WORK SPIRIT IN COVID-19 PANDEMIC: CASE ON BANK OF CENTRAL ASIA MANADO MAIN BRANCH

pandemi Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic is made rapidly changes in organizations. That change includes the possibility of differences in working spirit. This study aims to determine the difference between employee morale of their working spirit before the pandemic and during the pandemic. This research was conducted at Bank Central Asia (BCA) Manado Main Branch Office. To answer the research problem, this study uses the quantitative method of paired-sample difference test. The data collection method used is a questionnaire. Respondents in this study were employees of BCA Manado branch totaling 65 people. The results of the research show that there is a significant difference between employee working spirit before the Covid-19 pandemic and employee morale during the COVID-19 pandemic .


INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many changes to the way we work, that changes require adjustments. According to Iswahyudi, (2021), the emergence of COVID-19 caused economic activity to be in a negative direction.
In response to the situation and information that continues to develop regarding the spread of Covid-19, the government has taken various related policies, including issuing a circular containing a work from home policy for employees. Working from home has the same obligations and responsibilities as working from the office. However, in practice, the implementation of work from home turns out to have challenges and obstacles that are not easy, because not all sectors of work can be done from home. The positive side of working from home according to (Crosbie & Moore, 2004) will provide flexible time for workers to provide a balance of life for employees. Many Diterima : 23-03-2022Direvisi : 04-04-2022Disetujui : 13-04-2022 factors can affect the implementation of work from home such as the absence of work and communication tools, lack of coordination, domestic disturbances in the household environment, and so on.
The challenge in working from home for companies is how to maintain morale and knowledge transfer between employees. Morale is a picture of feelings in the form of desire, ability, interest shown by a worker in doing work diligently, disciplined and diligently so as to produce more, faster and better work. Companies or agencies will get a lot of benefits if every individual who works has a high enthusiasm in work. High morale will usually be seen from the individual's willingness to work wholeheartedly. Employees as the driving force of the organization are required to work with more enthusiasm in order to be able to face competition, and to maintain the existence of the organization.
Work spirit is a form of employee behavior that is based on the assumption that humans are rational beings and use information that they can understand (Ajzen, 1991). Therefore, the theory of planned behavior (TPB) is suitable to describe his behavior towards his work spirit. Employees can decide they can work with the same or a different passion when faced with having to work from home instead of working at office. In fact, there is a possibility that the work spirit when working from home and when working directly in the office can be different. In fact, there is a possibility that the work spirit when working from home and when working directly in the office can be different.
This research wants to examine this, by trying to compare the perceptions of employees at the Manado branch of BCA Bank regarding their morale when working at home and when working in the office. Beside that this research contains newness. Even tough working spirit construct is not new and was long established but compared the working spirit in period of covid-19 and pre-covid 19 is consider new. In the period 2019 to 2021 there were 193 scientific papers on google scholar database, but there is no record consider working spirit in pandemic COVID-19 situation.

Working Spirit
Definition of working spirit is defined differently by several experts. (Ngambi, 2011) defines morale as a concept that refers to how positive the group feels towards the organization. Furthermore, Seroka in (Ngambi, 2011) also defines working spirit as the belief or optimism of individuals or groups towards the organization which will affect the discipline and willingness of individuals in organizational activities.
Working spirit is important for companies because it can encourage someone to have more desire to move forward in thinking. Can lead to satisfactory performance results. Can beat the negative things in thinking, so we are able to do positive things in the initiative or act. Cultivate high loyalty to what is done and give bonuses for work performance.
The spirit of work does not always remain in employees. Sometimes morale goes up or down, indications of ups and downs can be seen from the following indicators:

Discipline
Discipline is a state of order, because the people who join in an organization are subject to and obey the rules and are carried out with pleasure (Kusumo, 1987). Employees who obey all the rules for fear of being punished reflect negative discipline. On the other hand, employee compliance with regulations because they are aware of the function of these regulations to achieve success is a reflection of positive discipline. The definition of discipline has two important factors, namely the time factor and the activity or action factor. Efforts to create discipline other than through clear rules or regulations, there must also be a clear description of duties and authorities, simple procedures or work procedures that can be easily understood by every employee.
Work discipline can be defined as an attitude of respect, respect, obedience, and obedience to the applicable regulations, both written and unwritten and able to run them and do not avoid receiving sanctions if he violates the duties and authorities given to him (Sastrohadiwiryo, 2011). Discipline is a person's awareness and willingness to obey all organizational/office regulations and applicable social norms (Hasibuan, 2017).

Cooperation
Cooperation is defined as a collective action between one person and another which can be seen from the willingness of employees to cooperate with co-workers and with their superiors to achieve common goals, the willingness to help each other among co-workers and with superiors in connection with their duties and their active in organizational activities. (Kusumo, 1987) states that cooperation is a reflection of the spirit and will be good if the spirit is high. High spirits make cooperation better and there is a willingness to help each other. The cooperation process contains aspects of relation, interaction, participation, the contribution of each individual relating to each other, each contributing thought.

Ability
Ability according to (Robbins & Judge, 2013) is an individual's capacity to do various tasks in a job. All individual abilities are essentially the ability factors needed to carry out physical activities. Mental ability is the ability needed to carry out mental activities. The dimensions of mental ability are numerical intelligence, verbal understanding, perceptual speed, deductive and inductive reasoning, spatial visualization, and memory.
From the several definitions of work spirit above, it can be concluded that work spirit is a description of the feelings, desires or sincerity of individuals/groups towards the organization which will affect the discipline and willingness of individuals in organizational activities to do tasks better and faster.

