Rediscovering purpose: how can HR make work more meaningful

Moderating the event was Ivana Karanović, Chairperson of the HR Forum and head of education and development at Karanović & Partners. She remarked how the past two years had been turbulent for the HR sector and that human resources professionals had to come up with new strategies to successfully respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic. She added firms had to put in more effort into listening to their employees’ needs.

According to Brennan Jacoby, although companies had found ways for staff to work effectively outside the office, this did not mean that all difficulties involved in working from home had been overcome.

‘If you think back to two years ago, there seemed to be an assumption that, as long as we got the tech right for working from home, then we’re set up for virtual working. What we found was that it’s not just about those logistical matters’, Jacoby said. He added that companies had to find ways to get their workers included and connected with one another, and that it was much more about understanding, listening, and connecting with people, because that was the only way for them to feel safe, which was a crucial requirement.

What this meant in practice was that companies had to constantly work on their values, primarily making sure that the employees could see and recognise them in their daily work, as well as that they had to actively listen to the staff’s thought about those key values and acknowledge and implement those opinions.

For integral video record from the event please click here (in English).