DUCTION Title: The employee performance in public universities during Covid-19 in Malaysia : A case study from UPSI 1.1 Background of the study Covid-19 outbreak was started in December in Wuhan, China, which then the virus has spread to all over the world (Schumaker, 2020). The virus then declared as a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) which then WHO evaluated Covid-19's global risk of transmission and had extremely high impacts towards people life (Schumaker, 2020). Later on, 16 March 2020, Prime Minister of Malaysia which is Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announce that Malaysia will go under Movement Control Order (MCO) started from 18th March until 31st March 2020 (LizzaBella, n.d ) due to the reason that the number of Covid-19 cases keep increasing. Since then, the Covid-19 pandemic happen in Malaysia. Various industries in Malaysia were badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic which it also includes the higher education sector. In Malaysia, higher education institutions play an important roles in economic growth (Osman, Ismail, Khan, & Alwi, 2021). Due to the pandemic cause by Covid-19, both academic staff and students at universities all over the world were experiencing unprecedented challenges such as class lecturers and tutorial had to be immediately converted online. Because of the sudden changes the employee who work especially at the higher education sector were unwillingly need to adapt themselves with the new norm that have been stated. Due to that the employee performance at the higher education industries were also get affected by the current situation. Employee performance is determined by elements such as job quality, quantity, and effectiveness, as well as the characteristics that employees exhibit at workplace. Employee performance also relates to how does the employees act at work and how well they carry out the tasks that have been assigned to them (Donohoe, 2019). Employee performance can be affected by various factor and one of the factor is workplace environment. This is because the employees spend a significant portion of their lives at work doing their jobs. As a result, all of their mental and emotional states, concentration, behavior, actions, and their capabilities are influenced by their work environment. It has a significant impact on staff engagement and most importantly is towards their performance (Satyendra, 2019). According to Nicholas Bloom which he stated that working from home is to continue do work like usual with the same output or efficiency during the pandemic which it may lead to a drop in performance of the employee, and it will be a threat to the economic growth for many years to come (Gorlick, 2020). In April 2020, Ernst & Young News (EY India, 2020) indicated that over 70% of Indian Businesses consider that a main concern about long term working from home is a loss of productivity and employee performance. To guarantee that responsibilities are done, higher education institutions must provide support to its employees. Employee leadership styles and attitudes are very essential aspects which it can lead to enhanced employee performance (Zahir, Loo, Raemah, & Norsiah, 2019). Because of Covid-19 pandemic and the Movement Control Order, all the of the higher education industries need to conduct everything via online. So, the academic staff of higher education institutes need to work in hybrid which is they need to do their work from home. This study will be conducted at University Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) in which the aim of this study is to examine the impact of the workplace environment, employee motivation, organizational encouragement on employee performance during the pandemic. This study will be focusing on the academic staff that work at University Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) in which to examine how does the Technostress, Digital Infrastructure, E-training, Working from home, Work stress hampering and Adaptive Expertise affect the employee performance which is the academic staff during the pandemic and MCO. The method that will be used to collect the data is Quantitative Data in which we will using questionnaires to gather all the data. Employee performance 1.Technostress 2. Digital Infrastructure 3. E-Training 4. Working from home 5. Work stress hampering 6. Adaptive expertise Do the research based on task below 3.5 Operationalization and measurement of variables 3.6 Data collection methods (observation/interview/survey) 3.7 Data analysis (types of analysis used - descriptive, correlation, regression, etc.)