3.1. Human Resource Management

HR management is a formal process within an organization that is designed to ensure the effective use of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other attributes of employees to achieve organizational goals (Word & Sowa, 2017). Effective HR management involves considering what systems exist for every stage in the work relationship, from job design, recruitment, and selection of individuals to fill the job, through to training, development, and the evaluation of individual performance within the job. HR management has been the focus of much of the literature that examines the finding, motivating, developing, and monitoring of the right talent.

In order for libraries to remain active even during a pandemic, of course good management is needed, and one aspect of this is HR management. Good HR management must pay attention to the principal functions of management. According to George R. Terry (Adeyoyin et al., 2012; Stueart et al., 2012), there are four of these functions, namely: planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling.

The first stage is the planning function, which involves an array of HR activities, including recruitment, selection, and job analysis, all designed to help the organization achieve its goals. HR planning must be able to provide guidelines regarding the requirements for the recruitment and development of the staff that need to be employed in an organization. The second stage is the organizing function, which covers the entire process of arranging staff resources, duties, authorities, and responsibilities in such a way as to create an organization that can move as a unified whole towards its predetermined goals (Putri & Maralis, 2019). The third stage is the actuating function, a process that involves fostering employee enthusiasm and guiding staff to work actively to implement plans to achieve their goals. This includes providing education and training activities, leadership, communication, and effective utilization and motivation of the workforce. Fourth is the controlling function, which involves assessment, correction, and evaluation of all the work done by employees, as well as supervision of this work as it is being carried out.

3.2. Special Libraries and Librarians Facing Change

Special libraries form part of a parent organization, offering information and knowledge services relating to particular subjects for their particular clientele. These libraries are found in the profit sector, in non-profit organizations, and in the public sector (Fraser-Arnott, 2020). Special libraries have emerged to address the unmet, specific information needs of individual organizations. In addition to requiring all the usual professional and technological capabilities, librarians at these institutions are expected to have knowledge of the particular subjects relevant to their parent institution, for example, law, the environment, and so on.

According to Stueart et al. (2012), library change can be driven both by external factors, such as global economic trends and the ever-continuing development of information technology, and by internal factors, such as changes in staffing, organizational structure, financial conditions, or leadership, which can affect all aspects of the library. When dealing with such changes, there are four key issues that need to be addressed by library staff, namely:

1) Empowerment. This involves encouraging and empowering staff to take the initiative to improve operations, reduce costs, and improve product quality and customer service. Empowering professionals with greater authority and increased responsibility encourages creative freedom. It also develops the ability of employees to disseminate ideas that can drive change and improvement across the full range of the information services provided by the library. Employees remain at the heart of the life of knowledge-based organizations that are undergoing change, and the success of such organizations depends on the knowledge and commitment of their staff.

2) Organizing Change. Change within an organization tends to be designed to increase organizational alignment, so that communication and decision making become faster and more visible to staff at the appropriate level. In general, such changes cannot simply be depicted using an organizational chart. Organizing change is complicated, and managing employee participation is a balancing act, between maintaining the appropriate levels of management control, helping staff to get work done more quickly, and offering opportunities for learning and development (Uzuegbu & Nnadozie, 2015).

3) Resistance to Change. Resistance to change is often destructive, not least because of the emotional, philosophical, and procedural conflicts that can arise between individuals and groups during the implementation process. Within an organization, therefore, this issue needs to be handled carefully through consultation and negotiation, and the change process facilitated through discussion, information, and education (Adeyoyin et al., 2012). Resistance can occur for several reasons. Staff may not understand or may not want to understand the need for change; they may be sceptical that the change will be a success; they may feel threatened; they may be satisfied with the status quo; or they may feel the speed at which change is occurring is placing too great a stress on themselves or the organization.

4) Flexibility. The ability to adapt to meet changing needs is the essence of good planning in change management. Any planning that is too rigid to accommodate the unexpected will be wasted. That is why it is important to review plans regularly, in order to revise priorities that may have changed in the short term and identify goals that have already been achieved. There are three categories of flexible working, namely flexi-time, tele-homeworking, and part-time. However, in reality, these three categories can be combined to complement each other, and then adapted to the needs of the organization. In this respect, flexible working involves offering staff the ability to exert control over their own way of working (Atkinson & Hall, 2011; Mungkasa, 2020; Possenriede & Plantenga, 2011).

