COVID-19 and Manufacturing Industries in India and Role of Human Resources Management

COVID-19 had put a halt to many manufacturing industries across the world, including India, and that led to one of the worst job crises. Manufacturing industry is one of the most important sectors in India that drives the economy. India’s manufacturing workforce in majority belongs to the unorganized sector which has progressed the economy in pre-COVID-19 times. The employees in the unorganized sectors have suffered immensely during the COVID-19 crisis. The Human Resources Management (HRM) experienced unprecedented challenges in understanding the crisis, employee challenges, and coming up with timely solutions to address these issues. The focus of the paper is to review the opportunities and challenges in the HRM policies and practices in the manufacturing industries during COVID-19 and provide recommendations to apply these findings and to develop a future HRM strategy in unorganized manufacturing sectors in India. To our knowledge this is the first review that addresses the potential role and challenges of HRM in the unorganized manufacturing sector in India during COVID-19 pandemic.