Businesses everywhere continue to evolve their operations in response to measures for stemming the spread of COVID-19. In some instances, businesses are strategically redeploying employees temporarily to business units that can be better leveraged in states of lockdown and restriction. This has put people managers in the position of driving the engagement of employees that are new to their team, but not new to the business. As a human resource professional with local financial co-operative First West Credit Union, I recognize this situation has unique challenges. Here are three ways to keep redeployed employees engaged  when they have been unexpectedly reallocated.

Fire up warm welcomes

Even though redeployed employees aren’t newcomers to the company, they’re starting fresh with a new team—which likely has team dynamics different from what they’re used to. Set redeployed employees off on their new journey with proper welcomes to their new team. You might even consider ensuring they get equipped with additional in-depth information about their new team—like an overview of who on the team does what, how the team typically operates and other related logistics. Bring some joy to their new work arrangement.

Over-communicate

It’s important that employees don’t feel like redeployment is abandonment. To send the right message, keep your regular one-on-one meetings with redeployed employees and continue to invite them to your team meetings. This keeps you informed on any needs they might have related to their new work arrangement, how they’re integrating with their new team and may give you an opportunity to coach to any challenges they might be perceiving. Temporary leaders of redeployed employees should also set up regular check-in meetings.

Assign a learning partner

Anyone who’s ever started a new job knows that being able to ask teammates questions is undeniably a lifeline (remember those from the gameshow “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”?). This couldn’t be more true with employees who are redeployed, in most cases unexpectedly. The potential benefit to mobilizing learning partners is two-fold: first, in many cases a learning partner will be able to remove knowledge barriers for the redeployed employee and second, the relationship can help the redeployed employee integrate more quickly.

Bonus: Consider the extra mile

I recently learned about a performance leader who showed appreciation for her team’s resilience, flexibility and creativity in the face of pandemic measures by sending each teammate a “survival kit” containing fine chocolates. Granted, this is a classy move and may not resonate with every employee. Still, a spontaneous, unique expression of appreciation can be a nice touch that clearly conveys to an employee that they’re a valued, needed contributor to your team and organization.

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Thanks to our guest contributors for sharing their ideas and experiences about ways to keep redeployed employees engaged with our community. Here’s a little bit more about Jen and Paulette:

Jen DesLauriers is a talent attraction guru with over 15 years of human resources experience. With more than nine years of experience in B.C.’s credit union system, she has been able to identify top talent for two of the province’s largest credit unions. Jen is passionate about aligning talent with the right role to ensure businesses can meet their strategic vision and values. Passionate about helping others reach their career potential, Jen strives to ensure applicants have the right information to make an effective career decision about their potential employer.

Paulette Brager, CPHR is a Sr. HR Business Partner with more than 20 years of Human Resources experiences as an HR Professional. She has championed and implemented, significant time savings across the HR department through process improvement, self-service and automation. She is an innovator and challenges the norms, leading and making change. She uses change management techniques with a focus on being a strong coach and leader. She exercises a partnership and employee experience mindset in working with stakeholders and various teams