The challenges faced by individuals and organizations during the COVID-19 crisis have significantly changed how businesses operate. In response, how we think about organizational and vocational behavior research has shifted. Questions of how leaders manage their workforce, how workers manage their daily work demands, and how workers consider their career options during and post the pandemic have attracted scholars' interest to assist businesses with recalibrating to a ?new normal.? Presented in this special issue are 10 original articles that seek to propel the organizational and vocational behavior fields forward, addressing questions important in the context of crises, on working life. In our introduction to the special issue, we set the scene for this new research by reviewing the organizational and vocational behavior literature published over the first 2?years of the pandemic that has explored the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on organizations and workers. This existing body of research covers emotions, work attitudes and behaviors, health and well-being, and team and career-related outcomes in the context of the crisis. The special issue also reflects on the enduring challenges for organizational and vocational behavior scholars conducting research during times of crisis to provide a roadmap for future research.

Organizational and vocational behavior in times of crisis: A review of empirical work undertaken during the COVID‐19 pandemic and introduction to the special issue

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9376344

Prospering in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: The effects of PROSPER-based intervention on psychological outcomes among preschool teachers

Numerous empirical studies and meta-analyses have offered ample evidence for the relationship between the strategic management of human resources and a variety of important organizational outcomes, such as individual- and firm-level performance. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, steered the discussion away from the traditional performance-related outcomes of the strategic human resource management and brought to the fore the importance of resilience. The purpose of this paper is to identify areas in which strategic human resource management can help organizations to become more resilient.,On the basis of a brief overview of the different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the management of human resources, this conceptual paper uses the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity framework as the backbone for the development of suggestions for the strategic management of employees to create and maintain organizational resilience.,A series of actionable suggestions regarding the way forward in building organizational resilience through the effective and ethical management of employees are presented and discussed. Specifically, the importance of using flexibility-oriented human resource management systems is highlighted. This “flexibility-orientation” involves all functions of human resource management, such as selection, training and compensation.,The proposed suggestions can benefit organizations by offering actionable recommendations regarding the management of human resources by taking stock of lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rethinking the strategic management of human resources: lessons learned from Covid-19 and the way forward in building resilience

Introduction: Of the serious problems that characterise the current crisis in Spain, the most alarming and revealing is unemployment, which, despite being so common, continues to be quite a negative experience for most people, often with serious negative effects on their biopsychosocial health. The perpetuation of this situation has given rise to a new syndrome of the unemployed. If these effects of economic downsizing are accompanied by the magnitude of the current situation brought about by COVID-19, the results can be devastating for the individuals and families experiencing it. Objective: To compare the symptoms of the unemployed syndrome in three population groups. Method: Three groups were studied: short-term unemployed (n = 91), long-term unemployed (n = 150), and those unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 94). Unemployment syndrome was assessed with the Unemployment Syndrome Scale (USS). The three population groups were contacted through web pages, social networks, etc. and answered the instruments online in a single session. Once the responses were obtained, their information was encoded in a database and analysed through the SPSS v. 21 program. Population groups were compared using the ANOVA analysis and the Bonferroni post hoc test. Results: The unemployed individuals who lost their job during the pandemic reported higher scores in the symptoms of the Unemployed Syndrome Scale compared to the long- and short-term unemployed individuals. ANOVA analyses for symptoms of USS were all significant in the different groups considering a significance level of <0.005. Participants who were unemployed for less than one year had lower scores in the USS than the long-term unemployed participants and those unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic that reported a significantly higher number of symptoms in the USS.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7372/pdf

Unemployment Syndrome during COVID-19: A Comparison of Three Population Groups.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2023.103669

COVID-19 Government restriction policy, COVID-19 vaccination and stock markets: Evidence from a global perspective

The purpose of this article is to simultaneously advance theory and practice by understanding how the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic relates to new hire engagement. Prior research suggests starting a new job is an uncertain experience; we theorize that the COVID-19 pandemic creates additional environmental stressors that affect new hire engagement. First, we hypothesize that the occurrence of COVID-19 and unemployment rates relate negatively to engagement. Second, we theorize that the effects of the pandemic become more disruptive on new hire engagement as they gain tenure within the organization. Third, drawing from strategic management theory, we test whether States that introduce stronger COVID-19 policies help enhance the engagement of new hires. Examining a U.S. national sample of 12,577 newly hired (90 days or less) quick service restaurant employees across 9 months (January-September, 2020), we find support for these hypotheses. Subsequent model comparisons suggest there may be health stressors that shape engagement more strongly than purely economic stressors. These findings may be important because they highlight the experiences of workers more likely to be exposed to the pandemic and affected by COVID-related policies. Should the results generalize to other samples and jobs, this study offers potentially new research directions for understanding relationships between macro stressors and new hire perceptions and socialization. It also offers practical implications by helping organizations understand the importance of explicitly managing job insecurity, particularly in terms of COVID-19 policy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Sam D. Strizver

Papers

The COVID-19 pandemic and new hire engagement: Relationships with unemployment rates, state restrictions, and organizational tenure.

Pay Information Disclosure: Review and Recommendations for Research Spanning the Pay Secrecy–Pay Transparency Continuum