Which HRM roles would be applicable in the Agilius Back to Work case study and what evidence is there to support how HR is operating and functioning?

What do you think are possible recommendations that can applied to the case study.

Spring 2020 On Sunday, March 15, 2020, Brown and his leadership team at Agilus made the decision to move from fully in-person to fully remote, work-from-home operations beginning on Tuesday, March 17, 2020. This change required a significant shift, including the need to ensure that IT systems were in place to facilitate a seamless transition. Within five days, all employees at Agilus were set up on Microsoft Teams and had received a company laptop or Microsoft Surface tablet. In many ways, the first few months of the pandemic created significant cohesion both in the broader society and at Agilus. Individuals generally felt that they were in this crisis together, which fostered a strong sense of common purpose. While societal cracks would soon become apparent, so would the myriad of ways in which the pandemic affected Agilus's business operations. Fall 2020 In 2020, the pandemic significantly reduced the hiring needs of organizations. As a result, Brown was forced to make some difficult decisions to ensure the ongoing financial health of the company. Unfortunately, this included temporary furloughs that decreased the size of the Agilus team to 120 employees. In the summer of 2020, Agilus formed a return to office (RTO) committee. The RTO committee's mandate was to work with senior leaders to recommend a timeline and the specifics of the approach for plans to return to an in-person working environment. In September 2020, Agilus initiated its RTO policy on a one-day-per-week basis. However, this lasted for just over a month until the reintroduction of public health restrictions. 2021 Remote work at Agilus continued throughout 2021. However, as the economy began to recover from the initial impacts of the pandemic, general hiring levels increased. As they did, Agilus brought back previously furloughed employees and brought on board several new hires. Virtually onboarding new hires presented challenges that Brown and Agilus attempted to alleviate by establishing an online learning portal, delivering technological equipment directly to new employees'homes, and providing significant virtual coaching and mentorship. Brown planned to keep many of these new processes in place moving forward. Generally, he felt that the overall culture at Agilus and the collaboration within the firm had weakened slightly compared to pre-pandemic times.Another trend that occurred across much of North America as the pandemic persisted was that many people decided to move from inner cities to suburbs, and from suburbs to more rural areas.8 This was also true for many of Agilus's employees who, with no need to be concerned about commuting while working remotely, decided to move to the outskirts of the urban areas where Agilus's offices were located. Here they were more likely to qualify for financing to purchase a more spacious property. Brown wondered how this trend would influence these employees' motivation to return to the office, given that they would face even longer commute times. On the other hand, several of his employees were eager to return to the office for a variety of reasons, including more socialization, improved collaboration and oversight, and better ability to meet with and manage clients. Many employees wanted to return to an in-person setting to simply get out of their houses again. 2022 In late 2021 and early 2022, the world was hit with a new, more transmissible variant of COVID-19, omicron.9 In response, governments reintroduced a variety of public health restrictions. However, as the initial omicron pandemic wave subsided in the Spring, governments across the country eased restrictions significantly, and more in-person activities resumed. With most organizations engaged in back-to-the-office planning and implementation, Brown wondered what was best for Agilus. In January 2022, Brown and Agilus announced the second of two significant acquisitions in a four-month period. In September 2021, Agilus had acquired the Bowen Group, the nineteenth-largest staffing firm in Canada.10 The company acquired the Delivery Group, an Ontario-based IT-focused staffing firm, in January 2022.11 Integrating new managers, employees, and clients post-acquisition was a delicate balance during the best of times, and Brown wondered if this integration could benefit from Agilus's back-to-the-office planning. BACK TO THE OFFICE? Brown reviewed a variety of studies and research on various alternatives for Agilus's workplace options, which could generally be grouped as a fully in-person model, a fully remote model, or a hybrid model with both in-person and remote elements. In addition to designing the right approach for Agilus, he also had to consider the appropriate timeline and strategy for implementation and communication. Fully Back to the Office When Agilus first moved to a remote operating model in March 2020, Brown had not imagined the company would still be mostly operating remotely over two years later. At the onset of the pandemic, Agilus had just completed a rebranding initiative and consolidated its offices in the Greater Toronto Area from five to three. The company's newly renovated eastern flagship branch in Mississauga was ready to open in April 2020, but it had barely seen any use whatsoever since. Brown and Agilus's first option for their future workplace was to move employees back into their fourteen renovated and rebranded branches across the country on a full-time basis, every day of the week. Remaining Fully Remote Continuing the current operating environment where all employees worked remotely was another option that Brown considered. This meant that all employees could work from a location of their choosing, often a home office. As a fully distributed organization, this would mean Agilus would no longer need their physical office spaces. While this could quite possibly result in significant costs savings, Brown also considered the drawbacks of such a model. Among other concerns, one of the most pressing for Brown pertained to the challenges of building and sustaining a cohesive, innovative, and collaborative culture in a fully remote workplace. Hybrid Models Brown also considered the option of moving to a hybrid model, which would offer a mix of in-person and remote working options.12 Employees would spend a portion of each week or month working remotely and the other portion at an Agilus office. Brown wondered if this would allow him to maximize the benefits of both options for Agilus. Or, on the other hand, would it be the worst of both worlds? If Brown decided to pursue a hybrid workplace model for Agilus, he also had to consider the specifics of how this would best be implemented. Many questions arose if such a model were to be pursued, including the following: How many days should employees be in the office? Which ones? Would employees be allowed to self-select which days they worked remotely and which days they came to the office? Would managers have different hybrid requirements compared to their direct reports? How would fairness between employees be managed and maintained? THE FUTURE OF WORK13 Brown was also interested in the research being conducted on the future of work due to the many economic, societal, and technological shifts resulting from the pandemic. He wanted to ensure that Agilus was ready to adapt to these shifts, both for its own workplace as well as for his clients'. In eight of the world's main economic markets,14 one hundred million workers were projected to need to switch occupations by 2030. These transitions were predicted to occur in greater numbers in the developed world, so Canada would surely also see significant labour market transition in the forthcoming decade. In addition to these dramatic occupational shifts, three additional broad trends were projected to affect the future of work: 1. Remote work, virtual meetings, and work-from-home arrangements, especially in the office work arena, were projected to remain, but less so than at the height of the pandemic. This would have follow-on effects on business travel, housing, and the nature of cities. 2. Automation and artificial intelligence, and corporate investment in these new technologies, was projected to increase dramatically, particularly in industries and workplaces with a high degree of physical proximity, where shifts resulting from the pandemic were expected. 3. As the mix of occupations shifted, growth was projected to be limited in lower-wage occupations and highest in higher-wage occupations. Brown wondered how he should incorporate research on these trends into his decision-making. While it seemed that many of these trends would increase the need for employment services, how would the sectors where Agilus's clients were concentrated be affected? Additionally, given that some level of remote work was projected to be incorporated into workplaces of the future, how should Agilus organize its own workplace to attract and retain employees? CONCLUSION As Brown basked in his victory on the tennis court, he sat down for lunch with his doubles partner that day, who happened to be a lecturer at the Ivey Business School. Together they discussed Brown's impending decision and ideas for the future of work at Agilus. Top of mind were benefits and drawbacks relating to company culture and collaboration, employee work-life balance, talent recruitment and onboarding, employee productivity, and Agilus's ability to service its clients across the country