Sustainable HR Practices Effectively Increased Employee Morale during Covid-19 Exigency.
| Author | Sahay, Yamini Prakash |
Introduction
COVID-19, the worldwide pandemic that has engulfed public and private life since the beginning of 2020, has demanded quick decision-making and fluidity from HRM professionals who have been used to a rather bureaucratic organizational governance for long (Gigauri, 2020). Due to exigencies like lockdown of cities and countries, social distancing norms, quarantine rules, other restrictions on people's movements and public gatherings, businesses had to go online, yet pressure existed on performance. Consequently, not only work-from-home, but perform-from-home became important and challenging. Working from home was different as well as non-relatable for some employees. However, for many others it was a boon as their work-life-balance increased manifold. These employees were better able to take care of their own and family's health during work-from-home schedules. In every company human resource was supposed to play a critical role in fighting against COVID-19 while managing regular HR functions.
The present article examines the experience of employees working during COVID-19 in the sense that their organizations presented to them a new model of HR practices. It assesses how a sudden shift in HRM practices has helped employees to view the effectiveness of new ways of doing business. The reviewed literature shows the lack of empirical evidence on perceived effectiveness of this new HRM, sustainable HR practices and employee morale during Covid-19 exigency. The perceived effectiveness of 5 HR practices, employee recruitment and selection, employee training and development, rewards and recognition, employee engagement and work-from-home were studied in the current study.
Covid-19 has unleashed the process of digital learning, hence, a considerable increase in the use of digital platform has changed organizations' methods of functioning, from frontline managers to top leaders. Digitally-enabled experiences have created new benefits. It creates a sense of community, purpose, and focus for people that are no longer connected with their colleagues face-to-face. All of this contributes to increasing employee morale, which refers to the positive attitude, positive affect, satisfaction and confidence among employees when they are at work. Employee morale is likely to have direct impact on performance, productivity, customer satisfaction and the like. Around the world organizations have been using digital/virtual platform of learning to enhance collaboration within and across teams. Sustainable HRM is seen as an extension of strategic HRM and presents a new approach to people management with the focus on long-term human resource development, regeneration, and renewal (Stankeviciute & Stankeviciene, 2018). Analysis by Jarlstrom, Saru and Vantala (2018) found four dimensions of sustainable HRM: justice and equality, transparent HR practices, profitability and employee well-being.
There is very limited literature that discusses effectiveness of sustainable practices in HRM and employee morale. Especially conducted in the Covid-19 context, this study becomes all the more relevant today. The current study addresses the gap by presenting an analysis of perceived effectiveness of new and different HRM practices implemented during COVID-19, and their implications for sustainability. The study talks about how the HRM practices implemented during Covid-19 were actually sustainable. People or human capital is the most valuable asset of any company and sustainability must start from them. The current study has implications for social and environmental aspects of sustainability.
Objectives
The objectives of this study is to examine whether perceived effectiveness of sustainable human resource management practices like recruitment, training & development, rewards & recognition, engagement and work-from-home during Covid-19 pandemic have any relationship with employee morale.
Literature Review
HR practices and employee motivation and wellbeing have been the subject matter of several researches since the recent past. This is especially because a sizeable number of employees over the world realize that they lack a deeper meaning in their jobs. Consequently, their job-related motivation and engagement is alarmingly low (Casey & Sieber, 2016). The researchers posit that sustainable HRM and engagement will help employees perceive their jobs as more meaningful. According to Piwowar-Sulej (2021) the consequence of successful implementation of sustainable HRM in organizations is competent and motivated employees. However, rare studies like Bowles & Cooper (2009) tried to find the relationship between sustainable HRM and employee morale and say that...
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