“Human Capital”
Remote in Proximity
Remote work is an increasingly present reality in our daily lives. While there are areas where the advantages are evident, and this evolution is quite natural, can a proximity sector like hospitality assimilate this new reality?
Beyond the economic and financial challenges, the pandemic situation has brought demanding organizational dilemmas to businesses, many of them new. One of the most expressive examples is the use of remote work, unprecedented for many organizations in the hospitality sector. If the performance of functions outside the hotel workspace had, until then, been limited to very exceptional situations or top management positions related to supra-unit structures, lockdowns changed that paradigm.
The decrease in business volume, from March, forced a drastic reduction in on-site teams, pushing many operational employees to a halt, and support teams to work from their homes. While the partial recovery witnessed in mid-June allowed the return of more front-of-the-house professionals to the units, many support teams remained, for logistical and health reasons, at home for a more extended period, or continue in that model.
Thus, organizations in hospitality are witnessing the implementation of a new hybrid model, where on-site teams and remote support from non-operational professionals complement each other in different physical spaces. This is a model that several analysts point to as the future of organizations in the post-Covid-19 era. In a recent study, The Boston Consulting Group refers to a survey according to which managers from various sectors anticipate that 65% of the workforce will adopt this work mode in the organizations they lead.
However, the speed at which this transition occurred, with virtually no margin for adapting to such structural changes, brought a context of disruption to the daily lives of hospitality companies. Among the numerous challenges faced, three of the most demanding ones, which continue to mark the present, are dematerialization, communication, and technology.
The first challenge is dematerialization. One of the significant cultural shocks for human capital in hospitality was precisely going through one of the phases of greatest job uncertainty without in-person access to teams that traditionally provide important support in clarifying fundamental issues for the professional. Without the possibility of in-person consultation with the Management team, Human Resources, Finance, or Marketing departments, normally available next door, and, moreover, in a context of service constraints in public services (Tax Authorities, Social Security, Employment Board, etc.), the feeling of vulnerability among internal clients skyrocketed. For both teams that remained on-site and employees on layoff, interaction constraints with support teams caused high levels of anxiety, negatively influencing the necessary focus on managing an already difficult and markedly unpredictable scenario.
The second challenge is communication, which has undergone profound changes as a result of the aforementioned dematerialization. With the impossibility of in-person contexts, the telephone and email formats experienced a sharp increase in volume among teams, resulting in many cases in a fatal congestion for process efficiency. This process inefficiency translates, in many cases, into matters without follow-up or prioritized topics forgotten among endless content. Additionally, the absence of elements such as non-verbal language – tone of voice, facial expression, etc. – enhances perception errors and interpersonal friction, often leading to problems between team members who are already emotionally fragile due to the general context.
Finally, technology. Being a fundamental pillar of this new organizational design, it is simultaneously a challenge that translates into several constraints at the team level. The heterogeneity, both in terms of the technological conditions that each worker has at their home and their willingness to use the new tools and applications necessary for the remote management of their function, inevitably results in process delays and eventual demotivation. This aspect is particularly complex for the company, as the remote context highlights, in this and other cases, a narrow line between the personal and professional dimensions of the employee.
The three challenges mentioned, along with the others that the current context presents to companies, require a high level of resilience and creativity. There are various responses that organizations have followed to reinvent themselves, yielding promising results.
Given the inevitable dematerialization and the reconfiguration of internal communication processes, several Human Resources teams have leveraged real-time communication channels to enhance proximity to each employee, such as WhatsApp groups, Telegram, Messenger, and others. Thus, community spaces are created where the team shares relevant information and helps each other.
In some cases, these initiatives have been complemented by defining exclusive telephone service hours for clarification of doubts and support for employees. With the proliferation of electronic communication channels in use, several companies have also developed precise protocols, defining “how” and “when” to use each one, increasing effectiveness and efficiency in their use. Additionally, various team routines – briefings, training, etc. – have been adapted to the specificities of the virtual format and transposed to video calls, overcoming logistical barriers and thus safeguarding group dynamics while protecting the cohesion of work teams.
Lastly, it is relevant to mention the providential role that the redefinition of training priorities has had in generating the necessary skills for this new reality. Whether in terms of behavioral soft skills – emotional intelligence, time management, communication, etc. – or at a technical level – collaborative software, cloud systems, communication software, etc. – this has also been a strategic front so that, in record time, the much-desired organizational “herd immunity” is achieved, allowing functional teams to face a paradigm radically different from what they have always known.
Written by João Silva Santos
November, 2020
This article was published in Ambitur as part of the “Human Capital” series. You can access the online version here.
