Clients

The State of The Job Market May 2020

I have been in finance recruitment since 1986 and during that time have seen a number of recessions, including the Great Recession of 2008. I have never seen a jobs market like this one in all that time and i fear that in the long term , Rishi Sunak's furlough scheme will contribute to making it worse. Firstly, since all this started about 8 weeks ago, it is accurate to say that there have been hardly any roles around. Even when companies do want to recruit, they have the difficulty of onboarding people whilst socially distancing. It is hugely difficult to integrate someone into your company's culture and ensure they know what they are doing, if you can not sit with them for a few weeks. In addition, whilst people can interview by Zoom, Skype or whatever other on line platforms they can use, the reality is still that people would like to meet face to face at the final stage. I strongly believe that Rishi Sunak is not helping matters by extending his furlough scheme through to October. Many of the jobs he is protecting are now redundant. More of them will become redundant as companies run out of cash from paying their other expenses as the months go on. At some stage, the government will have to face what they are dreading and running scared from, namely mass unemployment caused by their policies regarding this virus, which is currently killing about 1 to 2% of those infected. I understand that their decisions are not easy and it is admirable to want to save jobs but if you shut the economy down, companies can not live off thin air and mass unemployment will be the result. At some stage, the government is going to have to decide whether the death rate justifies huge swathes of the population losing their jobs and becoming impoverished. Currently, it looks as if they think it is and a compliant public, which is still being paid agrees with them. I shall be very interested to see what the public think when the funds currently paying them, dry up. Stay safe Jeanette Robinson

How To Survive Working From Home

I was speaking to a client this week who told me she "hates" working from home. As someone who has been primarily working from home now for a few years, I was genuinely surprised as I love it. So I thought I thoguht it would be helpful to all of you who ahve been catapulted from an office exisistence to the isolation of home to write a few tips on how to cope. 1) Have a structure to your day. This is extremely important as otherwise you will go in one of two directions. You will either do nothing at all or you will spend hours in front of the computer without giving yourself a break. 2) Working from home can be very intense. You can almost by accident, find yourself not moving from your computer screen from early in the morning to late in the evening. Your Things to Do List should incorporate breaks which you can tick off as well as work 3) You should schedule "Catch Up With Colleagues" calls into your weekly diary. These can be about work or just social. Either way, they help you stay connected and stop the feelings of isolation. I usually have early morning calls with staff and then one later in the afternoon. It helps us to review work, keep on track and exchange ideas. 4) As I said before, working from home can be intense and when I started doing it, I often found I had fionished all my work early. If this happens, don't worry that you've missed something. It's just that without many interruptions, you get a lot more done in a lot less time. You can use that extra time to do something for yourself, whether that's learning a new skill or housework. I personally, love that aspect of homeworking. 5) Try and go for a walk outside at some point during the day - as i write this, we are still allowed one exercise a day. It gives you fresh air and makes you feel as if you are still connected to the real world ( as much as this is possible at the moment!) 6) If when things get back to normal, you are still working from home, take yourself off to a local cafe or restaurant once or twice a week for lunch and enjoy a restful hour or so away from your desk. 7) If you have children, find out from your boss when you have deadlines for work and find out if they are happy for you to work otside the 9 to 5. One of my employees has a two year old and she frequently (pre this situation) takes her child to child groups in the morning but then does work for me in the early evening when her child is in bed. It suits her and it suits me. Flexing your work an be a major plus point when you work from home. 8) Other plus points: You don't have to commute and you can stay in bed a bit longer as a result! So in short, you can be more productive at times that suit you in less time than normal. This leaves you loads of time to devote to family or hobbies. Just don't keep biscuits, cake, or chocolate in the house if you want to stay slim!!!! Have a good week and remember - the lockdown won't last for ever!! Jeanette

Will Coronavirus change working patterns for good?

Until now, unless you have been a senior manager, flexible working for many employees has merely consisted of flexing start or finish times. I have wondered in the past week, whether the advent of the coronovirus will start to change this. If whole swathes of the workforce are forced to self isolate in case they have Coronavirus but in reality just have a cold, will companies insist that they continue working but from home in order to keep the economy moving. Once companies realise that their workforce is no less productive working from home, will this then change the way companies decide to engage with their workforces in the future. There is no doubt that technology enables staff in many occupations to work from anywhere but businesses have to date in many cases insisted on sticking to traditional models of employment. Seismic events like bad recessions or in this case a worldwide virus, make businesses reconsider their business models and make changes to them. It will be certainly be interesting in the forthcoming weeks to see how much disruption there will be if people are made to stay at home at the sign of the slightest sniffle or whether much will continue as normal using technology to achieve that. Have a good week. Jeanette Robinson