A Study of Sentiments of Employees during COVID-19

Abstract

Sentiments are mental attitudes and play an important role in forming opinions. Sentiment and emotion are interchangeably used, however have different meanings. The sentiment is a mental attitude or a thought influenced by emotion and has an important role in forming opinions and influencing future decisions of others. Employees are knowledgeable assets for any organization, and their sentiments about their organization, managers, co-workers, etc. create an opinion. The emotional well-being of employees has a direct relationship with the performance of the organization. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Many countries declared lockdowns, with unimaginable restrictions to control the spread of this pandemic. This resulted in organizations swiftly adapting to work-fromhome methods, almost overnight. This paper studies the sentiments and emotional wellbeing of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted undertaking a review of the literature and adopting a framework for sentiment analysis and emotional wellbeing. The study shows that employees have mixed sentiments of feeling excited, positive, anxious, angry, and negative. Most of the participants with positive and excited sentiments believe that this pandemic has created a challenge as well as an opportunity.

Keywords: Sentiments, Analysis, Emotional Wellbeing, Employees, COVID-19

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