Micro and small businesses, especially information technology startups, as well as micro and small family businesses engaged in production using high technologies, and innovation, are a very important element of a country's economy. However, in conditions where the owner is usually the manager of the company and when there is no established human resources management sector or a designated position with responsibilities in the field of human resources management, the human management process itself is mostly informal, ad hoc, and subject to frequent changes. Human resource management problems are particularly noticeable in crisis situations such as the COVID-19 virus pandemic. This paper examines the attitudes (in the form of interviews) of managers and owners of small businesses in the field of information technology and high technologies towards the retention of employees in the COVID-19 virus pandemic in the first week of declaring a state of emergency in Serbia and in the first week of May, when the lifting of the state of emergency was announced. Although the sample is small, it can be concluded that small businesses were unprepared for this crisis, but that in terms of human resource management, especially when it comes to retention and rewarding employees, small businesses in the field of information technology have been able, because of the nature of their work, to overcome the crisis much easier than companies engaged in production (although they are utilizing high technologies).
Steps for Survive in the Global Economic
