Analysing the systemic changes of HR in start-ups due to COVID-19

Abstract

The pandemic, COVID-19 has forced many start-ups to shut down and many others are facing cash crunch. In India about 38% start-ups have ran out of funds and 4% have shutdown (Times of India, 2020). In such a situation, businesses are forced to scale down the work force and improve the efficiency of the existing workforce by re-skilling. While, cost-cutting is a high priority, COVID-19 is transforming every aspect of working. According to a survey, globally nearly 88% of the organizations have mandated employees to work from home and 97% of the organizations have cancelled all work-related travel (Arlington, 2020). Work from home has become a new normal for most of the employees. Accordingly, all the aspects of HR management have taken a turn. Recruitment, training and engaging the employees has become a biggest challenge across all the companies and many organizations are re-thinking about current practices. Many established companies are adapting to environment with the aid of technology. For example, Walmart has partnered with Strivr to use virtual reality to prepare Walmart workers for Black Friday in store shopping (Meister, 2020). However, start-ups don’t have necessary bandwidth in terms of resources to invest on technology. While many start-ups have withered due to the pandemic, there are also start-ups that prospered due to the pandemic. The core differentiating factor between two such categories of start-ups is their ability to cope with environmental changes and renew themselves. Organizational renewal involves changing organizational resources and competencies over a short period of time. Through this project, we aim to analyse how start-ups are responding and adapting to the pandemic, and possible short term and long-term trends that could impact various organizational domains with a special focus on the HR systems.