COVID-19 Oriented HRM Strategies Influence On Job And ... - PLOS

2.2 COVID-19 oriented HRM strategies

Unexpected events causing a global scale crisis can have a dramatic impact on the employees’ wellbeing [29, 30]. The situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is guaranteed to take a long-term effect on the psychological wellbeing of employees, causing cumulative stress for many of them, which will consequently affect performance, a key aspect for organizations.

Because employees are the most important resource of any organization, the organization needs to take care of their wellbeing as well [31, 32]. Therefore, a health disaster such as a pandemic will pose a huge challenge to the HRM department to mitigate the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on employees [29, 33]. As early as the 2008 crisis, there were voices from researchers arguing that HR professionals should be part of the crisis management team.

During a COVID-19 pandemic, employees often face problems not only at work but also at home. Therefore, HR specialists should be ready to manage any problems and issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic [29]. The HR department gains importance in the organization and its main task during a pandemic is to mitigate the negative effects of a global pandemic among employees [29]. Therefore, it is necessary to involve the HR department in the planning and implementation of crisis management as the main representative of the highest capital of any organization [31].

Researchers have noted that modern approaches to HRM are more effective in turbulent times than traditional approaches that are considered edgy and unprecedented [34]. Therefore, it is important to recognize which HRM practices will most effectively mitigate the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and also allow the use of emerging opportunities [29]. In turbulent times, two HRM approaches are distinguished from an organization’s perspective " soft"—in which employees are considered a valuable resource for the organization [35] and "hard". When considering "soft" HRM practices, they mainly focus on taking care of the employee’s wellbeing during the crisis to guarantee high performance.

Therefore, organizations focus on training employees to acquire new skills necessary to work in new conditions [36]. Additionally, they focus on appropriate communication processes, transfer and exchange of information [37, 38]. They also try to provide activities such as mentoring, coaching, which positively, even in crisis situations, raise the wellbeing of employees [39].

The most common „hard” HRM practices include those related to the financial aspect—pay cuts and freezes [40], downsizing [41, 42] or withholding recruitment, reducing training budgets, lowering individual performance goals and benefits [43, 44].

In the literature, mixing of "soft" HRM style with "hard" HRM style seems to be the most effective way to mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the organization’s employees. The mixed model allows an organization to create maximum employee job performance and efficiency by taking care of employee motivation and engagement using "soft" HRM practices. On the other hand, it allows the organization to persevere in the difficult time of crisis by cutting operational costs related to recruitment or employees’ development and promotions, thus ensuring its high efficiency [45].

Considering all that and the importance of job performance maintenance during COVID-19 pandemic (to ensure organizational performance), it seems that there is an apparent need to indicate what detailed HRM strategies will be beneficial for the organizations operating in such conditions in order to maintain and boost the job performance. The above-mentioned detailed HRM strategies should relate to three areas: securing qualified staff, adapting the organization to the new reality, and ensuring the wellbeing of stakeholders. Hiring and employee development must be taken into account as part of the provision of qualified personnel. In addition, it is necessary to discuss the strategy of adapting the work organization to changes that have occurred in the environment. It is necessary to take into account the need to move to virtual reality (digitalization), change the existing processes organizing work (job redesing), equipping employees with tools allowing to adapt to these changes (COVID-19 training). It seems obvious that the above issues will not be possible without ensuring a good flow of information (communication). Moreover, in such difficult circumstances, the issues of providing support to entities within and outside the organization (employee wellbeing and corporate social responsibility) should be taken into account.

2.2.1 Hiring.

COVID-19 pandemic has significantly interrupted an organization’s operations, and the need to create an action plan in response to a rapid and unexpected event is riddled with extreme uncertainty. Among other things, it is very difficult to predict the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is difficult to assess the severity of the pandemic on the organization’s finances. There are many strategies that an organization adopts to protect the financial aspects of the organization by choosing to freeze certain expenses, including freezing dedicated hiring expenses [46]. The employees’ staffing includes two basic HRM activities: recruitment and selection [47]. All activities aimed at recruiting employees reflect the general mood of the business and the opportunities the organization will have once the pandemic is over [47].

