Management Assignment: Opportunities & Constraints Faced by Australian Management During Pandemic
Question
Task:
Write a detailed management assignment analysing and discussing the key opportunities and constraints faced by management during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Answer
Introduction
As discussed herein management assignment, in December of 2019, the Chinese government indicated that they were treating people who had contracted a new virus. It was identified as the coronavirus . It was a new strain of SARS. There was a huge global response in controlling the disease, including curfews and lockdowns, as the health experts embarked on the journey to look for the cure. Many countries started responding to the cases of the pandemic, and in an effort to protect their citizens, they adopted social, economic and security measures. These measures ended up having adverse effects and more so in the hospitality industry. In this study, the focus is on strategic opportunities and constraints that were faced by business managers across Australia as well as the world.
Constraints
Management is important for the protection of its personnel while being on the job. Authorities must ensure that the workplace is free of just about any concerns that could harm or kill them psychologically or physically. Two major issues emerge in this sense: how to limit spread of contagious disease and ensure that all staff are free from infection, and how to improve employee awareness of the importance of following workplace prevention measures. This was indeed a challenging tasks, because the dilemma was business survivability vs employee protection.
Organizational management is worried with potential hazards that could jeopardise the organization's overall success. In this scenario, Covid-19 would be a risk that the company needs to examine and mitigate its total impact on the company's resources, including people and financial resources. Following Covid-19, major businesses were confronted with significant issues. Many businesses will be compelled to lay off workers in 2020 (Gupta, Chaudhary and Gupta, 2021). In addition, numerous firms were forced to suspend operations in certain areas. For example, grocery marts and other retail firms have had to entirely shut down their offline operations and depend exclusively on internet sales to stay afloat. The implication is that it lost sales it could have made during that time period. During this time, many companies also had to deal with the loss of a large number of their customer base. Expos, conventions, football matches, and other huge gatherings, along with cultural organizations like as museums and galleries, were all suspended without any kind of warning. Lockdowns also have brought physical and in-person consultations in general and physical health, such as salons, gymnasium etc to a halt (Baum and Hai, 2020) . Finally, major industries such as automobiles, trucks, and communications were abruptly shut down.
As a result of individuals staying at home as well as companies closing owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, a number of well-known brands in many industries have declared bankruptcy. Sears, Hertz, JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, and J. Crew, among other well-known American businesses, were in dire financial straits (Wang et al., 2020). The travel industry has been significantly hit; 80% of rooms are unoccupied, air carriers have slashed their workforce by 90%, while tourism is anticipated to lose a large amount of money in 2020 (Gupta, Chaudhary and Gupta, 2021). By guaranteeing that common spaces are sanitised on a regular basis, Covid-19 has resulted in organisations paying increased operational overheads . At the same time the cost of disinfectants had gone up citing a sudden surge in demand which further added to the woes of businesses.
Consumers were also inconvenienced as a result of the ailment, as they were required to keep social distance. Diners, retail enterprises, and even institutions with retail footprints, such as banks, had to limit the total number of clients they could accept at any given time (Svajdova, 2021). This resulted in a decrease in overall income while enterprises were unable to cut their operational costs. For example, at hotels, check out and check in hours were restricted, limiting the organization‘s capacity to generate high levels of revenue from its activities. The revenue for every room has decreased for hotels in the hospitality sector. The foreign limitations, as well as the shutdowns, had a negative impact on the hotel sector.
The management had a lot of trouble handling remote personnel as well. First and foremost, they struggled to ensure that personnel who were working from home had the essential tools they needed to do their jobs (Groenewegen, Hardeman and Stam, 2021). Furthermore, remote working requires the availability of some specific tools and working conditions within the workplace, including conferencing tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams whereas screen-sharing and collaboration tools such as Windows remote desktop and team viewer along with a high quality web-cam. This is not to mention that the workers also needed a workstation at their home. Now, this could not be financed by all firms due to varying reasons, primary being finance. Second, especially workers employed from home, enabling strong communication, evaluation, help, performance measurement, and a re-adjustment of remuneration. Furthermore, since they were leading remote employees for the first time, management remained inexperienced. The likelihood that working remotely would leads to employee isolation due to the lack of connectivity between colleagues, lack of peer mentoring, and absence of one-on-one interaction must be addressed by HRM professionals. This also causes psychological distress among employees (Kaminer, 2020).
