and it’s important organisations do not make decisions based on these individuals to the detriment of the masses. Gladly we have not heard of many of those situations.

Some behaviours HR headquarters readers have reported are interesting though:

Withdrawing Resignations

We’re hearing of widespread withdrawals of resignations within organisations – people are now concerned for a recession and being last in and first out for new jobs, preferring the security of longer tenure with their current organisations. People who intended to emigrate or travel have had their plans curtailed as well.

There is a dilemma here for organisations who may have offered someone else the job, and a general ethical dilemma as to their CSR impact of holding an employee to a resignation. Has there ever been a more vivid example as to why you should always leave an organisation on good terms?

Annual Leave

People cancelling annual leave is probably one of the most obvious things that has started to happen as people went from going on holidays, to not travelling to holiday hot spots like Italy and Spain, to not travelling at all, all within 10 days or so.

For most organisations this is not a big issue but there is a longer term implication that may need policy and process changes depending on the duration of the restrictions we see. For example, we may see large portions of our employees with most of their AL allowance left when this all clears, but with a much more condensed timeframe to use it in. If there are restrictions within the organisation as to only carrying over X number of days, common sense should prevail, and companies allow greater flexibility, but this may require system changes where carry overs are hard coded into your HR system.

Unpaid Parental Leave

We’ve also been told of large changes to unpaid parental leave requests – not asking for it, but reversing it – we are presuming this is because it has now become acceptable to work from home and perhaps be granted more flexibility around working hours or the, now acceptable, audible child in the background.

This means more cost moving onto an organisations payroll which is an interesting side effect.

Paternity Leave

Paternity leave has to be taken with a set time of the birth/adoption of a child – will/can this be relaxed? Partners looking to take it may want to shelve it until after Covid19 for a variety of reasons due to the restrictions of what they’ll be able to do during that time off and, if they are frontline staff, there is a need to keep them at work.

Work From Home – eWorker Tax Relief

Did you know there is tax relief for you if you work from home? Me neither, but there is and it is now in the public domain. It’s effectively €3.20 per day and employers can pay it tax free (but are not obliged to) or the employee can claim relief directly.

If you’ve seen any other trends in employee behaviour we’d love to hear from you….