Podcast: 'Resilient' Nashville businesses get expert HR assistance from G&A Partners
In a recent podcast with John Ray, host of Nashville Business Radio, Aubrey Livingston shared some of the ways G&A Partners has helped Nashville businesses since joining the market earlier this year.
COVID-19 aside, Tennessee business leaders have had to be resilient, said Livingston, G&A Partners' regional sales director for Nashville. They’ve dealt with various natural disasters, tragic events such as the bombing in December of 2020, and major internet outages.
“We’ve seen Nashville business owners lift and shift and become innovative in order to survive,” she said. “One nonprofit client of G&A Partners doubled its ability to serve the homeless by adopting a corporate partnership model with extended stays motels.”
Ray and Livingston discussed the light the pandemic had shined on the importance of employee handbooks. Several area businesses had not touched their handbooks or tweaked their policies in decades until the pandemic complicated their business with numerous new federal and state policy mandates and safety protocols.
Livingston said G&A can consult with its clients on the risks and implications of the new working environment and can help companies create a new handbook that includes all the new policies that have been put in place to protect the organization and its employees throughout the pandemic. She likened the handbook-creating process to “providing some insulation and bubble wrap … to ensure that the business is protected.”
“Temperature screenings, testing mandates—it all needs to be added to the handbook,” she said. “That is one thing G&A can consult on—we help employers understand what they can and cannot ask of their employees when they think about returning to the workplace.”
Later in the podcast, Ray asked if Livingston has seen any post-pandemic workplace trends. She listed three big ones:
- Mobility in choice is a key trend. Employees want flexibility and the right to choose where/when they work.
- Safety and health are at the top of everyone’s mind. Employees want to work for an organization that will keep them safe. And this may cause changes to the work environment.
- Adopting technology that allows automation and efficiency.
“While there are a lot of trends, the pandemic has changed the landscape,” Livingston said. She said she has found that employees are now demanding a hybrid work environment where they have the ability to work from home. That will present challenges for employers and managers because managing remote employees is different than managing them in person.
“G&A can help conduct training for both managers and employees,” Livingston said, “along with writing the policies for a hybrid workplace. Dress code, time spent at the computer, camera policies—G&A brings these often-ignored topics to light and works through the unique cultural topics with each [client] organization.”
Zoom fatigue, employee recruitment and retention, and top benefit offerings were also topics of discussion in this episode. Listen to the full podcast on the BusinessRadio website.