Organizations are increasingly challenged with staying competitive and keeping pace with an

unprecedented rate of change in their environments (Tovstiga, 2013). Highly volatile, uncertain, complex
and ambiguous (VUCA) environments create opportunities for organizations but also pose threats that
require them to be innovative and creative in how they approach these challenges, which are often not
just unpredicted but may even be unprecedented. Scholars have described how the HR function,
through adapted HR strategy and practices and through shaping employees' innovative behaviors, can
enhance organizational responsiveness to rapidly changing external competitive conditions affecting
their products or services (e.g., Cappelli & Tavis, 2018; Shafer, Dyer, Kilty, Amos, & Ericksen, 2001;
Shipton, Sparrow, Budhwar, & Brown, 2017). Ironically, however, little attention has been paid to how
organizations respond when the disruptive changes relate to HR issues affecting their members. The
COVID-19 outbreak is a stark example of disruptive change requiring rapid adjustment by the HR
function as organizations react to travel bans and quarantines, large-scale workforce restructuring and
layoffs, physical distancing and an overall shift to work-from-home mode of operations (McCulloch,
2020; Thomas, Campbell, & Hancock, 2020; Wei & Wong, 2020).

1. Invest on Training Employees for Remote Working (Training and Development)

Companies all around the world encourage or motivate employees to work from home during the
corona virus pandemic. This may be a firsthand experience for many of the employees in the world,
especially for employees in developing countries like Sri Lanka.
Meister (2020) has examined various ways the companies are dealing with remote working and one way
is training employees to work from home. She has identified that many organizations in USA provide
training for employees on working remotely, working remotely while in quarantine and also training
managers to manage remote workforce successfully. Microsoft has created a Guide to Working from
Home During COVID-19 and this guide was shared with the Microsoft global workforce (Meister, 2020).
For their customers, a version of that was made as an editable document to use with their own
organizational conditions (Meister, 2020).

It is recommended for organizations to use online or cloud platforms where their employees can work
remotely, learn new competencies, ask questions from their supervisors and colleagues, share opinions
and ideas etc. while being healthy and productive. As an additional advantage of working from home, it
makes employees to maintain a proper balance between their work life and family life.

2. Give More Consideration for Worker Wellbeing (Health and Safety Management)

Due to the fact that this deadly COVID-19 virus is spreading all over the world, one of the major
considerations or might be the first priority in the organization is well-being of the workers. If one of the

employees gets infected with this deadly virus, it surely can be a cause to shut down the whole
organization at an instant. Therefore, HRM needs to take relevant initiatives to protect worker well-
being. Meister (2020) said that “Today more than ever, the future of work is the future of worker
wellbeing”.

Thus, every employee of the organization must be informed to practice good safety practices while
maintaining social distance to protect others as well as themselves. For those employees who do not
work according to the safety practices of the organization can be punished through disciplinary actions.
Construction Industry Development Authority (2020) has mentioned health and safety guidelines for
employees in construction industry to be adopted during COVID-19 and some of them are given below
as an example.

Likewise, organizations in other industries also should follow comprehensive health and safety
guidelines as mentioned above and HR must take the first step of initiating them. Other than the above
practices organizations have to rethink on some areas like conducting meetings, using elevators, sanitary
facilities, using lunch rooms and changing rooms, transport facilities, accommodation etc. in order to
ensure the safety of every human being. Further, organizations have to take steps to keep their
organizations extra clean to avoid spreading of virus. It is compulsory for every organization to check the
temperature of employees using temperature test machines when they are entering into the
organizational premises. Another safety initiative is that organization can introduce a transport facility
system if they have the possibility, to let the employees travel from their home to workplace and from
workplace to home. This will reduce the chance of employees getting exposed to the external public in
public transportation vehicles (Eg; bus, train) and simultaneously reduce the probability of getting
infected by COVID-19 virus.

It is not only about the physical health of the employees but also about the mental health of the
employees. According to Opatha. (2020) there are 15 fears for employee due to COVID-19 and they are
fear of getting affected by himself or herself, fear of possibility of getting quarantine, fear of getting
stigmatized by the public and friends, fear of getting affected by his or her closely loved ones, fear of
getting affected by others, fear of becoming a cause of spreading the epidemic, fear of attending the
work, fear of getting sanction/s, fear of peer pressure, fear of harsh customer response, fear of losing
the job, fear of continuity of business operations, fear of inability of implementing plans developed, fear
of inability of formulating new plans for better future, and fear of loss of pursuits of pleasure. Opatha.
(2020) has mentioned that the employee will get one or two or several or all types of fears mentioned
above and as a result of that he or she becomes stressful. This type of stress is labeled as Stress By
Corona (SBC) (Opatha., 2020). Thus, it is a responsibility of HR department to make preventive actions
from the organization’s side to diminish or eradicate those fears through counselling and executing
standard health and safety practices as mentioned before in the paper. Ultimately this will minimize
employees’ Stress By Corona (SBC).

3. Pay Cuts Instead of Layoffs (Pay Management)

One of the major challenges for organizations during this pandemic is to pay salaries for employees.
Paying salaries as usual might not be possible for many organizations as they were shut down at least for
a month in many countries. In Sri Lanka many of the private and public organizations were closed for
nearly two to three months and still there are some barriers to open some business organizations due to
the prevailing quarantine curfew in some areas of the country at the moment. As a result of this
organizations couldn’t earn profits as usual and now, they are struggling with paying salaries to the
employees. Hence, some organizations have started to layoff employees. This has also become a cause
for many employees’ mental stress as they are losing their income source. But it is more suitable for HR
to help the company and the employees of the organization during this hard time, by proposing salary
cuts for a predetermined period instead of layoffs (Jaisinghani, 2020). Here, proper communication must
be held between the HR department and trade union/s of the organization. For an example, one HR
Manager of an organization in Sri Lanka mentioned that they have requested all the Senior Managers
and above staff to salary deferment on voluntary basis from April onwards. They have given options to
cut their salaries as a percentage of 0%, 20%, 40%, 50% from the basic salary. Further, he mentioned
that Senior Managers individually responded to the HR department and this strategy helped their
company to save money in millions to manage lower staff salaries. Another example is management can
reduce salaries up to 25% for a period of 6 months so that the company can survive and no staff needs
to be laid off (Jaisinghani, 2020).

4. Communicate All the Necessary Actions Taken by the Organization to Employees

Taking necessary actions by the HR people and other managers of the organization to fight against
COVID-19 is not enough, but also need to communicate those actions to employees in an
understandable way because ultimately these actions are executed by employees in the organization.
Therefore, it is recommended to send an e-mail to all the employees who have e-mail facilities,
informing safety measures or share newly introduced safety policies and other related policies and
procedures via social media. Those e-mail or online facilities might not be available for some poor
factory workers living in some developing countries like Sri Lanka. However, they can be communicated
through word of mouth method or displaying posters and notices in the places where they regularly
attend (Eg; lunch room, bathroom area, inside the factory, rest rooms etc.) in the organization.