COVID-19 crises: Does perceived organisational support promote resilience among employees of higher institutions in Ondo State?

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 and its other variants have precipitated changes in various organisations, higher institutions inclusive. These organizational changes have influenced how work is being done and caused a lot of stressors for employees, hence, resilience is needed to make the employees resilient in this period to survive and bounce back. Also, the paucity of studies that attempt to establish the relationship between perceived organisational support and employees’ resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic informed the purpose of the study. Five hundred and one teaching (384) and non-teaching (117) staff of higher institutions in Ondo State were purposively selected for the study, the mean age of the participant was 38.5%. The instruments used included the Survey Perceived Organisational Support Scale (α= 0.93) and Employee Resilience Scale (α= .86). The study revealed that socio-demographic factors (age, level of education, having dependents, and job experience in years) predicted employee resilience among employees of higher institutions in Ondo State, holding constant the co-influence of gender and institution of affiliation (F (6, 494) = 3.170, p < .001, R² = .037). It was also revealed that perceived organisational support predicted employees’ resilience among employees of higher institutions. This study concluded that a favourable perception of organisational support has a strong influence on determining high employee resilience during organisation changes and stressful events such as the COVID-19 pandemic among higher institution employees in Ondo State. As a result, organisations should consider hiring those having dependents and guarantee that tools such as training are accessible to help employees become more resilient.