Vocal Voices

Companies of all sizes and from all sectors have recently made announcements of job losses. Some firms are cutting back while others will go bust and disappear completely.

Most of the job losses are being put down to coronavirus and the lockdown, but is that really the true case?

A lot of people are furloughed and working from home, but loads are just furloughed and doing very little. This has got me wondering about how many companies are looking at the number of staff on their books and thinking that they could become leaner and meaner and still get the job done. We have all known for years about council non-jobs, but what about those in the private sector? The makers and doers at the bottom might still be safe, as will the bosses, but what about those in the middle?

Come October and it will be squeaky bum time for a lot of people I reckon.

I think so too

Some job losses are certainly due to the virus - Airbus, for example, because there simply isn't the necessity to build new planes for a travel market that is going to be depressed for a long, long time.
Others are basically due to online shopping and the acceleration of the demise of the High Street, i.e. John Lewis, and would have happened sooner or later anyway.

I think it's a fairly even split.

Ossie, I am obviously concerned about the jobs directly lost due to coronavirus, and there are many. The same goes for those lost to the Internet, but those were going anyway, virus or no virus. However, my other concern is about businesses looking at the way things have worked under lockdown and asking themselves if there is another way of doing things.

Do they need so many layers in the pyramid and / or do they also need so many people in each layer? My bet is that many of them will be looking at work duplication and whether they can get rid of one layer, or more, by sending some work to the level below and some to the one above.

The hierarchy of some companies is more like The Shard than a Great Pyramid.

WM, I think there has been a total review overall.

There is another part of this which will become evident over time. The number of workers for administrative jobs are based on the hours needed to work time the coverage needed plus a calculation for sickness etc. Home workers travel less, can start earlier or work later and, I am certain, will report far less sick days if they don't have to travel to the office.

So companies will be looking to shed jobs based on this. I know the NHS is looking to move up to 75% of administrative jobs to home working and to sell off buildings required to seat them.

Then there will be companies who have been holding staff and using slower redundancy to bring the workforce down in order to avoid justifications to government or unions. Expect these jobs to flood out over the next three months.

As for contract work? This parrot is DEAD.

BT are still wanting to centralise, by bringing most of their IT workforce into just a few big offices. Ridiculous, and going against the trend, but it won't affect Mick as he's just waiting for the next "release" scheme, to retire.......