Coping Mechanisms to Pandemic’s Psychosocial Impacts among Selected Hospitality Industry Workers in Lucena City, Quezon Province: Basis for a Professional Training Program

The current coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has led the world towards severe socio-economic crisis and psychological distress. It has severely hit the economy; however, the service sector, particularly the hospitality industry, is hard hit by it. It increases the sense of insecurity among the employees and their perception of being unemployed, adversely affecting their mental health. Not only on behalf of the hospitality industry workers but also on the end of the hospitality businesses such as hotels, restaurants, bars, recreational parks, tourists’ spots, and airlines. As a result, this research aims to determine their coping strategies due to a pandemic that brings out the worst-case scenarios in employment. As part of this study, the researchers selected a maximum of 100 respondents of hospitality industry workers specifically in Lucena City, Quezon Province. In accordance with this research study, the researchers distributed online survey forms via google forms for it to be the data gathering procedure. These google forms were provided for the hospitality industry workers who were the chosen respondents. As the study pursued a questionnaire, the researchers used a purposive sampling procedure. This is a method adopted by researchers where performing purposive sampling is fairly straightforward. The researchers selected a sample based on their knowledge about the study and population. All in all, this study aims to determine the potential of the psychosocial impacts that cause stress, anxiety, and other struggles to the hospitality industry workers of Lucena City in order to identify the possible coping mechanisms that can prevent or cure these challenges from happening. To sum up everything that this research has accumulated, there are several challenges and struggles that the respondents have encountered brought by the hard times of the pandemic. The researchers have proven based on the respondents' responses that in the particular circumstances of the pandemic, hospitality industry workers have been facing a lot of struggles not just only in terms of physical and mental aspects, but also emotionally. The following recommendations are based on the analysis accomplished and, on the conclusion, given previously. The researchers recommend that proposing a professional training program will help the hospitality workers to take an assessment or test that will improve their performance in their environment, giving a recognition system to motivate and inspire the hospitality workers to work well by awarding them special honorariums, certificates, and recognition to do better in their working area. Lastly, based on the analysis, the majority of the respondents suffered emotionally followed by their mental health and physical health during the pandemic, with that, the researchers recommend to implement a help hotline and help desk on their workplace with the help of the Human Resource Management as well as Clinical Service Department to assist and help the workers in coping with the challenges they experienced in terms of their emotional, mental, and physical health and be able to protect the overall well-being of the workers.