HRM ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC: IMPACT OF COVID ON HR Company:

PRACTICES AND FUTURE
WORKFORCE
PROFESSOR: DR. URVASHI SHARMA

SUBMITTED BY: NIRAJ DUBEY

MBA(HRD) DSE
 THE COMPANY
MakeMyTrip is an Indian online
travel company founded in 2000
by Deep Kalra.Headquartered
in Gurugram, Haryana, the
company provides online travel
services including flight tickets,
domestic and international holiday
packages, hotel reservations, rail,
and bus tickets. As of 31 March
2018, they have 14 company-
owned travel stores in 14 cities,
over 30 franchisee-owned travel
stores in 28 cities, and counters in
four major airports in India.
In 2016, MakeMyTrip and Ibibo
Group, India's largest travel
booking portals, merged through a
stock transaction. Through this
transaction, MakeMyTrip acquired
its rival, Ibibo Group, in one of the
biggest acquisition in Indias online
travel space. Post merger,
MakeMyTrip shareholders own a
60% stake and Ibibo Group
shareholders get a 40% stake.
Naspers and Tencent, who jointly
owned Ibibo Group, became the
single largest shareholder in
MakeMyTrip.
 Impact of Covid on Hr Practices
“Keeping morale up will be
one of the biggest challenges
for HR professionals, as there
is no certainty about when
the pandemic will end” said
Yuvaraj Srivastava, group
chief human resources officer
at MakeMyTrip in an email
interview.
Travel firm MakeMyTrip has
announced salary cuts as
tourism sector have taken a
massive hit due to the
corona virus outbreak.
MakeMyTrip founder Deep
Kalra said that the pay cut
will happen across top and
managerial levels of the
company. the salary cut has
been done across
MakeMyTrip (MMT)
subsidiaries - Goibibo
and redBus.
The company might also
lay off about 400
employees who are not on its
payroll.
MakeMyTrip has about 650
people employed for backend
and support services. It has
plans to fire 60 per cent of
its total headcounts in these
departments.
The announcement has come
a day after Kalra and the
other founder Rajesh
Magow decided to draw zero
salaries starting April. They
also said that the leadership
team at MakeMyTrip would
be taking a 50 per cent
salary cut.
Difficulty in Keeping Morale
High:
One of the biggest concerns
for all HR practitioners is
keeping the morale of
employees high knowing that
we will be living with the
virus for a foreseeable period.
There is a sense of monotony
and fatigue that is settling in
– and this is one of the
biggest deterrents to healthy
growth at work and on the
personal front as well.
The emotional impact of
being disconnected from the
real world has only
exacerbated the stress levels
amongst employees – calling
out the need to establish a
positive and balanced work
structure that ensures
employees are suitably
engaged and well-rested.
Virtual On Boarding:
Over the past few months,
MMT have virtually
onboarded more than 60
campus hires and hope to
honour the rest of the
campus commitments in the
coming months. MMT
recruiting team has also
started making visits to
engineering schools for roles
in the technology domain.
While the modus operandi for
some of the other core HR
practices such as onboarding,
learning and development,
recruitment and employee
engagement were
remodelled for an online-only
mode, they continued to
remain rooted in our core
values.
MMT Work from Home
Model:
For many years now,
MakeMyTrip have been a
strong promoter of the work-
from-home model. Amongst
MMT workforce, a team of
over 600 women, who are
employed as Holiday Experts,
work from the comfort of
their home. So, it wasn’t
technically the first time that
we introduced remote
working models to our
people, but this offline-to-
online migration was one-of-
its first and a new learning
curve at this scale.
Employee Engagement:
Keeping employees
motivated and engaged
requires a great deal of effort
and collective contribution
from individuals, leaders and
the organisation at large.
During the lockdown,
MakeMyTrip kept his
workforce busy with projects
that would help greatly once
we hit the road to recovery.
From enhancing and building
travel products for the new
normal to contributing to the
development of the life-
saving Aarogya Setu app,
MMT teams remained
committed to contributing
meaningfully through their
individual roles. Also, MMT
realised that with some extra
time at hand, this was a
good time for company
employees to learn and
upskill… through online
courses and webinars on
various domains-specific
themes across strategy,
marketing, technology,
product design, advanced
learning and more.
Leadership Evolvement: encouraged and hopeful of
The biggest test of leadership getting to the other side of the
is how one responds and acts crisis, together.
with resolve during calamitous Mental and Emotional Well
times like these. Our Being of Employees:
generation has not seen
calamitous event of this nature MMT introduced new HR-led
and with no crisis manual initiatives that prioritised
available for industries and mental and emotional
businesses for a pandemic this wellbeing of people. With no
scale, effective decision physical interaction with co-
making with far reaching workers, MMT team building
implications can naturally and employee engagement
become a daunting task for exercises prioritised and
leaders. focused on building a strong
‘human connect’ in the new
crisis of this nature demands digital workplace – all with an
leaders to reflect visible aim to foster a culture of social
decisiveness, address human belonging, openness and
aspects of the crisis and offer transparency amid the rising
an optimistic yet, the realistic uncertainty.
outlook in order to ensure that
every stakeholder in the
organisation’s ecosystem trusts
and supports the company’s
path to recovery. And this
requires acknowledging the
personal and professional
challenges that employees are
experiencing and maintaining
utmost transparency to ensure
that teams remain motivated,
 Impact on Future Workforce
As we all know, change is
inevitable. It will keep taking
place by virtue of certain
triggers, whether internal or
external or whether we are
prepared for it or not!The
biggest change or trigger for
change that the entire world
is experiencing right now is
the Covid-19 crisis. It has
certainly affected the way we
live and work. There is
literally a 180 degrees turn.
No organization has been left
untouched by the impact of
Covid-19. Not only the
organization, the entire
sectors have been badly hit.
The businesses are facing
the wrath of the pandemic
and HR cannot stay
unaffected as an organization
is an ecosystem and
everything is interconnected
and interdependent.
Now that the fact that HR’s
role will undergo a change
has been established, it is
imperative to understand the
what and how of this change.
Remote work culture is here
to stay:
Now the organizations are
realizing the fact that they
can function through this
model as well. This kind of
culture will be followed in
many organizations post
covid-19 crisis as well. And
there’s no harm in doing so,
as gig economy is already on
a rise.
The new ways of doing work
will pose new challenges for
the HR department.
Certain questions that need
to be addressed are :
How to monitor and enforce
attendance?
How will the job descriptions
change to accommodate the
part time or full-time
remote work?
How to keep a check on the
productivity of employees?
How the whole performance
management will be
impacted?
What about those jobs which
cannot be done in a work-
from-home setting?
Apart from these, HR now
needs to be more focused on
the well-being of the
employees. It will become an
important aspect of HR
functions. Checking on the
employees if they are under
stress or facing any other
issues which is hampering
their productivity will
definitely be a part of the
priority list even after things
return to a new normal.
Maintaining the Culture of
the organization:
It is the culture of an
organization which attracts
us to it and choosing one
organization over the other.
Leadership is the most
important aspect of any
business that drives its
culture.
Culture is what binds the
entire organizations together
and gives its employees a
sense of purpose in their
work.
But maintaining the
organization’s culture in the
time of crisis is a big
challenge. With the dispersed
workforce, this becomes
even more challenging.
Leaders along with the HR
are required to keep in touch
with the employees to boost
their morale. Regular
communication, engagement
and commitment towards the
culture is something which
needs to be done to deal
effectively with the crisis
situation.
Paying attention to the
organization’s culture and
instilling the same in the
employees will help the
organization in the long run.
Acquiring and retaining existing employees as well as
talent: the prospective candidates.

