Due to the terrible destruction caused by the COVID 19 Pandemic, practically all organizations, enterprises, agencies, and other establishments around the world are currently on lockdown in accordance with governmental health procedures.
In this challenging situation, practically all of the organizations have developed work-from-home arrangements. The Department of Education is one of these organizations in the Philippines adhering to this Order (DepEd). Because to the difficulties caused by the fatal virus, several agencies and organizations are required to follow the government’s health procedures. The DepEd is also implementing the work from home policy for educators. For a variety of reasons, the majority of employees find this arrangement to be difficult.
In the present business situation during the COVID‐19 pandemic, employee engagement has become one of the utmost prominent primacies for human resource managers and practitioners in organizations due to lockdown. The paper is to determine the engagement of employees by various companies during coronavirus pandemic. Organizations nowadays are constantly developing innovative and effective means to engage the employees during this tough time. This paper is a conceptual paper that is based on various research papers, articles, blogs, online newspapers, and reports of World Health Organization. During this pandemic situation, organizations are evolving many engagement activities like online family engagement practices, virtual learning and development, online team building activities, webinars with industry experts, online conduct weekly alignment sessions, team meet‐ups over video conference for lunch, short online game sessions, virtual challenges and competitions, online courses, appreciation sessions, communication exercises, live sessions for new‐skill training, online counseling sessions, recognition and acknowledgment session, webinars dealing with anxiety and stress, providing online guidance for exercise and meditation, social interactions in a virtual office, classrooms training modules digitally, e‐learning modules, and many more creative learning sessions. Work‐from‐home regime engagement activities are very fruitful for employees as well as for organizations. Those organizations doing these kinds of engagement activities for their employees are learning new skills and developing themselves. Employees are feeling committed to the organization and stay motivated during this tough time of COVID‐19 pandemic. Owing to this issue, the higher ranking DepEd officials are aware that in these pandemic times, employee involvement in their work needs to be treated with the utmost invention, originality, and efficacy to comply with the government’s health guidelines and to sustain the company’s productivity. It is obvious to every employee that at this time, the set up should be followed to limit, if not completely eradicate, the spread of the deadly virus due to the ongoing worldwide catastrophe. Such precautions include social seclusion, use of face masks and face shields. Also, it is difficult for workers to participate in their work in a healthy but productive manner. They aspire to adhere to the organization’s high standards of service while being devoted to its objectives and professional working principles. It is a proven fact that workers who can adapt to any situation at work will help the organization or agency succeed, which will increase teacher and student production and the effectiveness of the school as a whole.
On the other hand, DepEd officials should engage with the staff about the difficulties they faced with regard to the technical, physical, cognitive, and emotional components of their work-from-home arrangement and take the required corrective action to improve staff performance.
Reference:
Littlefield, Christopher How to Be an Emphathetic Remote CoWorker During the COVID 19 Crisis https :/hbr.org>2020/04
By: JONATHAN B. BALDEO| HEAD TEACHER III| BATAAN NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL|BALANGA CITY, BATAAN
