Lately, organizations are giving attention to enhancing employee resilience due to turbulent economic times caused by lockdowns in the last couple of years. This explanatory research proposes and tests the mediating role of employee resilience to link task challenge and employee performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in government schools of Oman using the broaden-and-build theory. An explanatory research design was used for this empirical study. An Arabic-translated questionnaire version was designed to collect primary data online during the lockdown using simple random sampling. We used the Preacher and Hayes macro to analyze moderated mediation using cross-sectional data and analyzed 441 responses. The findings confirm the mediation roles of employee resilience and moderating roles of digitalization during unusual circumstances. The study has implications for the school administrators, Omani policymakers and schooling staff of the Middle Eastern educational industry.
Keywords: employee performance; employee resilience; task challenge.