Managing Blue-Collar Workforce during a Pandemic

1. Managing Blue-Collar Workforce during a Pandemic Almost every discussion out there on managing workforce during the pandemic seems to tackle exclusively the case of white-collar employees, dovetailing into key topics and challenges such as remote work and productivity, mental health, and effects on company culture. We seldom see any of these discussions address the blue-collar workforce who, for the most part, cannot work remotely because of the nature of their work that requires them to be on-site. These men in blue too suffer from repercussions and require an equal amount of attention if not more. For Imdaad Group, blue collars make up the majority of the workforce, and it’s their output that keeps the lights on effectively at the end of the day. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Imdaad has been very proactive in managing its workforce to safeguard their health and wellbeing and ensure minimal disruption to operations. Our workers and frontliners have been nothing short of incredible with their loyalty, dedication, and hard work. The credit goes mainly to our Human Capital department for the

2. effective strategies they have proactively put in place and their compassionate approach to dealing with people. In this article we share our experience and some of the lessons we have learned throughout this year. How is blue-collar workforce different? By definition, a blue-collar worker does manual labour, usually at an industrial facility. This includes skilled manufacturing jobs, technical services, cleaning, security, as well as general unskilled labour. The common misconception is that a blue-collar is by default an uneducated person, but this cannot be farther from the truth. In fact, most blue-collar workers nowadays have some sort of vocational education and many of them are experienced engineers. This fact continues to hold true as our world becomes more advanced and gets driven by modern technology and robotics.