Social and Economic impact of COVID-19 on Employee Performance in Tea Industry: Reference to Matale District

Abstract

The ongoing new Coronavirus pandemic is the biggest recent health crisis in the world which severely affected the social and economic life of people in all most all the countries in the world through its adverse consequences. Sri Lanka executed island-wide lockdowns as well as are specific boundary closures at different times to control the spread of the virus, and this condition created drastic changes in personal lives of individuals and working policies. Newly introduced working conditions like work from home, virtual working, working with limited staffs, affected the Sri Lankan economy, society and people in a variety of ways where the employees of export-based industries like Tea industry were identified as more vulnerable groups under the circumstances. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 on the performance of employees in the Tea industry. The quantitative research study applied a deductive research method which followed a questionnaire survey strategy to meet the research objectives. In the process, the population of the study was employees who work in Tea factories in the Matale district and fifty out of them were selected as a sample of the study. The self-administrated questionnaire consisted of questions about employee engagement, motivation, attitude, work experience, and social networking to measure social impact whereas economic impact was identified through the questions related to employee’s financial incentives, savings behaviour, credit behaviour and health-related expenses. The findings of the study revealed that the performances of employees significantly differ on economic factors whereas the impact of social factor was neutral in determining employee performance.