Executive Summary

In last two years, organizations went through uncertain and challenging time period due to the pandemic. Current, many organizations are getting back to normal with the lifting of restrictions and successfully completing vaccination program. However, business would face many challenges in the process of recovering during post pandemic. The key objective of this study is comprehensively evaluate the challenges that Hemas Holdings PLC would face in post pandemic era. Further, this report provides recommendations to overcome those challenges.
This report has identified key three challenges. One key challenge is that preparing teams to face future uncertain time period with the new leadership. Executive leadership change was happened in the middle of pandemic, however, changing process couldn’t be rolled out to the every level of the company as expected. Therefore, it is highly challenging to company to face future uncertain period which is expected to perform well. Further, employee turnover can be increased due to various social and economic issues created by pandemic. Another main challenge would be maintain employees’ mental wellbeing. Proper leadership and communication are highly important factors to overcome these challenges. It is recommended to plan out proper change management program to familiarize the new leadership approach, strategies and goals to reform teams. Regarding employee turnover, this report has recommended to improve employee’s benefits, flexibility and autonomy while being ready for any situation by developing succession plans. Further, to minimize the risk of mental health issues, it is recommended to improve awareness of mental health among employees, commence open discussion about it and develop social support system to assist employees. This study is conducted based on secondary data referred from journal articles, subject related book, Hemas Holdings annual report, reliable web sources etc.

1.0 Introduction

Last two years, businesses all over the world went through uncertain time period due to the pandemic. Except few, majority of businesses suffered due to Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, next few years, organizations would face many different challenges. Challenges related to people and organization are more challenging than others since those challenges are more complicated. Thus, organizations need to work extra hard to achieve its goals and objectives and also overcome those challenges. The report extensively evaluates the challenges could be experienced by Hemas Holdings.
Hemas Holding is the second largest conglomerate of Sri Lanka which operates in industries such as FMCG, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, travel and maritime. As a company operates more than 70 years in Sri Lanka, Hemas focuses on enriching lives across the various communities that company serves. Currently, more than 5600 employees work in Hemas (Hemas annual report, 2020). Even though, company experienced challenges and uncertainty during pandemic, company performs well in many aspects by remaining resilient, encouraging innovative thinking and inspiring agile solution whist respects its values. Last two years, there were many changes in business operations in Hemas. Hemas divested some of operations such as hotel operation, inbound and outbound travel operation and part of airline representation (Daily mirror, 2020). Further, CEO of Hemas was changed in 2020. These are huge changes which could affect various ways in the context of people and organization specially uncertain time period like this.
Considering all these aspects, this report identifies three key challenges which Hemas would face in post pandemic. Further, this study also explains the theoretical aspects regarding those challenges.