Hypothesis Development
In the pre-covid-19 period where work activities were usually carried out entirely at the office from 8 am to 5 pm. At that time social activities seemed to be livelier where employees could meet their co-workers. This meeting is very likely to make workers more comfortable because they can discuss and interact with each other about everything about their work.
During the Covid-19 period, work done at home did make work more flexible, where employees could be open to working several office and home jobs as well as work as teachers for those who have children who are also forced to study at home at once. in completing their work, even though the demands for productivity remain the same even though they have to work from home. In addition, if there are work problems, employees cannot directly meet face-to-face with other employees to discuss work problems. Although it can be done by telephone, email, but it believes there is something missing, when employee need to work at home.
Referring to the opinions that have been conveyed, the following hypothesis can be made: There is a significant difference between employee morale during the pre-covid-19 pandemic and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

RESEARCH METHOD Population and Sample
The population in this study were all employees of Bank BCA at Manado Main Branch. The sampling technique is purposive sampling, the criteria for which respondents are selected as samples are employees who have worked since at least 2019. The reason behind that criterion were respondents who have working experience in two periods before and during the pandemic. Employees who were selected accordance with the sample requirements were 65 employees.

Operational Definition and Measurement Indicators
Working spirit were defined as perceived of the feelings, desires or sincerity of individuals and groups towards the organization which will affect the discipline and willingness of individuals in organizational activities to do tasks better and faster. The indicators of this research are discipline, ability and cooperation.

Data Analysis
Comparation tools paired sample t-test were used to determine the difference of employees working spirit in the period of before and during pandemic covid-19.

Validity and Reliabilities
The technique used in testing the validity were correlation of product moment with a 95% confidence level. The validity test is done by correlating the score of each item with its total score. The results of this validity test were carried out by looking at the correlation value between item scores and total scores. If the correlation value of an item higher than 0.4, it can be concluded that the item is valid.
The reliability test were conducted to show the consistency of a measuring instrument. This reliability measurement uses the Cronbach alpha technique. If the alpha value of a questionnaire instrument is higher than 0.6, it can be concluded that the questionnaire instrument is reach good reability, if reach score higher than 0.7 is consider ideal score (Nunnaly, 1978). Based value on table 2 it can conclude that all the item of instrument is valid due of all the R-Value is higher than 0.4. The next step is to see the reliability of the instrument, as can be seen in table 3.  3 it can conclude that all the item of instrument is reliabel and reach their ideal score (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994) due of cronbach alpha score is higher than 0.7. After conducted the validity and reliabity test, it mean the working spirit construct considered well and it can proceed to hyphotesis testing.

Hypothesis Testing
The hyphothesis testing in this research use paired sample t-test approach. The result could be seen in table 4. As can be seen in table 4, working spirit in before and during covid-19 period with mean difference 2.857, reach t-score 2.219 and p-value 0.045. Based from the result it can be conclude the working spirit in the period of before pandemic covid-19 the respondent perceived significant different with their working spirit on during covid-19 period.
Based on the result it can be seen that the employees was perceived working spirit in before covid-19 period much better than during covid-19. In other word the hypothesis was accepted.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the enthusiasm of employees at work was considered quite good, and maybe employees could be more disciplined, their work attendance could be seen right away. In addition, in the pre-pandemic period, it was quite good, because employees perceived themselves to be more capable of completing the assigned tasks.
Work morale during the covid 19 pandemic may be perceived as slightly lower. There are several things that employees may feel, for example, there is anxiety, the higher workload due to mixed office and home work, which may make the ability to show performance in work decreased. Cooperation with fellow coworkers has decreased due to face-to-face limitations. In addition, work discipline can be disrupted due to work carried out without direct supervision, by staff or leaders who are in the office.
One of policy to face this pandemic is work from home. Work from home policy has challenges and obstacles and not to easier we think to implement because not all sectors of work can be done from home. Many factors can affect the implementation of work from home such as the absence of work tools, adequate technology, communication, lack of coordination, and other domestic disturbances. The result of a lack of morale can result in other things, one of which is decreased productivity or performance.
Several previous studies have linked work spirit with employees performance and productivity. Research conducted by (Yofandi et al., 2017) mentions about with higher working spirit, will increase employee performance. Meanwhile, (Assagaf & Dotulong, 2015) give clear information about working spirit positively related with productivity. (Heerwagen, 2000) explained to us that to build organizational success and occupational productivity one of factors companies need to think about is create employees with high morale of work.

Conclusion
Based on result it can be conclude that employee perceived their work spirit in the period of pre-COVID-19 much better than pandemic period. Before pandemic situation it might much better in productivity and performance, in the pandemic situation work from home policy is possible to decreased their productivity and employee performance.
Due of this research was conducted in Bank of BCA branch office Manado. Hence, the different of work spirit were feel by entirely employees of Bank of BCA at Manado Branch Office.

Suggest to Academician.
Research with work spirit construct is consider old and established concept. Even though examine work spirit in the pandemic COVID-19 situation is rather new. In other word, even construct work spirit is old and established, but it can still bring a new information on this pandemic situation. Many news and research gave us strong evidence that pandemic situation making economics decreased. For instance, in many local or international news work termination were increased due of COVID-19 pandemic. This research gave new different information about the negative effect on work spirit which possible to decreased performance.

Suggestion to practitioner
This research was conducted at Bank BCA Manado Branch Office, hence to Bank of BCA could provide better planning on facing rapid change. Even though nowadays COVID-19 relatively under control, though we could not ensure what happen in the future. Implement or technology adaptation is might be key. Beside that better understanding on changing on customer need could be the fundamental key.

Suggestion on Future Research
Due of this research only conducted on Bank of BCA branch office Manado, then this result could not generalize. Future research, other researcher could replicate this research on another object of research that could consider will occur the general conclusion.