Five years ago this week, the World Health Organization declared that a rise in coronavirus or Covid-19 cases could officially be termed a pandemic. At the time, there were 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people had lost their lives.
In the UK, the government was yet to announce a full lockdown, but workplaces were beginning to suggest staff work from home; schools were days away from closing; and then Prime Minister Boris Johnson told us all to wash our hands while singing Happy Birthday twice.
The first coronavirus case in the UK was recorded on 31 January 2020, and between then and the point at which WHO declared an end to the virus as a global health emergency, government figures showed that 227,000 people died in this country with Covid-19 listed as one of the causes on their death certificates.
March 2020 saw HR teams pivot quickly into new ways of working, followed by a changing landscape of restrictions, testing and vaccination requirements as case numbers peaked and troughed.
They had to get to grips with self-isolation and furlough while managing ongoing people objectives, often while dealing with their own pandemic issues, such as homeschooling and illness.
So far at least, the pandemic is arguably the 21st century development that has changed the face of the workplace most dramatically. Here are a few ways it transformed how we work and the role of HR within that.
Remote working is now (mostly) acceptable
Many HR professionals will remember hurriedly drafting WFH policies in March 2020 as organisations prepared for strict government guidance that would forbid employees from going to their place of work unless they held certain “key worker” roles.
The rules around this changed multiple times during the heat of the pandemic (and often depending on location), but on the whole, employers that might previously have frowned upon remote working now supported staff to work from home, supplying equipment and support where needed.
Five years later, there has been a rise in return-to-office mandates from major companies such as Amazon and WPP. Despite this, according to the Office for National Statistics, more than a quarter of workers now work in some form of hybrid working model.
And while data from LinkedIn suggests that most workers think some meaningful office attendance is fair, 50% do not want more mandatory office days than they have at present.
HR’s reputation has blossomed
When the pandemic hit in 2020, two business departments came under intense spotlight – HR and IT. Both were critical to ensuring workers had the tools and the support framework to transition their activities to a home office (or kitchen table), and both had to act fast while not compromising key business concerns such as data security and wellbeing.
Managing the complexities of remote working and constantly changing government rules helped HR teams strengthen their skills, with a CIPD/Workday survey finding in 2021 that three in five had upskilled or reskilled as part of their organisation’s response to the pandemic.
Returning to “normal” has also honed HR’s skills in change management and amplified its voice in key post-pandemic debates, such as returning to the office and requests for flexible working. According to research from HR analyst Josh Bersin, most (53%) HR leaders are now in the C-suite, boosted by their responses to not just the pandemic but also movements such as Black Lives Matter and D&I, the rise of globalisation, and the shift to remote work.
Focus on wellbeing has improved
After the initial moves to ensure workers were able to operate without being exposed to the virus and the later controversial mandates that demanded workers were vaccinated before returning to physical workplaces, it became clear that wellbeing more broadly had risen up the corporate agenda.
In 2022, seven in 10 HR professionals told the CIPD that employee wellbeing was on senior leaders’ agenda, while 42% agreed that senior leaders encouraged a focus on mental wellbeing. In 2024, the same survey found that 53% of organisations now have standalone mental health strategies, and 43% continue to support employee mental health.
But while employer provision for both mental and physical wellbeing has grown, the impact of Covid-19 on health has not disappeared. Sapien Labs’ annual Mental State of the World report published this week (10 March) found that many adults aged under 35 continue to experience diminished mental health and wellness.
Similarly, long Covid – a syndrome characterised by symptoms such as chronic fatigue, shortness of breath and difficulty concentrating – continues to blight many workers’ ability to do their job. A recent study from University College London (UCL) estimated that the number of working days lost to long Covid costs the economy multiple billions of pounds every year.
Workplaces are better prepared for change
The past five years have not only been marked by a global pandemic, there have been a number of other events and shifts that have shifted the employment landscape. Diversity and inclusion received heated focus after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, only for thousands of these programmes to be dismantled five years later by the new Trump administration.
At the same time, artificial intelligence has morphed from being a useful tool an organisation might deploy in a chatbot to something that can write a detailed report in seconds and perform simple administrative tasks quicker and potentially more accurately than a human. Organisations such as the Singapore Bank and Klarna have slashed headcount as AI becomes more sophisticated, and HR professionals are at the forefront of building organisational strategies where AI and humans work together.
It’s hardly surprising then that employees told PwC in 2024 that they feel there is “too much change” happening at once. But responding to the fast-changing (and not always clearly understood) rules that dominated the early months of the pandemic has strengthened HR’s resolve when it comes to dealing with change and supporting employees through these shifts.
Analysts at Gartner recently predicted that HR will need to be resilient to even more change in 2025, including shifts in worker demographics, new legislation such as the Employment Rights Bill in the UK, increased worker loneliness and an uncertain future for D&I.
It’s difficult to predict how HR teams might react if another pandemic were declared in the near future, but it’s likely they would once again take it in their stride.
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