The Impact of Pandemic COVID -19 in Workplace

Abstract

COVID-19 has become a huge worry for the Globe. The social and economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic will be far reaching and devastating for all. In this globally connected world, every country will get impacted by the devastation caused by the pandemic. The COVID-19 is likely to lead to certain permanent or long-lasting. By the time, when the pandemic ends, we will probably see a new world, a new lexicon, a new social norm with far reaching economic and social destruction. When COVID-19 outbreak started spreading across the world, thousands of people started facing severe health issues and death rates increased. The only way to stop the spread of the pandemic was to stop all social and economic activities in the affected countries for indefinite period of time. This led many countries to impose complete lock-down all across the globe which is still going on going on. In such a scenario all business activities, across all industries were completely stopped. The lockdown impacted various sectors in varied degree. For example, the airlines, hospitality, hotel, manufacturing industry is totally stopped and will take a long time to come out of this situation, if at all. Millions of people in these sectors are likely to lose jobs in these sectors. COVID-19 pandemic caused enormous disruption in businesses, which will take years to recover, if at all. The disruption is likely to lead to permanent shut down of many businesses, unable to bear the financial losses and disruptions caused by the pandemic. To get over the current situation, companies are trying to run offices and administration jobs through “Work from Home” mode. Companies are trying to cope up with economic turbulence caused due to COVID 19 through the usage of disruptive technology by working from home concept. Earlier work from home was an acceptable business practice only in IT and Technology sectors. However, other industry sectors were reluctant to adopt WFH as a good business practice. The biggest business change that we can see today, forced by the global spread the pandemic, is that many companies have been forced to implementing Work from Home mode for their employees. During the last 2 months, companies have found significant benefit in the WFH. Most companies, going forward, are looking at WFH as an integral business model. The WFH mode is helping some industries and functions in keeping its operations going, in a limited way. This research paper analyses the positives and negatives aspects of work from home concept as during this COVID-19 crisis, people working on WFH, are compelled to live in social isolation and emotional distancing. One can balance the responsibilities of work-life domains, especially when life domain needs as much attention as to work, during these difficult times. The study has focused on the impact of COVID-19 virus pandemic on working life of employees. This research paper also emphasizes that how employers as well as HR managers are required to think out of the box and bring forth best practices as well as redefining HR roles  during any adversity .This research paper will also give light on few important issues  such as People-Connect , adoption of a system of  Skilling, re-skilling, Up-skilling and multi-skilling people about technology, design thinking, storytelling, analytics, Artificial intelligence  to prepare our workforce to become more competent and talented by enhancing their skill set.

Keywords: Work from Home, COVID-19, social distancing, lockdown, people-connect, re-skilling, multi-skilling, up-skilling, technology disruption.

DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-15-02

Publication date:May 31^st 2020