Driving Organizational Change In The Midst Of The Crisis: How Does It Affect Employee Performance?

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate how organizational change during a crisis influence employee performance, with special references to a virtual work setting and working from home. Primary data obtained from 295 employees from three commercial banks in Sri Lanka were selected through Stratified Simple Random Sampling. Descriptive statistics, linear regression analysis and multiple regression analysis are used for data analysis. The linear regression results explore that measures/variables such as changes in a communication system; leadership; Technology and Tolerance to change have a significant negative effect on employee performance, while the multiple regression analysis shows, only the changes in communication and leadership affect employees' performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were limited to selected employees in three private commercial banks in Colombo, Sri Lanka using a self-structured questionnaire. The findings of this research rely on primary data collected from the grass root level. Also considering the response rate and sample size, there are limitations to generalize the findings. This research was restricted to four variables Changes in the communication system; Changes in leadership style; Technology advancement and Tolerance to change; impact of other factors that can influence employees' performance during the pandemic period did not fall under the scope of this study/were not covered. The impact of organizational change on employees' performance during COVID-19 is an under-researched area of study. Findings of this study can act as a guideline in future for managers to handle organizational change with lesser employee resistance to successfully manage where companies are forced to implement sudden changes.