V-5 Model of Employee Engagement During COVID-19 and Post Lockdown

Abstract

COVID-19 has left the globe in a situation of despondency. Physical as well as the human resources (HR) of an organization were adversely affected during the lockdown. The corporate world is observing several corporate crises from the full or partial shutdown of businesses to layoffs, furloughs and resignations. HR managers are struggling to curb this renunciation of employees and grappling with reduced employee engagement. To keep employees highly motivated in this time of mayhem and maelstrom of the pandemic, HR managers need to revisit their employee engagement strategies with a new perspective. This article provides a ready reference list of variables to HR managers to enhance employee engagement level during COVID-19 and post lockdown. This article suggests five major elements of employee engagement, namely—value, voice, variety, virtue and vision. These logical elements of employee engagement are identified after an exhaustive review of the literature. Appropriate variables for each element support author’s perspective. Though neither these elements nor the variables are exhaustive, yet they hold utmost relevance to enhance employee engagement in the time of the global pandemic.