I am going to tell a real life story from last month. How is it to change job during pandemia? I did not only change the organization I am working, but also position, industry and role. I have a tendency to put myself in a professional ’danger’ frequently to keep me learning and not staying still. This time it was from an NGO CEO to one of world’s the biggest IT company, to sales.

As I will be working with Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, I was actually lucky to have a sticky start with many difficulties (made by a human mistake). No other start would have given me such a powerful and personal lesson learned on why is HCM the core of businesses and organizations innovation, productivity and success!

No identity

Entering a new workplace remotely and efficiently needs to be organized systematically, efficiently and friendly. The friendly part worked for me as I had been given a ’Buddy’ to give me a call on my first day and of course my manager and HR welcomed me by giving me a call. I felt welcomed.

Nothing else was there. And this was a powerful lesson. It was like going to work in the old days, but needed to stay outside the building and only been able to use my personal phone to give calls. As there had been an error in the process, I had not been given a global user identity, the gateway to all the services and the key to all the information and help. As a person on a new employee hotline (it support) said: we can’t help you, as you don’t exist. I received a temporary pc with some printed instructions, as I was not able to enter the ’building’ and I little by little I managed to find out the source of my problems. In my first Slack-discussions and Zoom-calls my identity was DUMMY_GUID. With the help of some heroes in the organization I have now found my identity. Without that I had no PC, phone, badge, payroll information, trainings, access to any other information or systems, and on top of those no one could find me in this building.

BUT

Now that I have entered the building has everything been impressively efficient. I have been given very precise check lists, what to do and in what order, where to access and what groups to join. My check list is telling me, where to fill in my information and how to make myself productive. I have an onboarding training with different options to choose from to fit my calendar and of course integrated to my calendar. I have taken part on Town hall-meetings, all-hands-meetings, one-to-ones, partner meetings etc. Through my identity I have access to all the relevant places and learning paths and much more to come. The quality is excellent: world class industry trainings, instructor lead trainings and self studies. Time lines and scheduling. By entering the system and throwing my self in I have a huge opportunity to build new things on my previous experience and very soon enter to customer’s realities and solve the business critical issues together with them.

My CEO background keeps me thinking about the productivity point of all this. How much does it cost extra to have a new experienced, expensive, employee waiting for someone else doing things for her. How many someone elses is needed? How much time does it take to make her effective and productive part of the organizations? In my case this was only a couple of weeks, what if it is months? Pandemia, and what ever comes after, has really put the HUMAN processes to be CAPITAL and business critical.

How do you know where your people are, what they are doing and are they on track with their targets? Do you know your work force trends, how does it behave and how are your people doing? Do they have enough information to do their job and will they get fast access to it when situation changes? How do you tell and test that everyone in the company is doing right things, right time, in a right place, with a right attitude and aptitude? What if in a case of business disaster you need to act fast? Do you have the tools for that?

Very interesting and very important. Maybe now it is the time to recognize the role of human capital as a center of innovation and the core of successful business and operations.

That’s why I joined this movement.