The Impact of the Pandemic Covid 19 on the Business Environment in Oman

 

More part time employment

The crisis of Covid 19 has its impact on the business environment in Oman as employment strategies started to depend more on part-time employment in order to let employees come in fewer numbers and this supports social distance that can protect them from getting the virus. Part time employment led to more work from home rather than office work and making meetings online via applications. This has led many companies to turn to online sites to attract its customers to purchase goods online and this encouraged shipment to use faster and more secured shipment techniques. 

More seasonal employment

Another issue that appeared as a result of Covid 19 is using temporary and seasonal employment as in fields such as hotels, hospitality, tourism and restaurants, work environment stopped to be busy as usual and stopped receiving many clients so temporary employees became needed and many employees have left their jobs to suffer unemployment.

Unemployment in traditional industries

Unemployment became a result of many people losing their permanent jobs in traditional industries such as food industry, clothes and others which made the Omani business environment suffer the existence of many natives without jobs, this has led also to firing many expatriates and sending them back to their countries as there are no places for them in many business organizations that lost its business in the crisis or reduced its productivity and profitability.

Changes in job-for-life expectations

The difference in the way people get jobs led to changes in job-for-life expectations as people who work in temporary jobs stopped having future ambitions related to work and this reduced having a job for life or even expecting that.

Business implications

Flexible working arrangement and less employment loyalty  

Less employment loyalty has become apparent in many sectors in the business environment of Oman. This resulted from employing temporary people who really don't belong to the organization and just work for receiving their wages and as a result this reduced ambition and career expectations for many workers in Oman. This led also to employees' turnover as the employee seeks better wages at most time and can leave work easily if there is a better job and a higher salary which affect the business organization's productivity and led to reduction in the quality of many outputs in many business organizations.

Another impact the pandemic Covid 19 left on the business environment in Oman is applying more flexible working arrangement that reduced costs on the company such as holding meetings online, performing more tasks at home by employees and focusing on online selling which raised the use of social media sites and websites to attract customers and enabled more electronic means of money transactions. This was good in reduction of costs but also led to employees' turnover and lower quality in service delivery in many areas. This changed the way business is managed greatly.