Uncertainty is at the forefront of many crises, disasters, and emergencies, and the COVID-19 pandemic with the arrival of third-wave is no exception. We, as psychologists are concerned with the coming of organizational pressures on the team workers and changing patterns of behavior of staff members owing to new challenges both in the structure and administrative field.
We can begin to engage ourselves in sensemaking and sense giving to help process and find out ways and means to clear uncertainties and find new ways to prepare employees to meet pressures and ways of coming out of the crisis in a healthier and more supportive way. We can begin by reflexively making sense of our own experiences with adjusting to new ways of working during the onset of the pandemic, including uncomfortable realizations around privileges positionality, status, money, and power. We then can review how organizations and organizing practices are responding to this extreme uncertainty. Finally, we can offer thoughts on the future of work in such hopeless situations of organizational ambiguities and uncertainties.
Both short- and long-term outlooks for the professional and quotidian aspects of our behavior in a fog of uncertainty are to be framed. Would we have to close our campuses? Would we be able to continue our local and international collaborations? Would people have to work from home? Would there be enough facilities in the offices to accommodate the needs of all employees? Would we all die? Moreover, a unique challenge with COVID-19’ is, are we going to have both a health crisis and an economic crisis, which is occurring alongside more common natural disasters. In short, we have more questions than answers, and the only way for many of us, and our communities and organizations, to sense the contours of this crisis is to walk straight into the fog and discover whatever is and what is required to be done. As, this disaster has affected the entire globe, radically altered how people live and work, and devastated economies, it is crucial to make sense of this emotional and academically important context. Finally, we have to find some new perspectives on the future of work in the wake of this global crisis. We hope our attempts to oscillate between sensemaking and sense giving will help others to reflect on their own experiences and provide future directions for research amidst and after this cosmology event.
Moreover, is it all right to work from home and not to be supervised by management authority? People are more worried about their health issues or look less committed to their job. They have to manage their tensions between commitment to continue business-as-usual and the ability to advocate for their best interests related to their health and family wellbeing. Let us talk about education centers. Is it not ok that as aspiring students, we can suggest waiting or taking a gap? Often we are distraught and sleepless with the knowledge that many of the students were socially isolated and struggling, especially the international students who had decided for a break. In other words, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a plethora of crises across the globe, in the workplace, and inside educational environments. More importantly, this global health pandemic constitutes both an economic and health crisis, and it is coupled with other more.
About the author
Dr. Usha Srivastava
Retired Professor of Psychology, Department of Higher Education Govt. of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal
Her areas of special interests are personality development and self-growth, communication skills, career orientation, gender equality, the status of working women in India, and social issues. She has worked extensively on a fresh approach to modern-day living, subsequent consequences, and simple remedies. Her books: Indian working women in transition, The Art of Communication are already published. Excellence is nothing but doing the best, Kavayanjali in Hindi
