Doodle issued the following announcement on April 23.

In the current COVID-19 era of country-wide lockdowns and social distancing, organizations find themselves in a wholly unique situation: millions of employees are working from home, indefinitely. But as the "Recruiting and Onboarding Employees from a Distance" research study released by Doodle indicates, US HR professionals are ill-equipped to digitally adjust and adapt their recruitment and onboarding processes during crisis situations.

According to data from the Doodle platform, there has been a 47 percent increase in the number of virtual meetings scheduled in the first quarter of 2020, compared to the previous quarter. However, when we asked how prepared HR professionals are to implement fully virtual recruitment and onboarding programs in the event of a crisis, 17 percent admitted to not being prepared at all and 31 percent said they're only slightly prepared. These findings demonstrate a major disparity between the growing digitalization of the workplace and HR's ability to pivot and adapt its processes accordingly.

According to Renato Profico, CEO of Doodle, "Despite the growing prevalence of remote work in the last decade, HR teams are still heavily reliant on face-to-face interactions when it comes to recruiting and onboarding employees. While this may have been reasonable and even viable before the coronavirus outbreak, it's far from that now. The reality is that many companies are continuing with (and even accelerating) their hiring plans to keep up with the demands of COVID-19. So a lack of digitalization will severely impede their ability to fill 'essential' roles, causing a ripple effect of consequences - from delays in fulfilling orders and subpar customer experiences to a decline in employee productivity and revenue growth."

Key findings from the study include:

• Despite a surge in virtual meetings, remote meeting tools are the lowest priority in HR budgets. Despite the rise in virtual meetings, video conferencing tools (weighted average, 1.88) and scheduling technology (weighted average, 1.90) both rank very low on the priority list in HR budgets.
• Virtual recruitment is a delicate balancing act of tools, people and processes. The biggest recruitment hurdle for 22 percent of HR professionals is scheduling meetings with multiple team members (across time zones). Plus, 15 percent have trouble juggling between multiple tools to schedule and conduct interviews.
• Virtual onboarding fail: a recipe for low employee morale and early turnover. 17 percent of the surveyed HR professionals struggle to make remote workers feel like part of the team. Plus, 15 percent of the respondents find it most difficult to integrate remote workers into the company culture.
• The future of remote work (productivity) hinges on technology, not training, environment and attitude. Technology was cited as the top factor (26 percent) impacting the productivity of remote workers., compared to training (12 percent), work environment (12 percent) and attitude (11 percent).

Profico concluded, "Altogether, our study's findings should be seen as a guiding light of hope to HR professionals. Technology will be critical in simplifying, automating and speeding up the virtual recruitment and onboarding process. This requires organizations to realign their priorities and make room (both operationally and financially) for remote meeting tools like employee communications apps, enterprise scheduling platforms and video conferencing tools. By implementing and integrating these types of tools into the organizational processes, HR teams will be better equipped to support, empower, motivate, engage and retain their fully remote workforces during and after the pandemic subsides."

Survey Methodology

Doodle surveyed over 300 HR professionals in the United States to gauge their current recruitment and onboarding processes - and their preparedness to transition to a fully virtual recruitment and onboarding model in the event of a crisis. The survey was fielded from late March to early April 2020. Additionally, Doodle analyzed data from more than 30 million meetings created on Doodle in the first quarter of 2020.

About Doodle

Doodle is the leading enterprise scheduling technology helping the world's largest brands instantly set meetings with clients, colleagues and teams. Tapping into the unique nature of smart scheduling with AI and chatbots, Doodle simplifies the planning of 1:1 and group meetings for busy professionals. As the world's most trusted online scheduling platform, Doodle has more than 30 million monthly active users. Part of the Swiss media group Tamedia, Doodle AG is headquartered in Zurich, with offices in Berlin, Atlanta, New York City and Belgrade.

Original source can be found here.