Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Employee Engagement in a Selected Private Commercial Bank in Colombo Region, Sri Lanka

Abstract

The level of eagerness, enthusiasm and the commitment of employees towards their job role are described as Employee Engagement, and this is one of the Human Resources concepts currently been practiced in organizations. The more you engage your employees ,and show that you care, they will surely feel that their efforts are been acknowledged and it will make a huge difference. Employee Engagement also helps you to measure and manage employees’ point of view on certain tasks and decisions during some of the crucial elements in the workplace culture. This particularresearch isan effort to go beyond the concept of Employee Engagement and the impact it had on employees during the Covid-19 pandemic. The overall research will be based on the changes that took place from 2018 –2021. The research is tested in aselected PrivateCommercialBankinColomboRegioninSriLanka.Themainaimofthisresearchisto investigate the key factors that drive Employee Engagement during the pandemic situation. Where as the primary objective is to measure the influence of Covid-19 pandemic on Employee Engagementwiththebank,followedbythesecondaryobjectivesofto identifytheimpactof Work From Home (WFH) concept on employees’ engagement, to identify the employee’s level of confidence, to recognize the communication process for employees, what other employee benefits (E.g.: infrastructure, non-monitory benefits) and to provide recommendations to improve Employee Engagement in the Bank. The available literature materials on the said factors will also be identified and presented. The population of the study was 150 whereas a sample size of 100 was taken into consideration for analysis. The primary data was collected through a questionnaire and the secondary data was used from some of the reports from the company Human Resource Department. The quantitative analysis was performed using the SPSS tool in order to test and develop the hypothesis of the study. Also aqualitative analysis was also carried out in order to find possible solutions and achieve the said research objectives. The final suggestion was that employee engagement had an impact on the employees during the pandemic and it is vital and recommends developing further activities to keep them motivated and remain in the Bank.