Unfortunately, due to its high instability, future organizations are not able to predict their staffing needs enough even in the short term [47]. The dynamics of the staffing needs depend on a large number of factors, such as market demand or political regulations [47]. It is therefore the responsibility of the HR department to adapt to current trends.

Therefore, it is recommended to be very careful during analyzing not only future needs of resources but also current one [47]. Many sources demonstrate that the most commonly adopted strategy is that of freezing the recruitment of new employees, either partially or completely [46, 48]. Data obtained from the U.S. LinkUp portal in the shows that even with the onset of the spread of the coronavirus, there was an uncharacteristic drop in job advertisements for the period. More representative data will emerge in May 2020, where a 40% drop below the average level of ads for the same week in 2017–2019 was recorded [49]. That is due to the fact, that organizations as a result of the crisis predict a reduction in aggregate demand, and a reduction in employment or a complete freeze is a kind of response to the decline in demand [46, 50].

In a situation of constantly changing socio-economic conditions, such actions are primarily aimed at protecting current employees and reducing disruption to the organization [46].

2.2.2 Employee development.

Employees as a key component of any organization significantly affect its productivity, success, and future. This is the main reason why organizations decide to invest significant amounts in employee development [51]. In practice, employees’ development means not only developing their skills but also the organization as a whole. More productive employees also mean that the organization will also prosper better [52]. Although employees’ development and promotions are considered one of the most effective ways to support employees’ performance. In times of crisis, when the need to survive in the market turns out to be crucial, organizations decide to take many radical steps that eliminate the flexibility of the organization [53]. The HR department also has a key role in dealing with the consequences of the crisis, which is responsible for reducing stress among the employees in the organization, still taking care to invest in human capital, but keeping in mind the minimization of strategic costs [54]. As it was mentioned, during a crisis, organizations very often decide to reduce many of the additional costs, which also result from the payment of additional benefits, promotions, and employees’ development [54]. Therefore, a crisis away opportunities related to employees’ development and promotions, despite rising employee expectations. Moreover, as has already been mentioned, organizations are also often forced to reduce or completely cut down on recruitment, therefore HR departments have to prepare tools that will smooth the situation and keep current employees in the organization, despite the growing risk of employee dissatisfaction associated with the need to reduce promotions and employees’ development [54].

Among these tools are modern methods of offering alternative jobs, part-time positions, or flexible working hours [55]. This provides employees with a certain sense of security, which in times of global crisis will have a more effective impact on employees, their performance, and their intention to stay in the organization. Thus, issues related to development and promotion opportunities will come to the background, so that their reduction during the crisis will not have a significant impact on employees and their performance [56].

2.2.3 Digitalization.

Despite the many often drastic changes needed to be made in an organization under COVID-19, there are some forms of restructuring, which can help overcome the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic [57]. Indeed, recently there has been an increased digitalization in organizations, the application of which often overcomes or significantly reduces the negative effects of the pandemic.

Organizations in a very short time have been forced to move their products online or to implement more information systems necessary for the continued functioning of the organization [57]. Digitalization is characterized by the combination of certain advanced technologies and the integration of physical and digital systems [58]. Digitalization is a process of transformation occurring in an organization through the adoption of digital technology [59–61] manifested as digital artifacts or digital platforms [62–66], but also in the form of a digital business model and management, including human resources [67].

Digital technology is considered as a potential that implemented in an organization on a large scale, will gain competitive advantage by improving organizational flexibility and resilience [66], as well as increasing dynamic capabilities. Therefore, digitization will be beneficial for dynamic changes in the organization, also caused by the dynamic environmental changes, because can helps to recognize and sense changes in the environment [60, 68, 69]. During the pandemic, it was noted how important digitization is in an organization.

