What We Know About Workplace Responses During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Human Resources Processes and Their Outcomes

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented situation, impacting all productive sectors. Human resources departments have been instrumental in migrating from a functional to a strategic perspective, contributing to the strengthening of organisations. This chapter aims to analyse workplace responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the adoption of human resources practices through a systematic literature review. Findings indicate that the main responses to the pandemic were creating a work team to manage the crisis; virtual work at the individual and group levels; encouraging virtual leadership; psychological, financial, and health support; fostering a work environment favourable to empowerment, shared decision-making, and participation. Other frequently mentioned human resources practices were compensation, flexible working, work design, performance management, remote working, work-family balance, recognition programmes, and training and development practices.