Chapter 1: Invisible Heroes: The Mission Critical Role of HR During the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 is the disease caused by a relatively new Coronavirus calle d SARS-CoV-2. It was first discovered by the World Health Organization in late December of 2019, following a report of a cluster of cases of “viral pneumonia” in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China (World Health Organization, 2020). The coronavirus was called “novel” because scientists had never seen it before. Along the way, experts have been surprised by its virulence, transmission, symptoms, impact on daily life, the magnitude of the sickness it causes, and the staggering death toll it has caused that continues to climb (Huang, 2021; Mineo, 2021).

The pandemic resulting from the widespread outbreak of this disease has caused serious mental, physical, and financial complications for people everywhere. It has been a devastating and disruptive global event—what some have referred to as a collective “mass trauma” (Prideaux, 2021) or a “shared tragedy” (Hamblin, 2021). The toll of the pandemic can be assessed by a variety of devastating metrics: hundreds of thousands of lives lost, millions of jobs eliminated, businesses permanently closed, hundreds of millions of school hours which took place at home with children working on a computer screen, and holidays, celebrations, and vacations canceled for most families during the year.