The implementation of digitalization has helped to create many new opportunities and thus allowed organizations to survive the difficult time of the pandemic and provided new opportunities for growth [70]. Digitalization has identified innovative opportunities to utilize new technologies like the reconfiguration of an organization’s resources that effectively allows it to respond to crises [59]. Therefore, many organizations to maintain continuous growth and ensure the organization’s sustainability have also reconfigured HRM processes such as recruiting or onboarding new employees to ensure the safety of new and existing employees while providing the organization with adequate resources.

2.2.4 Job redesign.

Job design plays an important role in HRM processes because it considers, not only all structural and social aspects but also the workplace’s impact on the employees [71]. Furthermore, once a job design is made, it must be systematically reviewed and redesigned because many factors such as management style, working conditions, the technology used in the organization, and environmental dynamics influence how the job will look [71].

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused some changes in job design on organizations’ global level [72]. HRM professionals in organizations must ensure that they align the organization’s operations, and employees, with the changes. They also should support employees in adapting to these changes to ensure long-term benefits in improving job redesign [72].

Many organizations during the COVID-19, to avoid business downtime, quickly had to work under changed conditions: using new technologies, in entirely new spaces—most often at home or in hybrid mode, with reduced social and physical interaction, and with far less supervision and support from other colleagues [72]. Changes like work are not just about adapting to new technologies or automation, they often reflect changes in the way tasks are conceptualized and performed, such as treating patients online or providing customer service to restaurants online [73].

This is why job redesigning plays such a key role in the functioning of an organization. The current pandemic indicates that the changes implemented will persist for a long time and even remain in the organization even after the pandemic is over. Therefore, it is important for HRM professionals, to conduct a proactive review of job design, risk analysis, regulations, guidelines, and practices to protect the employees’ health in the future [72].

2.2.5 COVID-19 Training.

For many organizations, technical aspects, were not foreign even before the pandemic, due to the rapid development of automation and information technology. However, a much lower need for technology was observed before pandemic, especially among small organizations. The pandemic COVID-19 and the need to work from home has made pressure to implement technology at every organizational level. Therefore, a significant increase in the use of technology is being seen in all organizations, especially the small ones [74]. Such changes in the organization and working conditions, the increased need to use technology forced by the global COVID-19 pandemic causes stress, uncertainty and bitterness which can affect the employee’s work negatively [47].

The additional training organizing by the organization, providing support for employees in shaping new skills to help during this new mode of work and dealing with the new situation, could be very helpful. It would reduce employees’ stress and additionally give them a sense of development and acquisition of new knowledge and skills [75]. Accordingly, training that develops remote work skills will play an important role and organizations will need to quickly adapt their training policies to meet current requirements [74]. Moreover, for all organizations especially which operate in a global marketplace, seems to be useful to provide training about how to create a strong international culture and employees’ relationships online to ensure high employee engagement and wellbeing.

The ability to work remotely is becoming an increasingly desirable skill in the labor market, not only among managers but also among technical workers [76]. Therefore, these skills should be supported by organizing additional training that covering not only technical aspects but also experiential aspects of virtual work [75, 77, 78].

2.2.6 Communication.

An organization is considered a complex network of communication habits. However, the organization itself is only a structure, while the communication behaviors of employees build the organization as a whole [79, 80]. It is considered in this way because the employees exchange information about the organization, the work, and the goals being achieved [81, 82]. Communication in an organization takes different shapes depending on what type of messages employees are operating.

Communications can be vertical and horizontal, which means that communication will then be formal or informal [82, 83]. Communication itself can also be differentiated according to the function it is supposed to perform, namely: directive communication, aimed at influencing the receiver [81, 84, 85], supportive communication aimed at conveying relevant and reassuring information [83, 86, 87] cultural communication aimed at providing the internal rules of the organization [88, 89] and democratic communication involving employees in decision-making processes.

