Mobilising Practices of Human Resources During COVID-19: Application of Managerial Innovation

The health crisis caused by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a major negative impact on the human resources of companies of all sizes and in all sectors (cessation of activity, obligation to stay at home). In the absence of compensatory financial measures, company containment (closure) is not an option to avoid more serious social consequences. It is therefore preferable for companies and managers to adopt other measures to limit the impact of this pandemic on human resources. Given this destabilisation of the business community, a number of innovative management practices will emerge and become a real imperative for mobilising human resources. The aim of this article is to identify models of managerial innovation put in place by managers to mobilise human resources during the current health crisis. Based on a review of the literature on managerial innovation and strategies for mobilising human resources in times of health crisis on the one hand and, on the other, a single-site case study of 6 Cameroonian companies operating in different sectors of activity, we show that, under the prism of COVID-19, a number of managerial innovations such as teleworking, team rotation and part-time working, social communication, salary maintenance, health support and coaching can emerge and become real spurs for the mobilisation of human resources.