COVID-19 and Workforce Management: Evolving Patterns, Challenges, and Opportunities in HRM

RESEARCH TITLE
COVID-19 and the future of workforce management – Evolving
patterns, challenges and key opportunities
STUDENT NUMBER
___________
SUBMISSION DATE
17 DECEMBER 2021
WORD COUNT
12020
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ABSTRACT
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the landscape of Human Resource
Management (HRM) significantly as it provided many challenges to the employees and the
managers alike. This research started with a focus on understanding the evolving challenges,
patterns and approaches used by HR (Human Resource) managers in conducting various key
functions including recruitment, training, performance management and other vital aspects
of HRM. A thorough review of various opinions, ideas and inputs from several authors on
this research topic highlighted various emerging approaches used by HR managers for
workforce management amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary data is collected using
‘Personal Interviews’ from HR managers of the selected retail stores based in Preston UK
and their insights are analysed to identify emerging themes. The use of interpretivism
research philosophy and inductive reasoning helped the researcher to integrate subjective
elements into this research for broader understanding. Recommendations to enhance the
HRM approaches and the scope for future research are discussed at the end of this report.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly, I would like to extend my sincere thanks and gratitude to my supervisor
___________ who was instrumental in helping me complete this research. Your support and
guidance throughout this research is invaluable. Secondly, I would also like to thank my
friends and family who offered moral support to keep me motivated. Lastly, I would like to
thank the research participants for offering their valuable inputs on this research topic.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................6
Research Background........................................................................................................................6
Research Aim.....................................................................................................................................7
Research Objectives..........................................................................................................................7
Rationale behind the research...........................................................................................................7
Structure of this report......................................................................................................................8
CHAPTER TWO – LITERATURE REVIEW..................................................................................................9
Introduction.......................................................................................................................................9
HRM Challenges and Opportunities during COVID-19 era.................................................................9
Disproportionate effects in work-family life....................................................................................11
Key HRM Operations Impacted negatively by COVID......................................................................13
Staffing process and its affects....................................................................................................13
Employee Engagement................................................................................................................14
Performance Management..........................................................................................................14
Compensation management.......................................................................................................15
Training and career development................................................................................................15
Emerging HR Strategies for efficient people management amidst pandemic..................................16
Perspective of Stakeholders............................................................................................................17
COVID-19 pandemic’s practical implications...................................................................................18
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................19
CHAPTER FOUR – RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.....................................................................................20
Introduction.....................................................................................................................................20
Research Philosophy........................................................................................................................20
Research Approach..........................................................................................................................21
Research Methods...........................................................................................................................22
Data Collection and Analysis............................................................................................................23
Sampling..........................................................................................................................................23
Ethical Considerations.....................................................................................................................23
Limitations.......................................................................................................................................23
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................23
CHAPTER FOUR – FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS........................................................................................24
Introduction.....................................................................................................................................24
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION............................................................................................................32
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Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................36
CHAPTER FIVE – CONCLUSIONS...........................................................................................................37
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................40
APPENDICES.........................................................................................................................................43
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS...................................................................................................................43
SIGNED ETHICS FORM......................................................................................................................45
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CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTION
Research Background
According to Rakowska (2014), activities in human resources management enable
organizations to gain dominant position in market through boosting the employee
productivity, morale and performance. In the current digitisation era, HRM operations
though upgraded momentously, the COVID-19 outburst forced companies in speeding up
the process of integrating niche technologies to HRM (Dermot and Bailey, 2020). The role
played by HR team is pivotal in motivating, liaising, collaborating and finally managing
employees in aligning the interdependent operations to alleviate COVID repercussions while
effectively utilizing the human resources. According to Yadav et al (2020), there is an
increasing desideratum to boost efficiency of HR operations in various dynamics such as
employee engagement, recruitment and performance management. As almost all industries
transformed to remote in delivering the services, the challenge ahead for them is giving
commitment in long term. According to Schmidt and Nutsubidze (2021), defiance has been
added to a big extent due to increasing necessity to train their employees for upgrading
their skills to further enhance the business which needs support from leadership.
The pandemic has brought unprecedented transformation in all kinds of organisations
especially in the operations of managing human resources. Zhong (2021) stated that for
more than 75 percent of employees COVID-19 transfigured their job experience. The COVID
directed the organizations in amending and adapting to new work structure due to
unexpected issues, challenges and concerns rose at all levels mainly at health, hygiene and
safety factors. In such health calamity situation, managers of human resource department
take part in critical responsibilities in dealing with not only hygiene and safety concerns but
also with the stress, anxiety and other psychological factors which got worsened in virtual
long working duration in a day (Andy & Butterick, 2021). Organizations got panicked after
hearing the news about widespread pandemic initially but finally came up with an effective
strategy for business operations continuity while protecting the employees from COVID
effects.
As work environment transitioned from office to home in this COVID era, imbalance
occurred in all types of businesses because of ineffective medium for communication.
Schmidt & Nutsubidze (2021) after doing the research and development on employee life in
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pandemic era have put forward the tough challenges for Human Resource Managers to deal
with as morale management, motivation, involvement, mental health and translucent
collaboration in remote work environment. Acclimating to new and further evolving
circumstances being created due to pandemic is also another challenge which HR managers
should deal with effectively. Cen & Linujan (2020) put forwarded another set of challenges
for HR managers in distant work culture like planning and managing work for employees,
engaging employees in various tasks, boosting the confidence, bolstering the work culture
where people are working in dispersed locations amidst COVID-19, and skill possession and
retention. The thesis report aims at studying the continuous changing roles of managers in
the department of HR in current pandemic era and also in future.
Research Aim
Investigating how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is shaping the future of HRM practices in
the Preston’s retail companies is the primary aim of this research.
Research Objectives
 To analyse the transformative role played by HR managers in the wake of COVID-19
pandemic
 To review of innovative HR practices to foster employee engagement and workforce
productivity during COVID-19
 To assess the measures that must be adopted by HR managers to cope with
challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic
Rationale behind the research
The HRM activities are highly important in business organizations in the present pandemic
and post pandemic ages to gain sustainability and achieve competitive advantage. On taking
part in this research program, researcher is targeting to upgrade proficiency in HRM
discipline and how it got impacted by pandemic. The COVID-19 created the transformation
of moving from conventional office work structure to remote through digitisation in which
many factors needs to be scrutinized meticulously by organizations before implementation
mainly collaboration. Companies in the current era are planning to explore different new
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methods for hiring, talent management, sustaining the confidence of human resources and
track their health periodically. The thesis activity explores current and future trends in
employee management of UK retail domain and the implications that they send to HR
Managers.
Structure of this report
Literature Review – In this chapter, several key topics associated with this research such as
emerging role of HR professionals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, driving employee
engagement through innovation HRM practices, latest HRM trends and the challenges faced
by HR managers in managing the workforce are critically analysed.
Research Methodology – All the research tools that are selected by the researcher to
conduct this research are discussed and justified in this section. Some of the areas include
the philosophy of the research, research approach, data collection, sampling and ethical
issues.
Findings and Analysis – The responses collected by the researcher using the interviews will
be discussed and analysed in this section followed by identification of key themes
Conclusions – The objectives of this research are discussed in line with the outcomes of this
research in this section along with key recommendations.
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