Business after lockdown in the context of Covid-19

1. In anticipation of the end of the lockdown, what are your 30-60-90 days’ priorities as the HR Leader of your organization?

Our main priorities are saving jobs and keeping the company alive as it is the case for a lot of companies, within different sectors. The Tourism industry is amongst those which will take off at the end and this may alter the way we do business significantly.

We have already taken courageous measures and one of them is voluntary remuneration reduction for certain level of employees. I must admit that during this time of adversity, we notice that our employees are united in sharing our vision of saving jobs. We have received a unanimous 100% adherence from our employees in this matter.

Our focus is also how do we sustain the business going forward, validity of our current practices, re-skilling and up-skilling of our workforce and working on various re-opening scenarios which also include how do we move from our current skeleton team to a full fledge team. Our preparedness, once the sector is back on track or how to get it back on track, will be vital.

2. What will be the challenges that Mauritius must address in the future as far as HR and employment is concerned?

Post Covid-19 phase may be more challenging than what we are going through at the moment. Helping our team to become more resilient in approach will a key survival factor.

A paradigm shift in our workplace to improve on multitasking, efficiency, staff engagement and HR Asset Management will be of paramount importance.

Worldwide, we are talking about unemployment and I am afraid Mauritius may not be an exception.

The Workers’ Rights Act (WRA) should be adjusted to allow employers and employees to have the required agility, to be sustainable during this time of crisis.

The Safety and Health aspect will be in the limelight and Covid-19 sanitary precaution will be a pre-requisite for businesses, both from a clients’ and employees’ perspective.

The government support is more than ever required in this unprecedented situation. I must say they have been present since the start of the sanitary curfew through the wage support scheme. The government can reflect on what can be done further in terms of alleviating fixed cost such as statutory deductions and utility cost to reduce the burden especially those with no revenue at all for the coming months.

The expression of “survival of the fittest” may more than ever be a reality.