COVID-19's impact on industry was largely inconsistent. As a result of the pandemic, several businesses were forced to temporarily close their doors, whereas others enjoyed an increase in business. Since each firm is unique, the consequences of using COVID-19 on recruitment will vary (Fairlie, 2020).
Under this context, organisations that were experiencing financial issues owing to the pandemic have down skilled their workforce by limiting the overall number of high-skilled hiring compared to that of the low-skill employment so that they could cut their costs and keep their businesses afloat. They also had frozen or reduced all recruiting efforts; while others have laid off their workforce. Professionals who's been out of work for an extended period have far lower odds of finding work again. Although laying off employees is an unpleasant decision for management, it could be necessary in times of financial crisis, including such COVID-19. Managers would face a major challenge if they couldn't give employees with enough information and guidance during this procedure. Nevertheless, in the face of uncertainty, that was not straightforward (Donthu and Gustafsson, 2020).
Employee as well as collective productivity must be measured and improved continuously in order to be in line with the company's overall goals. This is the definition of performance management, which is an ongoing process of identifying, evaluating, and improving worker and teamwork. Nevertheless, it shows that the outbreak of COVID-19 has had an impact on the overall functioning of organisations. Several authors claim that because of the pandemic's sophistication and uniqueness, most companies were so overburdened with COVID-19's challenges, such as gauging employee productivity and successfully disrupting performance-based remuneration, that performance management was reduced or even terminated (Sheth, 2020). In actuality, measuring the performance of employees during this crisis might be challenging due to the changes in workplace conditions. In addition, the COVID-19 outbreak might have had an impact on employee performance in other ways.
Opportunities
One company is prospering while another is failing. Entertainment media, internet grocery ordering, electronic learning, and remote work solutions are all examples of Internet-based businesses that benefit from this. Takeaways, snacks, and liquor have all seen increases in popularity among those who are staying at home more than ever before. Cleaning products have also seen a rise in popularity. Some other industries that are thriving during this period include healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and herbal and nutritional supplements (Sahoo and Ashwani, 2020). A plausible presumption is that marketplaces are stable, given the fact that they vary so slowly. We've learned a lot from the outbreak of COVID-19 that markets are volatile and may shift quickly. There are many different actors in the market, including businesses, consumers, and federal agencies, all working together to follow a set of rules. Dynamic habitats are ecosystems that exist solely for the purpose of generating income.
In spite of its limitations, telecommuting enables individuals to have much more flexible schedules, save commute time, boost professional autonomy, along with gain knowledge into new technologies. As a consequence, it allows companies to make greater use of it and reduce expenditure on their assets, including such office space rentals. Even some countries' economic sectors like Korea's believe that non-contact businesses like telecommunications, virtual help solutions, and online education have the opportunities for development. In addition, COVID-19 gives companies the opportunity to expand employee independence, strengthen digital abilities, and broaden their capability development. In addition, the pandemic has positioned disruptive technology as a key strategic partner. As a consequence, it has helped to keep businesses afloat and to reduce the distance between workers and management, while ensuring their safety. Conventional face-to-face interaction methods, including such conferencing, lunches, and even tea breaks, have been replaced by virtual ones because managers and HRM experts have been encouraged to think beyond the box. As a result, the company was able to maintain its workforce while complying to pre-established social distancing policies.
COVID-19, that according to the authors Lund et al. (2021), business should hasten the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning in industries that provides a high degree of human interaction, including such medical as well as personal treatment e.g., gyms as well as hair salons. Closed systems are no longer be relevant in organisations. Management companies must seize opportunities while avoiding risks in their ever-changing environment (Lund et al., 2021). Whereas the Covid-19 has already had a catastrophic effect, it is clear that it has also offered chances for the company to capitalise on in order to remain competitive (Hamouche, 2021).
