Covid-19 Pandemic and Its Implications for Human Resources The Nigerian Experience

Abstract

The study is to examine covid-19 pandemic and its implications for human resources: The Nigerian experience. The incessant spread of the dreaded virus globally coupled with the way we work, live and the persistent humanitarian crisis increased drastically and constituted enormous challenges to human resources available to organizations despite a coordinated effort to mitigate the risk of being infected with the virus. It is from the foregoing that the objectives of this study were drawn. Specifically, the study will ascertain the implications of covid-19 on jobs in Nigeria, investigate the implications of covid-19 on employee training in Nigeria, and examine the implications of covid-19 on psychological well-being of human resources in Nigeria. The paper is an ex-post facto research and adopted its analytical methodology from conventional content analysis based on secondary data gleaned from journals, textbooks, newspapers, web pages and government publications. Meanwhile, the study employed incentive theory as the theoretical umbrella for this discourse. The findings show that, some employees were stripped of their jobs because they could not contribute meaningfully to their organizations. Employees were not trained because employers felt they were redundant and unproductive. Some of them experienced psychological distress as a result of fear of contacting the virus and losing their job. The study recommends for people stripped of their jobs to engage in entrepreneurial initiatives as a genuine strategy of job creation, community resource assistance for those who lost their jobs, employees training for efficiency, open access to mental health and psychological support services.