Impact of Restructuring on Employee Productivity Amidst COVID-19 in Pakistan: A Case Study of SMEs

Introduction

The world was hit with Covid-19 in November 2019 when the outbreak spread like wildfire in Wuhan, China. At that point of time no one had anticipated that the worst was yet to come. In this globally connected world, each nation will get affected by the devastation brought about by the pandemic. The world post corona will never be the same. Due to the unawareness and extent of the damage caused by Covid-19 was initially unknown hence individuals were permitted to travel all around the world which prompted spreading of the COVID-19 across the world, eventually which led to a global pandemic. It was 3 months after the underlying discovery of COVID 19 on March 11th 2020 that the WHO announced it as a worldwide pandemic. At the point when COVID-19 flare-up began spreading across the world, a huge number of individuals began confronting serious medical problems and demise rates expanded. The best way to stop the spread of the pandemic was to stop all friendly and financial exercises in the influenced nations for inconclusive time. This drove numerous nations to force total lock-down all over the globe which is as of yet still continuing in some countries. In such a situation all business exercises, across all ventures were totally halted. The lockdown affected different areas in changed degree. For instance, social gatherings, hotels, manufacturing industries, educational institutes are completely paused and will set aside a long effort to emerge from the present circumstance, if by any stretch of the imagination. A large number of individuals in these areas are prone to lose their jobs (Kaushik & Gulleria, 2020).

The coronavirus also commonly known as Covid-19 has affected 219 countries around the world, with over 3.02 million deaths and over 18.4 million currently infected with the virus as of April 2021. In Pakistan the current Covid-19 cases are 80559 out of which 4447 are critical cases with total amount of death toll being at 16243 as of 18th April 2021 (“Coronavirus Death Toll and Trends – Worldometer”, 2021). A developing country like Pakistan cannot afford to have a complete lockdown. The fundamental worry for the Government of Pakistan (GOP) has been the financial effect the lockdown will have on the helpless sections of the general public, and delicate economy all in all. The Pakistani Stock Market's benchmark KSE-100 Index has plunged by more than 25% in March, and the rupee by more than 6%. Pakistan's economy is projected to confront a deficiency of up to 4% of its GDP due to interruptions in exchange, possible decrease in FDI and settlements (Salik, 2020).

Especially, organizations are confronting an assortment of issues like a diminishing demand, store network disturbances, cancelation of fare orders, crude material deficiency, and transportation interruptions, among others. All things considered, it is very evident that enterprises are encountering the critical effect of COVID-19 on their organizations (Shafi, Mohsin, Liu & Ren, 2020).

Given to the Pandemic and changed technologies to get the work done changed the normal course of work in many FMCG comapnies. Before the technological change was made a norm the leaders insisted that they need to update their own mindsets and work behavior. This required a new of thinking in regard to the company and its daily operations. FMCG giant Unilever believes in transparency and co creating with its employees as they famously say “making change with employees, not to them” (Kerr, Billaud & Hjortshoej, 2020).

Objectives of the Study:

• •

  To assess the impact of job restructuring on employee productivity.

• •

  To understand the relationship between restructuring and employee productivity.

• •

  To comprehend the effect restructuring on employee productivity.

• •

  To analyze the effect of restructuring on employee productivity.

• •

  To interpret the usefulness of restructuring on employee productivity.