ABSTRACT
Coronavirus is a new virus that was discovered in December 2019 and declared pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. Corporates have always had a vital role to play in the growth and prosperity of any country. In these challenging times of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent shutdown, Organizations now have to deal with a whole new set of problems, most of which has to do with the mental health of their employees. Isolation from society, the inflow of bleak coronavirus-related knowledge, the fear of contracting Covid-19, the looming economic recession and the sense of helplessness are all adversely affecting people’s mental well-being, causing a lot of stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns. This paper looks at the effect of COVID-19 outbreak on mental health of workers, especially psychological distress and depression. The paper is a study of the literature. This seeks to define the key stressors during and after COVID-19, analyze the main moderating factors that may reduce or aggravate the impact of COVID-19 on mental health of employees and finally provide guidelines from a human resource management perspective to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on mental health of employees.

Keywords: Mental health, Stress, employees, COVID-19, Psychological Distress, and Management of Human Resources