Indeed, communication is a crucial element in managing human resources by motivating them and keeping them engaged and committed to the organization [90]. Especially during the dynamic changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, appropriate communication will influence employees’ emotional commitment to organizational change, enhance their trust in the organization, and stimulate their commitment to the organization [90–94]. Researchers indicate that informal communication can reduce employees’ resistance to developing new skills and building new roles resulting from restructuring during COVID-19 [95, 96]. Moreover, keeping employees informed about important aspects of the pandemic or the future of the organization allows them to engage themselves in the continued development of the organization, reduces feelings of discomfort, uncertainty, and other negative emotions that can disrupt feelings of job satisfaction or job performance [97–99].

2.2.7 Wellbeing.

The radical changes occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to fulfill the obligation of social isolation and also the financial uncertainty causing by the successive closure of other and other sectors by the states have a very strong impact on the physical as well as mental health of people [100]. All kinds of difficult situations affecting societies, cause a direct negative impact on people’s mental and physical health, as proven by the research conducted in China during the COVID-19 pandemic, confirming high rates of stress and depression among people [101–104].

From the organizational point of view, stress, anxiety, or depression among employees, even if not directly related to their daily work, negatively affect their engagement, willingness to work, and consequently reduce their effectiveness [105, 106]. Organizations to help employees survive the difficult time of pandemics should especially focus on employee wellbeing.

The definition of wellbeing is not clear, as researchers view wellbeing as the ability to achieve goals [107]; happiness [108], and life satisfaction [109, 110]. On the other hand, Shin and Johnson [111] considered wellbeing in terms of a global assessment of a person’s quality of life according to their chosen assessment criteria and this definition is also relevant today [112–114].

In essence, stable wellbeing is when an employee has the psychological, social, and physical resources necessary to meet specific psychological, social, and/or physical challenges [110]. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the psychological balance of workers, preventing them from at least realizing the need for social exchange, the reduction of which will affect the sense of isolation in the workplace, thus resulting in stress [115]. What employers in particular need to take care of is free, unrestricted access to technology, other workers, and more free communication with employees, imitating a sense of face-to-face communication. Those actions can help in avoiding the risks associated with remote working [116]. Therefore, the wellbeing of employees during a pandemic, especially those working remotely, will depend largely on interpersonal interactions and social aspects, which are particularly difficult to provide in this mode of work [115].

2.2.8 Corporate social responsibility.

Many definitions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and organizational sustainability have emerged over the years, and the diversity of these definitions has big consisted of a focus on other stakeholder groups [117, 118]. One of the oldest definition present CSR as the responsibility of organizations to pursue such strategies and make such decisions that are desired and valued by society [119, 120].

Today, CSR pays attention to the fact that business and society are related in ways that go across the critical relationship between employees, customers, suppliers, and the community [117, 121]. CSR is therefore considered a multidimensional construct. Its mechanisms, processes, and evolutions are driven by a set of complex external and internal, socio-cultural, and economic factors, making it a dynamic, constantly evolving practice [122].

Therefore, its contemporary definition presents CSR as a discretionary allocation of corporate resources to improve social wellbeing, serving as a way to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders [123]. This theory indicates how much alignment is needed between stakeholder expectations and social wellbeing [124].

In particular during a crisis, an organization has responsibilities and obligations to its stakeholders. Thus, there is a requirement for organizations to support society and their important stakeholders, namely employees and customers, by engaging in CSR activities. To meet these demands, many organizations have adopted CSR as a form of a completely new global governance that promotes the ability to make collective decisions on transnational issues [125].

In a way, some kind of an examination has been forced on CSR organizations by the COVID-19 pandemic, which verifies a commitment to ethical business conduct [125, 126]. Indeed, during the pandemic, organizations have taken special responsibility for the safety of their employees. They try to provide for employees working in the home office the conditions similar to the conditions in the office, but for those who cannot take advantage of remote work, they provide maximum security in the workplace and full security equipment.

Organizations somehow felt the need to take care of the community by promoting public health, providing medical assistance, financial support, or helping other sectors that were particularly affected by the negative effects of the pandemic. This is because such actions bring a sense of stability and strengthen the organization’s community [127].