What HR can do in such a

Laying off huge number of
situation is to maintain a
employees due to onset of
pool of talent, so that as and
pandemic and low profits is a
when the situation is likely
pain area for many
they can immediately start
organizations.
getting the new employees
Once the situation is onboard and push the
somewhat normal, hiring will performance of the
be resumed but it would be organization.
mostly contract hiring and
temporary workers, since the
organizations will be Engaging a remote
continuing with remote workforce:
working. HR needs to figure
out a way to attract more
and more such candidates
who are willing to work Workforce engagement of
temporarily. workforce is one of the
crucial roles of HR. various
Another aspect which is studies prove that a highly
important is way the engaged workforce is
employees are being treated necessary for the survival
during the crisis. This can and growth of the
impact the image of the organization. Without that,
organization in the society. the organization will incur
For instance, Uber laid-off huge costs and will
huge number of employees eventually fall.
over a short zoom call, which
was very harsh on their part. In the situation of remote
Now this will create working, it becomes even
uncertainty in the minds of more important for the HR to
take care of the well-being of
the employees. HR can
devise new policies to take of
the health, both mental and
physical of the employees.

Certain benefits that can be

considered are daily pay,
subsidized loans and free
access to financial education
webinars to reduce the
financial stress of the
employees.

Also, rewarding the

employees for their
consistent performance even
while working remotely can
go a long way to keep them
motivated and engaged with
the entire team and leaders.