Impact of Covid 19 outbreak on employee performance
Figure 01 - Employee engagement via online
Employee Performance
Your employees’ performances are key to the success of your organization.
Therefore, an organization generally takes steps to improve the performance of
its employees. Employee performance is defined as how an employee fulfills their job duties and executes the tasks that they are responsible in, a given
period of time. Performance is always linked to the effectiveness, quality
and efficiency of an employee. It also contributes to the assessment
of how valuable an employee is to the organization. There are a few factors
affecting the employee performances of an organization.
1. Working Environment
2.Training Development
3. Employee Engagement
4.Competence
5.Recognition
6.Tools and Equipment
7. Work Load
8. Company culture and morals
9. Leadership
How Covid 19 impacted the performance of the
employees
For a long time, most the organizations and the employees
were used to going to their work stations where they meet their colleagues, and managers
and spend most of their time in the offices. With Covid 19 pandemic hit globally, it impacted all levels of working cultures and made significant changes
in the way that organizations work, employees’ routines, performances etc.
Most of the organizations switched to online completely and
some of the organizations who are in the business of apparel, food production,
construction etc. had to provide safe transportation services to their employees to
report to work while adhering to all the covid guidelines of the particular government.
Since most of the employees are not used to working only through online platforms the
organizations had to come up with ways and means to engage employees in work and
uplift their performances.
Covid 19 outbreak had a massive impact on the performance of the employees positively and negatively.
A recent survey carried
out in Chinese firms indicated that 46% of them expect a reduction in
performance due to COVID-19 (Boichenko and Tymchenko, 2020). Increased stress, inadequate
infrastructure, missing work environment/colleagues, unrealistic performance
expectations, impaired manager-employee relationships, and difficulty
establishing trust with colleagues are the downside of virtual work environment
(Graves and Karabayeva, 2020),
which can negatively impact on employees’ performance.
Caputo and Hyland (2020), through a focus group conducted
with a sample of 256 employees (mostly from U.S. firm), indicated that four out
of ten respondents felt that the pandemic would reduce cross-functional
collaboration, and 36% of the respondents worried about how remote work would
impact their work-life balance.
Supporting the positive impact, HSBC (2017) revealed that virtual work is more likely to increase
worker productivity than financial incentives. Research also showed that firms
providing a better work life balance through virtual work options pave way for
more productive workforce as employees feel more motivated (Stevens, 2019). Graves and Karabayeva (2020) stated
that virtual work provides employees with flexibility in work, increased availability
of time due to the absence of commuting, and more importantly access to better
talent around the globe that can increase the average individual performance.
Adaptation methods
·
Flexible working hours - Flexible working hours have
been debated by many on positive and negative grounds whether it is really enough
to offer flexible work simply as a ‘nice to have?’ Or should it be an
integral part of company culture? Many companies around the world still
practice the 9 to 5 working hours. However, given the pandemic situation,
flexible working hours became the most important factor as employers wanted to
maintain the performance of the company by giving the employees who are stuck in
their homes, giving them a work-life balance through flexible working hours. Flexible
work environments are wholly enabled by a digital workplace – video
conferencing and digital collaboration – and it’s a good thing for employee
engagement. It is also allowing the employees to give maximum support in
parenting, improve their mental well-being and improve productivity. On the
other hand, the employers will gain the performances that they want as
employees are in a happy place while seeing a reduction of the cost of desk space, and operational bills and also help to attract higher quality employees.
·
Introduction and adding more benefits to the
health care packages – Apart from the normal health insurance package that the organization
provide, organizations introduced benefits that cover the employees and their
family members if infected with covid, providing face masks and necessary equipment
for employees from the company, make available of doctors for employees through
company contacts etc.
·
Provide the necessary tools and support for the
employees to engage online – Not all the employees have the luxury of
the equipment and bandwidth to work online. Organizations had to step in and provide
the employees with the necessary equipment and online platforms to ensure that
the employees can work to achieve the targets of the organization.
·
Recognition of employees' work in video
conferencing and online meetings – With Covid 19, physical meetings were impossible
to take place. However, to motivate the employees most organizations adapted the online meetings. To keep the employees further motivated it is
identified that the leaders have to give necessary credit for the employees in
recognizing their work of them. This will keep the employees engaged within the
business units and recognition of their work will impact the performance of the
employees positively.
· Provide online training sessions for employees – Providing training to improve the employee is one of the factors that affect their performance. A lot of online training sessions were available with the covid 19 pandemic hit where most of the educational institutions moved to online platforms. Therefore, organizations were able to grasp the opportunity of accessing these courses during the pandemic time to train their employees.
· Engaging Leaders - Companies should ensure effective communication with employees. How leaders behave during critical moments leaves a lasting mark on their companies and people. Therefore, consistent and effective communication and interaction with employees can strengthen the company and enhance its culture. Sharing the up-to-date and relevant information about COVID-19 symptoms and disease prevention recommendations among company employees also helps the leaders to engage with employees on a daily basis. This will help build trust with leaders. which will affect positively the performance of the employees.
Conclusion
Covid 19 pandemic had positive and
negative impact on the organizations and their employees. It was a crisis
situation for Human Resource Management units where they have to lead the
employees to perform efficiently and effectively given all the covid 19
restrictions. Adaptation to the new working methods helped the organizations to
come out of the pandemic situation strongly with smooth revenue generations. The learnings
of the covid pandemic impact on the performance of the employees are that adaptation
to the new methods helps to build the trust of the employees and the
employees will go the extra mile to help organizations to sail through the crisis
period smoothly.
Reference
O. Boichenko, N. Tymchenko
How to Reduce the
Pandemic Impact on Employees: A Guide for Company Leaders. Deloitte
(2020)
Available at:
https://www2.deloitte.com/ua/en/pages/human-capital/articles/impact-of-covid-19.html, Accessed
1st Jul 2020
L. Graves, A. Karabayeva
Managing Virtual
Workers-Strategies for Success
IEEE Engineering
Management Review (2020)
A. Caputo, P. Hyland
Employee Concerns
about COVID-19
(2020)
Available at:
https://www.mmc.com/insights/publications/2020/march/employee-concerns-about-covid-19.html, Accessed
1st Jul 2020
HSBC
Nine Out of Ten
(89%) Employees Believe Flexible Working Is Key to Boosting Productivity Levels
(2017)
Available at:
P. Stevens
The
2019 Flexible Working Survey. Wildgoose
(2019)
Available
at:
https://wearewildgoose.com/uk/news/flexible-working-survey-insights/, Accessed
1st Jul 2020
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This is a very current topic discussing the Covid impact on employee performance. The Covid pandemic has impacted many organisational work processes and employees have experienced a changed culture and work environment. Many organisations shifted to remote work which has advantages as well as drawbacks which you have clearly discussed. The HR function plays an important role in managing this change effectively while maintaining employee performance. Good article. All the Best!
ReplyDeleteThis is a timely and well-explained topic. This blog is packed full of facts about the impact of the Covid 19 epidemic on employee productivity. Well Done.
ReplyDeleteFantastic blog! Do you need an Employee Engagement Calendar 2022 India? If so, you've come to the right spot. This calendar serves as a means of engagement between you and your staff. It's a great idea to use this to keep track of all your company's activities. It contains monthly events and activities to enjoy with your employees.
ReplyDelete