Covid-19 pandemic has caused massive disruptions in terms of how we work, from where we work

etc. Discuss (i) recruitment & selection (ii) Training & development (iii) Performance appraisal (iv)
employee engagement and retention (HR) process challenges during Covid- 19.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic most of the workforce went to online mode and few in hybrid mode.
At the initial days of the pandemic, most organisations stopped hiring to cut losses. Few firms also
revoked the job offers provided to new resources and some deferred the date of joining in order to
wait till the market stabilises. The hiring process once started has been predominantly in virtual
mode. During pre-pandemic times, interviews were mostly offline and seldom interview were held in
online unless there was location constraints. Now the trend is reversed and most of the hiring
process is digitalised due to penetration of applications like zoom, MS teams and CRM applications
by the organisation. Internal hiring has also been in rise in order to cut short cost and hiring time.
This would also lead to better resource utility within the organisation.

Training and development at workplace is one of the most impacted activities of any organisation
due to covid pandemic. Closure of offices has led to a huge gap of interaction among peers and
training personnel. Employees needed reskilling and transformation to digital talent were the need
of the hour for the organisation as well. Companies repositioned their learning program and
promoted digital learning for employees to upgrade themselves with relevant skills. In order to
improve the workplace learning firms are planning on hybrid mode of learning process in order to
help them improve on both practical and application aspect of learnings.

Even in the best of times, determining how to effectively evaluate and reward staff is difficult. In this
situation, managers are confronted with a circumstance that make the job even more difficult
because they are likely to lead to increasing bias. More bias can result from ambiguity in how
assessments are done.

Employee engagement in Covid time is complicated due to work from home nature of employees.
Senior management who did not have remote working mechanisms in place at the start of the
pandemic had to devise a way to supervise their team's performance from home during the work-
from-home scenario. Daily team meetings and frequent one-on-one check-ins were two popular
online ways. The flexible working environment that most COVID-19 employees were exposed to, on
the other hand, has changed our outlook on work-life balance. Working from home allows
employees to balance their professional and personal duties. Employees who were willing to go
beyond planned hours as a direct result of good engagement in the COVID-19 remote working
environment have occasionally improved commitment as a result of the flexibility to choose one's
working hours.