How can HR Professionals be working remotely during the pandemic?

Not everybody has been able to shift to telework and some of those who are working remotely still struggle with the technology, isolation, and distractions of work from home (WFH). But 66% of all employed U.S. workers say they can be effective when working remotely, according to the most recent LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Index the survey, our biweekly check-in on the attitudes and anxieties of the U.S. workforce. 

Impressive? Yes. But check this out: The same survey found that 85% of HR professionals say they can be effective with work from home (WFH).

In some ways, HR professionals are fortunate: Their roles don’t demand physical work that can only be done on-site like construction or manufacturing production, and their work doesn’t require the physical presence of other people, like it does for a film crew or professional soccer or basketball players.

But the nimble embrace of remote work also comes about because successful HR professionals are adaptable, forward-thinking, and highly organized.

Their comfort with WFH is also encouraging news given the critical role HR teams will play in developing policies and practices that will support remote work as companies begin making it a permanent fixture for some or even all of their workforce.

HR pros are also much more likely than the rest of the workforce to want training for well-being and leadership

In most respects, HR professionals share the same sentiments as the rest of the workforce. Some 70% are confident in their ability to get or hold a job — almost the same percentage as the overall U.S. workforce (69%). More than half of HR pros (57%) are also confident that they can make progress in their career over the next year, just one point above the 56% reported by all other employees.

But on two other points, HR professionals differed significantly from the rest of the workforce in the recent survey. For one, 34% of HR professionals said they would like online learning to help them improve their emotional well-being, substantially more than the 27% of the overall workforce who said so.

One way to read that result is that HR pros are finding their work during COVID — managing hiring freezes, conducting layoffs, helping employees cope with personal and professional challenges —particularly stressful and want some guidance managing it.

But another take is that HR professionals want to understand emotional well-being in order to help others as much as to help themselves. That would be a reasonable response to headlines such as this one from a blog post on SHRM: “Pandemic Takes a Toll on Employees’ Emotional Well-Being: HR and People Managers Can Take Steps to Address Employees’ Anxiety.”

One other survey finding may bear out the notion that HR professionals are looking to take the lead on remote work and employee well-being: 26% of HR folks, compared to 20% of their colleagues, said they want online learning to help them become a leader.