HR Discourse 04.20.2020: HR at the Time of Corona

Illustration Credits: Soundcloud

Disclaimer: This is a series of microblogs created on my Facebook profile during the start and peak of the Enhanced Community Quarantine (16 March - 15 May 2020). This represents my personal feelings and thoughts on issues that affected me the most. Pardon the grammar & poor sentence construction.

It has been a challenging week for us HR Practitioners. I had to admit that balancing work and staying home has been a doozy.

I belong to the IT Outsourcing (or Support Outsourcing) industry so the migration from office to homework set up was relatively easy. It means that I can still continue working at least 8 hours a day while accessing my files remotely. But mind you, it is not.

We recently hired an new employee whose start date falls during the ECQ. I already sent his contract and his NDA to his email. And I have to report him to HK; to be included in the payroll this 15th. The main concern was his unit was stuck in the office and his manager was asking me to find a way to send the unit to his residence. It was a good thing my boss was able to find a way to send it to him personally and skipping the checkpoints at the same time.

Second was internet connection - mind you the connection was so slow. Two employees' workload was compromised because of this and they almost asked them to go on forced leave. This was raised in the meeting where I was not consulted in advance. After the meeting, I told them that the CAMP will only given - Php 5k - one time; telling them to make the decision before the end of the week. It made them decide to make them work instead and when the internet connection was better. Problem solved.

Monitoring government updates is part of my job. I need to report them to the mother company and during our weekly meeting. Good or bad news, government updates affecting Labor, etc. should be relayed and interpreted properly to make information easy to comprehend.

The fun part about this period is the free learnings. Although I am now suffering from information overload. I don't want to say that it is bad but I am taking advantage of this opportunity to gain something. It is a welcome distraction from our quarantine.

There are stuff that I still want to say but it may waste your digital time. How your HR week going? May this be a good opportunity for all of us.