As the growth drivers of an organization – decision makers, managers and supervisors are staring at an uncertain future. The scale of COVID-19 spread and its effect on the nation state economies has left organized employment sector, short of breath – while the unorganized sector (especially in case of India) has been thrown into a state of chaos.

While extensive planning and communication remain critical to organized sector and its wage earners – another key component which due to COVID-19s “fog of war” might go amiss from decisionmakers notice is – course correction.

While planning and communication between various units of the organization help orchestrate and fulfil the basic functions – responsive planning should not compromise on course correction. This means to pre-empt possible outcomes and then putting together an organization’s planned strategic response to each one of them.

In this case, all established large and fast-growing economies already rely on contract professionals – to assist, supervise and adhere to the production and operational requirements. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the organizations who have yet to play the professional outsourcing and resourcing card, have missed a trick.

Skilled and competent professionals who are available on short-term and long-term basis especially in occupational, safety and health and other industry trades are positioned uniquely. They can leverage this global lockdown, to become the eyes and ears for future growth objectives and allow organizations to hit the ground running when we emerge from this crisis.

Let’s take a quick peek at how professional outsourcing can build the growth mindset in this downtime.

Audits and safety overhaul of workplace

While physical presence may be under question due to the lockdown, accumulated data in form of currently used SOPs, training manuals and audit reports are carefully aggregated within an organization.

Professional manpower on-contract can become the 3rd party auditors in this scenario and help build a more resilient system without causing any disruptions or operations downtime. The new ISO 45001 standard has put – processes – as the key element at the heart of any outstanding system.

These hired and skilled professionals with international certifications can build better OHS and EHS template for your workforce to follow – when they resume normal operations.

You can simultaneously build momentum around this ‘management of change’ via use of digital platforms – such as your EHS management software and E-Learning portal for the wider workforce. A great way to engage and at the same instance improve organizational learning quotient.

Safety roadmap and benchmarking

A well-known paradox within OHS is the jump from “talking about it to actual implementation of safer systems” – to ensure superior occupational, safety, health and environment outcomes.

Well, now is the time to get back to the drawing board and get qualified professionals on-hire to reshape organizational safety and health standards. While the plant operations may be stopped or running at lower capacities – previously aggregated data such as – incident/accident rates, training to competency delivery quotient and awareness based programs, such as behaviour based safety can become the stepping stones of your rejuvenated safety roadmap.

These will in turn allow your organization to achieve international safety and health benchmarks in shorter time frame, when you resume operations, and this becomes a shot in the arm for attracting new business while workplace morale is also lifted.

Consensus building and technology aids

The Toyota production system “Autonomation” or ‘automation with human touch’– is to detect, understand, identify and eliminate abnormalities. Abnormalities which may cause over-production (but of an inferior build), which may create a workplace environment where synchronization between units is out of tune and other associated supervisory concerns.

Hired safety and trade-skill specific manpower can build functional bridges for your workforce and fast-track learning, competency development and eventually its demonstration at the workplace.

With digital occupational safety and health portals, these professionals can engage with the training needs as well as soft skills of your workforce. These may be required to ply the workforce towards a more synchronous and effectively managed operational team (even before the organization can aspire to achieve global safety standards).

This COVID-19 lockdown and the subsequent downtime we are experiencing can become a professional litmus test for many organizations, as and when the global operations resume. However, preparedness and willingness to engage with 3rd party experts and professionals in this time of needs can become mutually beneficial and keep the growth mindset intact.