COVID pandemic: Redefining the employment ecosystem

ABSTRACT

The CORONA pandemic jolted the world out of the blue. For what was once envisaged as a common virus, it quickly began to unleash its power and took the whole world in its grip. The business units too suffered from the ferocious impact of the CORONA pandemic. The government of the country implemented a complete lockdown forcing citizens to stay indoors and to adopt and embrace work from home culture. While some of the essential work force team members were allowed to move around freely others were not too lucky. Business units, sensing that CORONA is here to stay for a longer period than what was anticipated, they began to feel the impact of the lockdown as the work force was geographically placed and the issues pertaining to business sustainability and continuity began to surface. Further, the switch over from physical mode of operations to digital mode of operations has had its own limitations. For example, moving to digital means of carrying out business processes wherein the team member is stationed at home, the control exists gets transferred to from the project manager to each member of the project team. This makes the task of managing the team extremely difficult and getting the work done within the constraints of time and with no direct mechanism for controlling the team it generates different set of challenges and which needs to be addressed somehow or the other. Further, in remote operations certain other aspects need to be taken into consideration. For example, aspect needed to ensure that the home workplace is provides unhindered work environment so that the concerned team member does productive work. Another crucial aspect which was relatively easy to manage, when physical mode of operations was in vogue, is the issue of decay of trust and adoption of unethical practices during the course of carrying out day to day business operations. In virtual world, as mentioned, the control exists with the person operating remotely, he can log off at will or can switch off the mike or video at his own leisure. In such scenario, the issue of trust and unethical practices need to be taken into consideration. This chapter addresses in detail supported by specific real life examples to address the employment eco-system prior to COVID pandemic and during the COVID pandemic. In particular the chapter takes into consideration the aspects such as work environment, human resource policies, organization culture and the like. This is due to the fact an eco-system is an amalgamation of several components each serving a specific role. © 2022 Nova Science Publishers, Inc..