**Preface to "Challenges in Work and Employment during the COVID-19 Pandemic"**

The global world is still acclimating to the COVID-19 pandemic declared in March 2020, a few months after the first signs of the outbreak. The resulting restrictions and lockdowns affected work organizations worldwide, while the many coping strategies implemented during the pandemic offered new tasks to working life research communities.

Researchers from Belgium, Canada, Finland, India, Norway, and South Africa took the opportunity to share their research results on the experiences of living with these measures in the Special Issue *Challenges in Work and Employment during the COVID-19 Pandemic*. Following a rigorous peer-review process, 10 research articles were accepted and are now published as a reprint.

In addition to country-specific features, the impact of the pandemic varied among different occupational and professional groups. The articles present the experiences of employees from a range of fields, such as professional work in higher education, teaching, social work and healthcare, engineering, and workplace development and cultural services. Work in the cultural sector can be precarious even without the pandemic; thus, these special circumstances highlighted the issue of unemployment more heavily in this field. Data consisted of pre-existing research and new data gathered via surveys and interviews. The articles shed light on the ways new situations were handled based on the levels of work organizations and individuals and looked forward to changes applicable after the pandemic.

This reprint will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the different fields of working life and workplace development, human resource management, leadership, and labor market policy.

> **Satu Kalliola and Tuula Heiskanen** *Editors*
