Employee Engagement in Times of Crisis

Abstract

limited to employee productivity then on we graduated to shifting our focus to correlating performance with employee satisfaction. Higher the levels of employee satisfaction, greater the performance. Of late with the changes in nature of businesses we have started realizing and talking about the most critical and neglected aspect known as ``employee engagement''. Engagement is often said as a capture of an employee's head and heart. Today the world is different than it used to be nearly a year ago. The global pandemic has caused an atmosphere of uncertainties and confusion creating communication gaps and lead to complete disruption in our lives. In such a scenario, keeping employees engaged and passionate about work is a challenge ahead of organizations worldwide. This paper attempts to focus on studying the impact the global pandemic has on various employee engagement practices and strategies of the firms. The primary purpose of this research is to understand how such periods of crisis impacts the employee engagement practices and to be more specific which areas of employee engagement has changed drastically during this crisis. Employee engagement in such trying times assumes a paramount importance. Though a lot of organizations have encountered a plethora of challenges due to Covid-19 crisis in adjusting their management styles and working practices it is a question unanswered as to how the lessons learned about the employee engagement will be brought to practice in their working model. It will surely bring scope for positive improvements and shift in area of focus in employee engagement practices in the organizations in years to come.