5.1. Profile of the DPR RI Library

DPR RI (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat) stands for the People’s Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia. Structurally, the library is part of the Secretariat General of the DPR RI, which is directly responsible to the leadership of the DPR RI. For administration purposes, the library is under the Data and Information Centre (known as Pusdatin DPR RI), which is led by a central head (Perpustakaan DPR RI, 2018). Within the overall organizational structure, the role of HR management is to determine the division of responsibilities and the roles required, and to coordinate the work involved in order for the library to achieve its goals (Ahmady et al., 2016). The library was established in 1951. When the Government of the Republic of Indonesia was still in the form of the United States of Indonesia (RIS) and domiciled in Yogyakarta, the library moved to Yogyakarta. This library is a continuation of the “Bibliotheca Volksraad” owned by the Dutch East Indies government in Indonesia, and part of the collection is a relic of the Volksraad library. Since the capital of the Republic of Indonesia moved to Jakarta, the library has been located within the complex of the DPR RI Building, Senayan, South Jakarta, in what was formerly the Balai Pustaka Building.

The vision of the DPR RI library is to be an excellent parliamentary library offering a range of information, collections, and services to support the duties and functions of the DPR RI. To support its vision, the library provides data and information services that are fast, precise, accurate, renewable, and available on a regular basis to members of the DPR. The various services available include book lending, on-site reading services, the DPR e-library, e-resources, e-clipping, an e-paper, and the latest integrated service information system (known as SIPINTER). For all these services, the DPR RI library is open to all work units within the council. The DPR RI library is a special library that deals with issues related to Indonesian politics and development.

In addition to its central function of supporting the activities of the DPR RI, the library is also open to the general public as a centre for knowledge and learning, but with more limited services and with access to the printed collections only available in the building. With a focus on research, this library is a special library that has actively held literacy activities for its users during the pandemic, including webinars, book reviews, and bibliobattles.

The DPR RI Library has 17 staff, consisting of the head of the library section, 4 administrative staff, and 12 librarians. Most of the 17 staff in the DPR RI Library are graduates in library and information science. Observations by the researchers suggested that Dimas and Rani were the most approachable members of staff here. Dimas appeared the most self-assured because he actively communicates with other colleagues and was very open to the researchers. After the researcher had finished interviewing all the librarians who were in that day, it was Dimas who invited the researcher to tour the library and take pictures with him as a form of documentation to complete the report. The next most confident member of staff was Rani. She is a librarian who is diligent in providing new ideas to the head of the library division in relation to user services and other library activities such as webinars and focus group discussions (hereinafter abbreviated as FGDs).

Under normal conditions, HR management in the DPR RI is carried out in accordance with the usual four main functions of management, namely planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling. As part of the planning function, the library arranges various programmes for staff, such as training and seminars, which are conducted face to face. In the organizing function, superiors provide face to face instructions to subordinates, but communication is still carried out downward and upward. In the actuating function, the library usually recruits student interns regularly every year. In the controlling function, the library controls the presence of staff, reports on performance in each section, and reports on every activity in each of the units on a regular basis.

5.2. Organizational Climate

The working climate at the DPR RI Library during this pandemic appears to have been friendly and well-structured. The library staff were focusing on their respective work and chatting occasionally to relieve tension. Even though a shift system was currently in force, this did not dampen the spirit of the workers. In fact, they were happy when it was their turn to work in the office, because they found the facilities in the office better and more conducive to performing their work compared to the much less satisfactory facilities at home.

From Tony’s statement, it can be concluded that the facilities for WFH were not always adequate, and that not all librarians had Wi-Fi installed in their homes, which meant that some staff had their work hindered by problems such as signal interference. Tony’s opinion was supported by Rani’s statement.

Rani’s statement here is proof that she personally preferred working in the office rather than WFH, because she felt the technical resources and facilities available at home were not as good as in the office. Dian made a related point about communications.

