The covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on various aspects of people's lives around the world. Despite the risk of the pandemic, most workers who are engaged in delivering essential services are still reporting for duty as usual (Business and Human Right Resource Centre, 2020). Although this is part of their professional obligation, most of them are highly concerned about their working conditions amid the pandemic (Fernandez, Lord, Halcomb, Moxhama, Middletona, Alananzeha, and Ellwood, 2020). Their anxiety is mainly centred on the perceived risk of contracting the virus, transmission of the virus to their family members, stigma surrounding the vulnerabilities of their work and the threat towards their personal freedom (Fernandez, 2020; Chiang, Chen, and Sue, 2007). In addition, these workers have also been inundated with increased workload and longer working hours (Mhango, Dzobo, Chitungo and Dzinamarira, 2020). This has affected their level of motivation, engagement, commitment, and job satisfaction. Perceived poor working conditions are associated with negative outcomes for employee behaviours, such as turnover intentions (Arnoux-Nicolas, Sovet, Lhotellier, Fabio, and Bernaud, 2016), disengagement, dissatisfaction and lack of commitment. Several researchers have tried to understand the causes and effects of corona virus pandemic on various aspects of life. Although this is the case, little attention has been directed towards examining the key factors influencing employee disengagement amid covid-19 pandemic. To address this gap, the researcher seeks to test the effect of covid-19 pandemic on poor working conditions, the perceived risk of covid-19 pandemic and employee disengagement.

Keywords: Covid-19 Pandemic; Employee Disengagement; Working Conditions; Perceived Risk Of Covid-19 Pandemic.