Understanding the Social Worker Experience with Organizational Changes in HSOs During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Lewin’s three-stage change theory (i.e. unfreezing, changing, and refreezing), this study explored social workers’ experience with organizational changes in human service organizations during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative content analysis was conducted using secondary data from a cross-sectional survey (June–August 2020). Responses for 2447 participants (78.5%) who answered the open-ended question, “How have services, functions or operations changed in response to COVID-19?” were thematically coded. Four overarching themes were identified and discussed: (1) changes to organization capacity; (2) technology/infrastructure and workers arrangements; (3) workplace safety; and (4) impact on clients and workers.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• frontline workers
• Lewin’s change theory
• organizational change
• social work

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2024.2377073

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).