Workplace health management too has benefitted from technological advancements. Even though they are still employed by the company, these would have helped in the application of this model to keep employees at home and protect them from virus. As a result, health practitioners like psychologists were able to help the community while complying to conventional separation restrictions via e-health systems. For instance, in China, psychological health services were provided via hotlines, electronic consultations, and e-learning, just like during the epidemic. Through use of AI or Artificial Intelligence for Human Resource Management has now been emphasised by several writers, advocating that it must be utilised as a useful tool to eliminate interruptions in management and maintenance processes while retaining physical separation as well as employee protection. Additionally, organisations must construct statistical models that take into consideration numerous risk variables and ambiguities in pre-emptive supply scheduling and plan implementation. There are several dynamic scenarios that can be automated using AI in order to help decision-makers (AI). Software can help management practitioners optimise and improve management operations and practises within organisations, such as staffing, talent acquisition or talent management while the outbreak is still raging and even after the outbreak has subsided.
Managers as well as HRM professionals should be encouraged to explore innovative ways to combine the pandemic's vital role with ICT infrastructure into HRM and then implement new approaches in the firm's environment. Because some employees, especially managers, lack the technical skills required for this type of work environment, they must adopt training. Organizational change can only succeed if everyone is on board. Keeping in touch with them will also help to alleviate their anxiety and strengthen their belief in the company.
Conclusion
Ever since start of Covid-19, Australia's management has encountered both opportunities and constraints. At the moment, the constraints do outnumber the opportunities that doesn’t mean the firm should not maximize on the opportunities available. The organization has had to cope with challenges such as dropping income and stable costs, which has led to the termination of employment contracts with some staff. Managers must guarantee that cost-benefit assessments are used in decision-making, owing to the necessity to decrease expenses during the pandemic. Its performance has been hampered by a decrease in the number of clients as a result of industry lockdowns and regulation. Nonetheless, the experience has imprinted in management a greater awareness of employee, adoption of newer technologies such AI, ML and Analytics as well the ability to work remotely, which will benefit them long after Covid-19 is over. The government's assistance in paying staff and the development of the Covid-19 vaccination are two factors that that would ease the constraints as we move forward.
Reference list
Baum, T. and Hai, N.T.T. (2020). Hospitality, tourism, human rights and the impact of COVID-19. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print).
Donthu, N. and Gustafsson, A. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 on business and research. Journal of Business Research, [online] 117(1), pp.284–289. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7280091/.
Fairlie, R.W. (2020). The Impact of Covid-19 on Small Business Owners: Evidence of Early-Stage Losses from the April 2020 Current Population Survey. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Groenewegen, J., Hardeman, S. and Stam, E. (2021). Does COVID-19 state aid reach the right firms? COVID-19 state aid, turnover expectations, uncertainty and management practices. Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 16, p.e00262.
Gupta, H., Chaudhary, R. and Gupta, S. (2021). COVID-19 Impact on Major Stock Markets. FIIB Business Review, p.231971452199451.
Hamouche, S. (2021). Human resource management and the COVID-19 crisis: implications, challenges, opportunities, and future organizational directions. Management assignment Journal of Management & Organization, [online] pp.1–31. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-management-and-organization/article/human-resource-management-and-the-covid19-crisis-implications-challenges-opportunities-and-future-organizational-directions/6857481FD64558659EE4C17C6DAE9AB9.
Kaminer, D. (2020). Discrimination Against Employees Without COVID-19 Antibodies. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Lund, S., Madgavkar, A., Manyika, J. and Robinson, O. (2021). The future of work after COVID-19 | McKinsey. [online] www.mckinsey.com. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-after-covid-19.
Sahoo, P. and Ashwani (2020). COVID-19 and Indian Economy: Impact on Growth, Manufacturing, Trade and MSME Sector. Global Business Review, p.097215092094568.
Sheth, J. (2020). Business of business is more than business: Managing during the Covid crisis. Industrial Marketing Management.
Svajdova, L. (2021). Consumer Behaviour during Pandemic of COVID-19. Journal of International Business Research and Marketing, 6(3), pp.34–37.
Wang, J., Yang, J., Iverson, B.C. and Kluender, R. (2020). Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis. SSRN Electronic Journal. [online] Available at: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/21-041_a9e75f26-6e50-4eb7-84d8-89da3614a6f9.pdf.