This statement from Dian, the head of section, shows her awareness that virtual communication actually has a weakness, namely allowing miscommunication. It was also clear from what Dian had to say that the relationship between the staff and the head of the library works both ways here, because Dian is always open to staff who want to provide input or suggest new ideas (Rosinski et al., 2014).

5.3. WFH Practice during a Pandemic

The following are some issues relating to WFH practices that were experienced by the librarians during the COVID-19 pandemic.

5.4. Human Resource Management at the DPR RI Library

In terms of the planning function, the library decided at the start of the pandemic to stop taking on any new staff, such as temporary employees or interns. This was in response to the high spread of the coronavirus. The library sought instead to optimize its existing staff to do all the work required during the pandemic. In November 2020, however, the library opened up again some internship opportunities for students, which were carried out virtually. The disadvantage of not taking on additional staff such as apprentices was that the librarians could have been overwhelmed by the amount of work they had to do, since the volume of work during the pandemic was the same as in the pre-pandemic period. However, employee health was always the top priority. In addition, the library was also forced to change several programme activities, such as cancelling self-scanning, and allowing some activities to run more slowly. It can be concluded from this that the planning function was used to make numerous changes to the existing plans, while at the same time implementing flexibility so that services could continue to run.

With regard to the organizing function, the HR management team divided up the tasks and responsibilities of each staff member using communications made through a social media application, i.e. a WAG. However, miscommunication and misperceptions were prone to occur. The library leadership occasionally communicated via Zoom instead, using this tool to help implement the revised work schedule when they set up a shift system of working two days in the office and three days from home. However, the leadership did not force its staff to work full-time at home for three days, in view of the difficulties with facilities. In this function, the leadership was very open to their staff if anyone had any creative ideas which they wanted to raise in relation to the library programmes during the pandemic. The weakness of organizing through electronic media is that there can often be misunderstandings in interpreting the text of WAG messages, and this can cause conflicts between staff members.

In terms of the actuating function of management in the DPR RI Library during the pandemic, here there was some resistance from the staff. They complained that the WFH system prevented them focusing properly on work. The change in the situation was very different from what they were used to, and the new way of working took them somewhat by surprise. Fortunately, this problem of resistance was overcome by the management through additional motivation and efforts to adjust the work situation. In addition, this function also revealed a degree of flexibility in the use of online FGDs as a tool for staff development and training (Stueart et al., 2012). These FGDs were attended by almost all the library staff, which was important because it helps open horizons and broaden the knowledge of librarians to allow them to continue to innovate in developing library services (Laksmi & Fauziah, 2016). The weakness of these online FGDs was that they were prone to technical problems, and not all the employees had adequate tools to participate online. This is in line with the statement by Nyumba et al. (2018), that online FGDs can only be accessed by participants who have Internet access, that they are vulnerable to technical problems such as poor network or loss of connectivity, and that they often fail to capture nonverbal data. It can be concluded that the actuating function was used to empower staff and to give them additional flexibility by loosening deadlines for activities that could not be undertaken at home, such as circulation services, cataloguing of the library’s collections, or self-scanning.

In the control function, managers had to carry out monitoring across all areas because of the many changes that occurred during the pandemic. This function had to address the issue of flexibility more than any of the others. Flexibility was applied in several staffing activities, as follows:

In order to understand the whole analysis, Fig. 1 may be consulted.

Fig. 1

Significant changes in human resources management, before and during the pandemic. WFH, working from home; WAG, WhatsApp group.

It can be concluded that out of all the various jobs necessary to the librarians’ work, not everything could be done at home. This meant that the librarians felt that their work was being hampered. However, by applying the concept of flexibility, the work plan that had been made could at least still run, even if many aspects of its implementation had to be postponed. Based on the evidence of the actions taken at the DPR RI Library during the pandemic, it can be seen that the processes of HR management were carried out with an emphasis on the concept of flexibility. Flexibility at work helps employees maintain a balance between their professional and their personal lives (Davidescu et al., 2020; Possenriede & Plantenga, 2011; Rosinski et al., 2014).