THE IMPACT OF COVID 19 ON ORGANIZATON PERFORMANCE

The whole world was at shock with the COVID 19 pandemic. World over businesses dwindled because of the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 Pandemic. A number of businesses have closed down; others have reduced the operations and yet others greatly made losses in operations. The government services were also not left behind, key figures in government and big reputable companies tasted positive. Other lost their lives, friends, workmates, and the likes. Many Prayer places were closed indefinitely due the pandemic. A lot of resources including the Human Capital and finances have been diverted to curbing the spread and the effect of COVID 19 pandemic. The reallocation of these resources has had a negative impact on the performance of the organization.

World Health Organization (WHO) was quoted saying that this pandemic the world should prepare to live with it just like HIV/AIDS. World scientists having sleepless nights to see the way forward but still there is no immediate medications (except for a number of vaccines which are yet to provide the greatest protection required). What the scientists should be struggling for is to find a treatment that can the pandemic since they already developed some vaccines (Rutaihwa 2020).

Similarly, the pandemic has had an adverse effect on organization performance. Its effect is seen in a number of layoff in mega companies such as, ?Uber Technologies in India on 18th May 2020 eliminated an additional 3,000 jobs and closed dozens of offices around the world and is shutting down many of its side projects in an effort to weather the?coronavirus?pandemic that has devastated the ride-hailing business; ?Lyft?laid off 982 employees, or 17% of its workforce, and cut the base salaries of its top executives in addition to furloughing hundreds of employees; British airline?Virgin Atlantic?said on the 5th of May that it is planned to cut 3,150 jobs and would move its flying programme from London Gatwick to Heathrow airport as it counts the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Markets Insider Publication (2020),?the number of jobless claims for the week ending March 14 2020 totaled 281,000, exceeding economist estimates for 220,000. In a week's time,?Goldman Sachs anticipates ?the number of jobless claims could explode to a record 2.25 million. (Taylor Borden, 2020)

The travel and hospitality industries were hit the hardest three airlines?including Air Canada ?announced a reduction in workforce and?Marriott, the world's largest hotel company, started to furlough thousands of employees. In this case the performance of these companies are already affected regardless of the need for their services.

The COVID 19 pandemic outbreak and spread led to travel bans of some airlines and even local transports within boarders, a case in Kenya the president announced the ban of entry and exit in and out of Nairobi city, later on he announced the restriction of entry into the Kenyan territory.

In education sector schools and higher learning institutions were closed indefinitely. Uganda for example, has just ended the world’s longest school closure, ordering millions of students back to the classroom after a gap of nearly two years. some 15 million pupils have not attended school in Uganda since March 2020 when classrooms were shuttered as COVID-19 swept the world.

According to a recent report by international management consulting firm Arthur D Little, up to 135 million jobs were lost and 120 million people might be pushed in poverty in India. If that happens, it could have a huge impact on consumer income, spending and savings (Sukanya Roy?2020).

With the outbreak and spread of this pandemic many organizations shut down the operations and laid off employees and others forced to vacation, yet others closed down parts of their operations. This greatly affected the performance and the profitability of these companies. Employees laid off have to be paid and operations dwindled down. It means organizations are most likely to operate in loses as the fixed costs remain constant.

Despite the impact of the pandemic on employee and organization performance some of the companies’ world over have continued to operate though at minimal. Productions have dwindled down and some have lost employees and workmates. It is against this background that this study is set to determine the impact of COVID-19 on organization performance.

Since the outbreak of the and the spread of COVID -19 is new world phenomena it means there may be no recent research about its effect on organization performance. Therefore, this research is meant to spearhead or to set a ground for further research and there to find the impact of the pandemic on both organization and employee performance.

Related theories

i.??????????????Contingency Theory.

ii.?????????????Hannan & Freeman's Theories of Organizational Effectiveness

1.2 Research Objective

1.2.1. General research objective

The purpose of the study is find out the impacts of the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 on organization performance.

1.2.2 Specific research objective

i.??????????????To find out the impact of outbreak of COVID-19 on organization performance.

ii.?????????????To identify strategies used to curb the effect of the outbreak and spread of COVID-19

iii.???????????To identify the effect of COVID-19 on employees’ performance

iv.????????????To identify cost implications associated with the outbreak of COVID-19

Hypothesis: the outbreak and speared of COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on organization performance.

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